David Shing. AKA Shingy is an Australian futurist speaker creative director. Strategic digital consultant and entrepreneur known as the digital profit. Also the title of, the podcast, which we’ll talk about in a moment here. he’s a multidimensional creative who specializes in advising clients about inventive and effective approaches to optimizing brand value within the digital landscape.

He is passionate about educating the masses about emerging digital, social and mobile technologies. He’s worked large and small companies while co-authoring. Several technology related patents. He’s also worked as Verizon’s media, digital profit. And prior to that, AOL’s European head of media and marketing responsible for.

11 countries. It’s an absolute privilege then, to have one and only David Shing with us to talk to the Greater Property Group and our agents about branding marketing and the changing, real estate industry, which I have here. And this applies to you as an agent in 2021 and beyond. Shie welcome to the run.

Thanks very much, man. Not podcast masterminds. Welcome here. Big round of applause. Thanks brother. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Great on joining that. Yeah. Yeah, no, I appreciate you making some time this morning. I told you we were gonna chop it up a little bit. Talk about, branding and marketing and why it matters so much, especially if you’re a sales professional, you’re some, you know, agents in particular, the real estate industry, agents like to brand themselves.

Now, before we get into it, I do want to ask you, you know, in your words, what you do, Forbes magazine, which is really interesting Forbes magazine called you an artist, a globe trotting speaker, and a market seeker. Same article said, David, As a storyteller who identifies emerging trends and inspires clients to think differently.

And I said to you on the podcast, I’m sure that those who work with you would agree that that’s accurate, but how would you describe what you do exactly. Yeah, look, I, I, I would say all of that Forbes did a pretty good job of that, which is one now one of their educators, but more importantly, my, my job is really simple, which is to inspire people to do better than they could have thought they could really basic.

And the basics of that is look, you’re, we’re only human to human business. Period full stop. Are you probably gonna wanna talk about a bunch of s**t? That’s got technology at the heart of it. Fine. Awesome. But end of the day, there should be a human at the end of that thing. Otherwise we’re going down a different tunnel.

and by the way, if you wanna touch on that, that’s fine. You wanna talk about metaverse or clearly with Spencer, we wanna talk about Bitcoin or blockchain or Jesus NFTs, any you guys wanna jam on? We can, but truthfully you’re in a business you’re in a business to business relationship with humans at the end.

And the purchase decisions that they make with what you are responsible for are some of the biggest, most stressful elements in their life. And so I think that’s some of the architecture as to why real estate agents have done a really good job or attempted to do a fantastic job of branding themselves.

Cuz ultimately the transaction has to feel humanized. It just it’s we’ve moved on from a thousand years ago when the first thing a real estate agent would do is what they put their picture on a goddamn business. And that picture looked like it was taken maybe 20 years ago. And you turn up, you like, I’m sorry, are you the person that’s on this card?

Cause I don’t see that s**t happening, dude. Thank Christ. I look a little bit like that. Sizzle reel still. Thank God, but it’s really quite remarkable to me that real estate agents think that plopping your face on a business. Card’s gonna be enough. I don’t know whether you guys do that. If you do, you better bloody will make it look really personal.

You know, it’s in it’s. It’s amazing because when I ran media and marketing for AOL, I’d have these people pitch me all these different ideas for the media. The media groups. And right before I left the UK, I’d launched a women’s site and fortunately became the number one women’s site in the UK. But when the, when we were pitching the proposition, I, I obviously had women in the group pitch it, but they never ever personalized the pitch.

It was bulk stand. Anybody could have pitched it. Anybody on this call could have pitched that thing. And the number one thing for me is context, right? So what I mean by that, and I don’t mean right as in, right. I mean, right. It’s bloody context, because if you think about it, people are making a massive responsibility in entrusting you perhaps with one of their biggest opportunities they have on which they may have multiple.

If it’s a wonderful experience. You know, David, that’s why you and I can kick it. Mm-hmm  I think the category you’re in is bat s**t crazy. I would never, ever want to be in your category. It’s too goddamn stressful for me. I know it’s incredibly lucrative and I get that good on you. And you’re all good looking and all that good s**t.

And that’s gonna be mass appeal for people. That’s great. But when you don’t look like an all painting as I do, you know, you have to find a different vocation. So real estate agents block their faces on a business card and have at it. But I do think that, you know, it’s a, it’s a different, it’s a different play and a different place.

And I know we’re not even getting started, but I just wanna jump in and say that I find your category remarkable. but I also think there’s, there’s an absolute change in people’s psyche. You have about 18 months left of that radical change in their psyche. By the way, the last 18 months has taught us that people are prepared to change forever.

I just came back last week from speaking at the largest HR conference in the middle east in Dubai. And the last time I spoke, there was 2019 and I talked about a bunch of predictions that I thought were coming maybe 10 years from now for the future work. I didn’t expect ’em to come 18 months. So in that time period of 18 months, what I found is that people started is to go real quiet.

Particularly in the brand space. I just wanted to get back to like, I don’t understand this because I’m freaked out. So therefore my brand’s gonna freak out. So let’s just all pause. It was that time. It was the first time I, I subscribed to live TV in 20 years. Cause I didn’t know what television was doing, but I wanted to see what ads were doing.

And boy, they were terrible. It was either somebody telling me the American pillow, whatever that thing’s called or Ginsu. On primetime television because every brand on planet earth went, oh my God, my Spinster’s clammed up. I dunno what to do here. And I’m gonna freak out as we start to relax. As people start to relax into this hybrid world, there’s a truth to that.

which is a psychology for people has radically changed. And to understand, I mean, I think what you guys are as psych majors, actually, I don’t think you’re real estate agents. You not damn psych majors. And you’ve got to just, you’ve gotta read body language. You’ve gotta understand tenacity. You have to understand frequency.

You have to understand not just verbal de fluency, verbal de fluency is the fillers. When people speak in ums and RS immediately when I meet somebody and they’re Amanar and like kind of, they don’t know what they’re talking about. So there’s this really interesting change that’s happening in people’s psyche in their relationship to you and they meet you.

So, you know, I celebrate and I’m thrilled that there are so many, so many winners in this. I dunno whether it’s monthly or quarterly that you do those shoutouts, but that’s incredible because it you’ve already got the human skill at the heart. But yes, I’m excited about your category. It’s radically different.

It should be radically different. please don’t just put your face on a business card. Do you guys have your faces on a business card? Somebody wanna grab one for me right now? Show me what the hell’s on your business card. There’s no face on. Is there Rocky? You don’t have your face on your business card.

You of course you do. You know, what’s funny. We were actually talking Spencer, Spencer. That looks nothing. Like you put that thing down. When was the last time you wore a tie? Last weekend, listen, the, you know, shaggy, we were talking about this, we were talking about this, yesterday actually, you know, we haven’t personally like, I, I think Nathan and I, we haven’t had a business card in quite some time.

and typically, you know, what happens with business cards? You know, they typically go in the garbage or something like that. And if you are gonna have a card, you do have to have a call to action, a unique selling proposition, something else, which I’m gonna ask you about specifically, but you touched on it.

And I wanna ask you about the process here just for a minute here. You, you know, you talked about. Distilling brands down to human terms, right. For companies so that they can relate to the everyday human, the consumer, the client. How do you do that? Like, what’s the process? How do you help companies and brands, relate to the everyday human?

Yeah, that’s a, you know, it’s really, really simple and it’s really basic and everyone forgets it. So it start, there are three things. The first thing that people typically talk about is their story. So, you know, what is the story of the organization that you work for? What’s the heritage of that thing? Why is it amazing?

There’s this whole lineage that every brand on planet earth has followed that formula. And we could talk about these stories till the cows come home. And in fact, let’s do it right now. Does anybody have a Chanel bag? Somebody has to have a Chanel bag on here. Jesus you’re in real estate. Somebody has a Chanel bag.

No, somebody must. Nobody has a 2.55. I feel like crystal Kwan might have one. Who else is on here? Let me ask you a question. Does anybody? JC has one. JC definitely has one. JC go grab your Chanel. I, I really don’t have one.  what I’m vibing here. I love the fact that as soon as I ask questions, people turn their cameras off faster than I’ve ever seen before.

I’m love. I’m totally vibing that scene, man. It’s like, okay, he’s not gonna pick on me if I just bloody I’m out, dude. But let me tell you that the, probably one of the best stories he could ever tell was that the Chanel story, and there are two reasons. Everybody know the 2.55 bag. It’s the one that has a crosshatching on it’s leather.

It’s got a chain on the bag. Everybody know what I’m talking about. Okay. So let me explain. I just gave me two minutes to talk about this. There’s a reason why that bag is more expensive than any other bag in its category. And I think fundamentally it’s because of its story, it was launched in February, 2000.

Oh, sorry. February, 1995 and Coco Chanel’s iconic bag, it has crosshatching on the leather cuz it matches the saddle blanket where she was taught how to ride a horse from her muse and she would. Not side saddle, like women did back in the day because she wore men’s trousers. She will, she rode over the horse.

And so that’s one thing. So it’s always a callback to that. The bag is black because it’s the color of the, the priest’s uniform for the orphanage you grew up in. And the interior of that bag, when you open it up is burgundy and it’s burgundy because of the color of the nun’s outfit. There is a zip in the inside pocket on that bag and that’s there to create it was, it was there.

So she. keep her love letters from all the, the, the men that she had, had within her life. And there’s also a, a little tiny pocket on the back that has a curve. So next time you look at it, look at that Chanel bag and see the curve. The curve is actually the matching. That’s the smile of the Mona Lisa, which is her favorite, her favorite painting.

The last thing is the chain. There was the first clutch purse back in the day to have a, to have a chain. And the reason it has a chain is that just, you could have a freehand of smoke. So I think that whole story alone is. And that is a heritage story. So that story, story, story, story story. The second thing people throw into is perform.

You know, this is the fastest growing suburb in, in the urban area. There are more coffee shops popping up on each corner than we’ve ever seen before. That’s all performance, blah, for me, totally blah performance. If it does what it says on the can God bless cuz that’s what it should be. The internet has taught us that performance is everything it’s not, it’s not where brands are built.

Brands are built on. Or sentient touch texture taste. I have a sense of what’s gonna happen if I hang out with, you know, Spencer or Rocky, I know what’s going on there. There’s a vibe with these cats, I think until Spencer show me’s business card. Now I’m gonna call bulls**t on that. I’d also saying the same thing with Joe.

I think Joe, you know, there are people here that I look at and think immediately, I kind of get a vibe and I know, I know what that’s gonna be now in the real world. That’s called sentient. You get in a car, you close the door. That sound will tell you whether you’re in a luxury vehicle or an economy vehicle, the smell of the leathers will tell you there’s, you know, there’s a value to that.

All of those substrates are all based on feel and feel. God bless is the hardest thing on planet earth to deal with the hardest thing to do. But it’s the only thing I think people should focus on. You included. I think you guys have done a great job is a brand doing that. As individuals, you have to sort of back draft into that.

And that’s gonna be really interesting and powerful once you actually do that, cuz that’s where you become iconic. And that’s where I think most people should spend their time in the feel story incredibly important. Get it together. Feel is incredibly valuable to understand what that iconography can be like and performance.

That’s just a byproduct because I think everyone would agree that, you know, you shake somebody’s hand, you know, within millisecond. Whether you’re gonna want to trust that person with your, your, one of your largest purchases on planet earth, period, full stop. But that’s just me. For hard interest. I like, I liked you too, man.

We could talk about that as a story. I just wanted to pick on you, but thanks very much for bringing that up. You

anyways, we’re getting into it here. We’re we’re just getting warmed up here and we’re gonna ask about a brand story as you relate to the everyday professional in a minute here, but, what are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in the world of advertising and branding marketing over the last few years, you talked about.

Things compounding or speeding up in the last 18 months or the next 18 months. Yeah. And how would you apply those changes to your business if you were a real estate professional? Oh, okay. I think we, we, yeah. Yeah. I think the first thing first is people’s attitudes have changed. Right? We now have, we have these belief systems and I just caught, you know, draw it as a bell curve for a reason and inverted bell.

Previously, when things radically changed in the world, you sit in the middle and don’t jump left, or right. You tend to stay in the soft part of it, cuz you don’t wanna upset anybody. You don’t wanna have a point of view and guess what? That bell has got really wide, really fast. And if nothing else, the last 18 months, two years has taught us that you have to make a decision where you stand.

You have to be one or the. You have to be black or white, red, or green, blue, or black, what you need to stand for something. If you sit in the middle, I’m sorry, you were gonna get forgotten about. So point of view matters one for you, and it matters more importantly for the people you represent and it matters for the brand that represents you.

So those sort of paradigms are very, very important. So point of view is the most amazing thing that’s happened. And with that is also understanding that the brand that you have isn’t necessarily your brand. It’s the representation and reflection of who it is that you are representing. So if you are somebody who only deals with properties in the multimillion dollar category, great, you’ve already kind of defined what that brand looks like.

If not, you know, you’re able to actually forge a different style of brand for that type of acquisition. So you have an ability to reflect the style, your style within the brand and the audience of which you’re trying to target are mass brands that I deal with. Same. You know, they really have to understand that they don’t own the brand.

The consumer owns the brand. So can you reflect the types of messaging that they’re looking. In a vocabulary and that vocabulary by the way, is not just based on, verbal it’s based on three dimensions and that’s sight sound and motion. So obviously you guys are important across social to help that frequency, a lot of that social better have video in it, in your business because that’s the greatest texture.

It’s also the thing that allows people to engage deeper. And it’s also the realness, isn’t it. And you know that because if somebody told you. That photo looked really amazing, cuz that bedroom looks gigantic, but when I’m in it, it really should have been taken in a para panoramic. It probably should have been taken in four photos so I could see the dimension.

So those sort of there’s a realness to it, David, to be fair. And that’s the biggest change I’ve seen, which is we’re no longer just standing in front of a facade and trying to Polish. We’re actually being very real. And part of that is the social platforms that have taken off are very real they’re visceral.

And I was surprised by that because prior to the pandemic, right, when TikTok bought musically, which is why it became really a valuable platform in the us. So prior to TikTok, it was musically, it was really just a, a platform design for the kids to collaborate across singing and karaoke and limb singing.

It was pretty. Until the creeps came along. So they quickly sold it off to bite dance. But what’s been really interesting about that. Frequency is that COVID has been incredible for TikTok and the style of video that gets amplified. There is real, it’s incredibly visceral where everything else that we tend to play around with starting with LinkedIn at the very top of that tree, all the way down to Facebook and then Instagram, it all gets polished as it goes down.

But when it comes to TikTok, the real, it is the better it is and more impactful. It is apparently. Yeah, you took the words outta my mouth about, you know, why you should be thinking video first. If you’re in real estate, you know, sight sound motion, they all matter. And I think agents we’ve been talking about this for, for months now, as agents need to think video first, I think that’s imperative.

If you are gonna tell your story, as a sales professional brand yourself, you gotta be thinking video first. but when you’re shooting, sorry, when your agents are in market and you’re shooting video, are you guys shooting video on GI or are you just shooting it straight off the iPhone and Android handset?

I would assume most are iPhones somehow. well, we actually talked about this. I think, I think we talked about this about shooting vertical or horizontal either. Well, firstly, I’d only shoot vertical and if you’re gonna shoot, if you’re only shoot, if you’re going to shoot horizontal, shoot it for the platform that should be horizontal, like a private VI channel or something where you feel like you’ve got more of a boutique environment.

But for me, if I were you, I would absolutely be shooting with a GI. I would be going out and buying a DH, sorry, DJI or something where you can literally walk through the house with this gimbal and give somebody a frequency. So they don’t feel like they’re gonna throw up. That’s why video is very, very important because I’ve seen a lot of shaky video out there and that’s staccato video style that iPhone gives you.

There’s no way of stabilizing it. So if you were just to do it with a simple gimble and it’s like 250 bucks, so it’s not like a lot of investment. And Nathan, I see that you’re either agreeing with that or you, what are you, you know, sorry. I actually thought that Nathan was drinking out of a, what is that plastic solo cup bloody 12 in the afternoon?

Is it almost? But my point is, if you have a gile, you have an ability to create something that actually feels like it has more of a, an ebb and flow, and it’s just gonna be better quality than the person down the. I promise you if you’re not doing it, you have to do it. Mm-hmm . Yeah. And, and act actually goes back to, I think we’ve mentioned this on here is the reason why, vertical or straight up, like, this is more important, as a sales professional, when you’re shooting is people don’t like to be sold to.

Right. And automatically when they see a vertical, you know, when they see a vertical feed, they think they’re being sold to. Right. So that’s why. Right. And some companies have actually gone back. I’ve heard about this, like multimillion dollar companies gone back and reshot or re, cut their videos to.

Landscape. Wait, no, wait, what do you call this vertical. Horizontal portrait. Yeah. Vertical. Vertical. Yeah. Yeah. Portrait. There you go. Here’s the real deal. Here’s the, here’s the other thing I, I would, I would assume that 80 or 90% of your clients, the first thing you’re gonna do is get your fancy card.

They’re gonna look you up real quick on the phone. It’s all done on the phone. So it’s vertical is clearly the only way you want to do it. Cuz as soon as you go horizons, nobody turns 90 degrees. They just don’t. And so if you’re doing vertical anyway, it’s the way that you wanna see it. And I assume that all of you have QR codes on your real estate design.

And if you don’t have a QR code on your real estate sign, you bloody well should and they should be dynamic. Meaning that if you’re having an open day, then the code should go to an open. And why you are saying, Hey, it’s me. I can’t wait to see and greet you. I’m the person who’s gonna be at the door at one o’clock.

This is what you’re gonna expect today. And then on Monday, when the bloody open house is over, send them off to a beautiful walkthrough. And it’s a, on your verticals on your vertical video. Most things that I don’t see people do with QR codes is they don’t use ’em as dynamic. QR codes are living, breathing, dynamic environments for you.

It should be all on your business cards. They should be all on your real estate signs. It’s a massive miss if you’re not using them. And the reason for that is purely, purely, purely about being dynamic. The.  so you can send them to whatever you want. You also have the ability to hyper personalize it. So you have an ability to send somebody to a different destination.

As I said, it’s all, it’s just URLs. It’s very, very simple things to do. You know, you could actually, you could send somebody to a playlist that you’re going to actually, after you’ve done a walkthrough. On the brochure that they walk out with at QR code, give, given them a playlist that they’re actually listening to on the way out the door, if they really vibe it, there’s this hyper personal connection points that you have.

And the only way to do that in my mind, well, the best way to do that, the most inexpensive and the most dynamic way of doing that is QR codes, which is something I wrote about in 2011, by the way. So I can’t believe I’m 10 years. This is like a bloody 10 year old discussion, but Christ get on. Yeah, and actually, is Melissa.

I’m not sure if Melissa’s here, but, Melissa, you know, we were, she had re done some new business cards and she put the QR code there and what’s better is when you use a QR code with a call to action, obviously go here for. This is what we were kind of brainstorm, you know, go here for free blanket, home warranty program, you know, go here to find out about digital currencies and, you know, blockchain technologies that relate to real estate.

Whatever they call to action is give them a compelling reason to actually scan the code. I think that’s important. I think the CTAs, and we’re gonna talk about USPS in a second here. I do wanna ask you about this, cause I think this is fascinating. I’ve heard you say that it’s no longer about, consumers consuming content, right?

those days are over. What we have now is the creator, the curator and the critic. Of content, those three and that we’re in the world of personal self-expression as a new form of entertainment, which we’re kind of touching on. Can you explain how that might relate, to a brand or a real estate agent telling their story?

Yeah. So I think that if you are it, and you can reflect that you do a better job of hyper personalizing it, there are, there are multiple actions you need to think about, right? So if we go back to the early days of the internets, we talked about personalization, which is, Hey, you’re in Toronto. Awesome.

Here’s the weather that is absolute base. The next layer of that is customization, which is you’re in Toronto, but you seem like you’re into music because I have access to your calendar and you have some free time and I’ve checked you out on social. Here are some places you need to check out while you’re here.

It’s spending 24 hours in Toronto, cuz clearly you’re not, you’re clearly not a resident because you’re staying in a hotel or whatever. If you’re able to actually glean some of those data points, you’re able to create a customized experience. That customized experience also should feel humanized meanings.

It shouldn’t feel too. This should come from you because again, you’re reflecting the values of this human to human relationship and that’s, I think incredibly important. So that’s one thing. The second thing is if you act like that, Then it also shows that you understand the vernacular or what it means to be connected, because if you’re not and you’re passive then, and what I mean by passive, if you just think people are just gonna scroll through your content, that’s not good enough to, you know, with your videos as well.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t put a dynamic hotspot in it that allows people to say, you know, there could be a little blinking thing that says right here, Is where I’m gonna show you into a bathroom, but that point of this bathroom, the thing that I love most about it is it’s got these, you know, pocket doors and this view that you can’t see in the photographs, but it’s incredible.

And so I just wanna reach out to you and talk about those sort of things. For me, it feels more like you’ve got these dynamic elements and you care. And if you just. Passively put up this video that fills, and I I’m, I’m gonna hit on video all the time, because I think it’s the core and the cornerstone of your business.

It’s just gonna feel too polished. It’s not gonna feel like it’s real and real is the business. Right? The other thing is the first thing somebody’s gonna look at, as you said, David, if you’ve got a horizontal video or landscape, they’re gonna think they’re being sold and then they’re gonna think it’s gonna be polished.

So you’re already feeling like somebody’s gonna lean back. They’ve already become the. Okay. So if you’re thinking about, you know, something that’s more curated, the other thing is if you’ve got something that feels hyper personalized, that’s been customed to the person and the area that you’re in. If that is such an interesting way of approaching it, there’s no reason why that person wouldn’t share that with somebody else.

And they could be saying, we’re looking at this property, but this character who’s shown me. This property is amazing. Cause look what they’ve done. They’ve personalized this experience for me in a way that feels like I, I feel like I’m in it and imagine that sort of, talkability word of mouth at a dinner party on a Saturday night, that’d be amazing after they’ve seen an open house with you and that’s the sort of thing that we want.

We want living, breathing experiences as opposed to things that Phil. Which is interesting thought. I mean, you, at the beginning of the discussion, you mentioned the metaverse and I’m just like, you know, free styling here, but what, how do you think the, the, the metaverse will affect the way, you know, people let’s say the real estate industry, how it might help sales help or hurt sales professionals?

it could be very dynamic if you choose to allow people to participate in it, that can’t participate in it in real time and be there. But the truth is. If you, well, let me just back up, if you don’t participate in the metaverse today, and you’re super curious about it, just go play some fortnight, see what that thing looks like.

And that’s sort of a sense of you’ll get a sense of what it looks like. But if you don’t, if you think about it dynamically and think, well, what does the metaverse mean for me? Is it VR? I don’t know how many people on this call, probably how many people have a VR headset. No. Let me just go to the next screen.

Anybody have a VR headset in here? No. Okay. If you don’t have a VR headset, you’re not gonna participate in the metaverse anyway. So, if you want to participate in it, check out fortnight. If you do wanna participate in it, you can actually have VR experiences that you could pre-end to clients to do these immersive walkthroughs.

But if you do a really good job, just with a great walkthrough on a gimble, that’s probably gonna be more dynamic for them enough to be able to get them to come see the Godland. Because nobody’s probably gonna buy the property without actually wanting to touch you in some way and reach out to you and go through via walk through live schedule some bits and bobs, but walking through it virtually, it always feels a little bit off.

It always feels a bit like a game and it always feels a bit like it’s dynamically rendered and it doesn’t actually fill as dynamic as it should. And so I would be careful thinking about that as a strategy, moving. You’re the, yeah. Got it. Business period. Yeah. It’s, it’s an interesting, conversation about this.

A lot of people are kind of speculating on what it might mean for a lot of different industries. So it’s something that, will continue to evolve, I guess, as, as, as we go on here and as Facebook puts 10 billion into that space in the next year, 10 billion in the next year in that space. So the technology we’re gonna see it just, I, I mean, the technology’s gonna explode in that space, so that’ll be interesting.

Oh, oh, whoa, whoa. Be careful what you say there. The technology will explode. Hmm. Well, if you’re putting 10 billion in Shing, I would assume. No, no, no, no, no, no, it won’t. It won’t explode. Their marketing will explode around it. The technology will not explode. The reason I just said that is that nobody here on this call has a VR headset.

No reason to have. If you did gamer  yeah, I, I mean, I’ve used VR, I’ve used VR it and it’s like, I guess what I’m saying is like, if you’ve ever, how many have used VR, how many have put on an Oculus or. Pretty much everybody, almost everybody, everybody. Right. So if you put that on and you experience that, you feel like you’re in there.

In fact, after a few minutes, you like, you don’t even feel like, I mean, you feel like you’re in that world, for sure. Like, you know, you’re looking around, you’re touching things, you’re doing things in that space. I can only imagine what the, what the experience might be like when you spend billions of dollars in a year in.

Well, let tell you two, let me two things that happened with ocular. So from the development platform, which I’ve, which I’ve participated in, there are no biometrics built into the goals today. So if you’re looking at content and I’m laughing and you are crying, there’s no, there’s no change to the content.

We still wander around the same room, looking at the same content. Second thing is it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to build content that’s immersive, incredibly difficult, incredibly expensive to be particularly to make it feel like it’s cinema. So it will actually start in the gaming experience.

It’ll be a gaming experiences where they’re gonna spend most of that. Most of those dynamics, not all of us who are playing around in spaces that are in the real reality. And so there will be a lot of dynamic changes happening there for sure. And a lot of money spent in it, but ultimately that’s, it’s not enormous amount of money they’re spending.

They’ll spend an enormous amount of money on marketing, cause they’ve already spent enormous amount of money on Oculus and we’ve all tried it. Nobody really owns it. The number one manufacturer of VR headsets today is Google. Cardboard. Why because it costs about three and a half cents to make it. And all you do is put a stupid smartphone on top of it.

So that then the pixelation isn’t so great. So I’m all about the metaverse. That’s great, but we don’t have to run to it for the next 12 months. We just have to watch it participate in it slowly and actively if you’re curious, but it doesn’t have to affect your day to day life. It’s just a it’s, it’s a, it’s a great way also for Facebook to separate the.

From the big pile of smoking s**t that they’re currently created by themselves.  yeah, they, they needed a rebrand. They definitely needed a rebrand. And as we’ve agreed, it will, the technology will explode in the next year. So moving on,  on, we did talk about this before, on, on the podcast, which again will announce at the end here, but.

We talked about the fact that consumers see 1900 media messages, right. A day like this is crazy. I didn’t even know that that number existed, but 1900 BD messages. and then we talked about unique selling propositions or USPS key differentiators. Why are they so important to drive growth in branding?

So unique selling propositions without unique selling propositions. You don’t stand for. That’s one thing. So you have to have some sort of, as, as important as CTAs are or call to actions, to anybody getting something activated, particularly around things like codes, USPS are incredibly important. Why?

Because we wanna hang out hard on it before you lock in a USP, you should also lock in. What I would say is a manifesto or a tagline. So the most successful companies on planet earth have a very simple way of approaching it. And by the way, I’m a massive fan of simplicity. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication in this world.

It’s incredibly noisy. If you can calm things down by offering something that feels like a calm experience, particularly when people think about high value purchase decisions, then I think you literally stand out our dogs balls. I think you literally can carve out a very unique way of creating a dialogue that’s different, but that proposition should also be based on simplicity.

Why? Because you know this, you all know this, your attention span is shorter than a goldfish. I mean, so many of you are multitasking as we have this conversation, which is probably 20 minutes too long, because at the end of the day, if we have a short attention span, you have to be unique in the way that you stand out.

And that uniqueness shouldn’t necessarily be more, is more cause we’ve already got that. So I think less is more in some of those dynamics. there’s a bunch of you from Canada. And if you’re in Toronto, you’ve got the grandfather of modern architecture who did a great job in your city and that’s muse.

Vanderau he coined the phrase less is more, he also coined the phrase that devils in the detail, and there’s something beautiful about the simplicity of the way that he approached architecture, which I were to take that approach for the way that I would think about messaging and ideas and particularly USPS, because.

USP should just be aligned to what, whatever the customer thinks is the most important. And if that aligns with your values, then we have synergy. If it doesn’t, you have conflict and we have conflict, you’re gonna spend all your time in negotiation. Those negotiations gonna be no, they’re not gonna be. Yes.

And, and that’s incredibly valuable because I’m sure that the basis of your business is word of. Doesn’t matter how much money you try and throw behind things. If somebody says you, you need to call, you need to call Nathan, cuz he’s one of the coolest cats on planet earth, or you need to hang out with Lizzie because she knows exactly the, the way to move to a suburb and she gets what you need.

She not only does she have amazing properties, but she can tell me the types of schools that I think I need to go to. And when I need to get on the wait list, if it’s a hot school and this is why I care about. You got invited to parties and s**t who would’ve known that as a goddamn real estate agent and not just because the person lives next to you.

So I think the USP needs to be human truth and human values period. Full stop. Yeah, I think, you know, Len Len Wong, you know, the goat here on the call, I mean, he built his whole, you know, business empire brand on USPS and you kept them really simple. I mean, Len had an original USP some years ago.

Remember Len right? your home sold from 90 days old buy it’s super simple. We knew what we. Right when we called Len. Right. And of course his business exploded because of word mouth. I mean, it was the ultimate branding. So shout out Tolen for that. okay. I, a couple questions left. One is, we’re on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution.

What is that? Can you unpack that for us? Sure. I can. To the first industrial revolution, steam and then long term electricity and then computing. And the last one, which is intelligence has been creeping up on us for 20 years. That’s little bits and bobs of things that are finding all this intelligence about us.

And it starts with your phone. I mean, there are so many people that have things like tracking on the phone and they have notifications that are happening. do not track is a new feature. That’s only happened. Smartphone’s been around for 10 years. So there’s been lots and lots and lots of tracking that’s been going on.

So little bits of information that have been collected on us, just to give you guys a heads up in the internet of things, space of which you guys obviously participate in, because I’m sure you have a lot of places that wanna be smart houses, et cetera. There’s 127 different products launched in the internet of things category per second.

So there’s already millions and millions of devices that are already starting to think about little bits and data and all those little bits of data collect up to a massive amount of data that will be computed to understand exactly who you are. So intelligence, isn’t just one big thing that’s coming.

It’s a lot of little tiny things that everybody, every large company on planet earth is trying to figure out whether they should be the one. So whether that’s Google or whether it’s Facebook or whether it’s everyone else, including Amazon or, or the manufacturers are out there trying to figure out where they’re going to own the ecosystem.

Just to give you an example of that, just smart cars. And when you think about the advent of 5g, which I I’m sure is prevalent, where you guys are, 5g allows you. So have you ever done this? You go to dinner with a friend back in the day when you used to go out with people. Remember those days, that was fun a long time ago, but you know, you go and try and find a restaurant.

You’re looking at your phone thinking why can’t I find this goddamn restaurant you find out your two blocks lost. The reason why your two blocks lost is that signal is going all the way up to. It’s come all the way back down to tell you your two blocks around the corner to find out you’re lost. Now, you don’t have to worry about that because your signal can go from boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

It goes straight across. And there’s very little latency when you are doing that. The database it’s massive. So there’s massive amount of data that’s been collected. So to synthesize a lot of that data, particularly around things like smart cars, cuz you got, you know, there are, we have five sensors when we’re driving a smart car has something like 255 sensors.

So there’s a lot more sensors that it’s computing to figure out that you’re about to hit a cyclist. So that’s incredible. And that, that data architecture is absolutely massive. So the advent of intelligence starts at something like the phone and it ends at something like the smart city and all of that together is something that we’re all participating in and how we participate in that.

Is up to ask finally, to make those choices so you can choose to participate in it whole hog, or you could participate in it partly, but it’s up to you. What’s also interesting about this is. How do you participate in intelligence as an agent with, with the question I would ask, let me explain that if you’re collecting first party data on people, which I assume you are, and if you’re not, you should be.

And part of that is obviously having an agent side, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason you do that, but if you’re collecting intelligent data on people, but you’re giving them back an experience it’s even better than the data you’ve collected, they’re gonna give you more data than you’ve ever expected.

So when you’re collecting data, be very smart about it and collect, give somebody back a better experience. And they’re expecting with the data you’re collecting on them. Don’t just do the usual standard data collection stuff, because it’s easy to do. And then you’re not giving them any reason to give you any more data.

And because you’re not delighting them with something that that’s super special coming back. Hmm. And super interesting. So we’re on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution, which is. Intelligence. So how does that apply to your business? Okay. is there anything that we haven’t covered or maybe is what advice off the top of your head would give a new agent, a sales professional.

Who’s looking to make an impact, with their brand, anything we didn’t cover, we did talk about and maybe something they should focus on when they’re telling their story. And, and the other question is, does everybody have a story to. Let me start with the last one. First of course, everybody has a story to tell, and we know that stories are the, you know, they’re the basis of every source of human truth.

I mean, it’s great. Once upon a time is a great way to talk about it. I mean, I imagine the first time you meet somebody, it’s like, can I just tell you my story as to why I love this neighborhood so much? Awesome. What a compelling reason for me to lean in on that conversation. And then from there, you start to gather the information as to, to, to understand what they’re looking for and very quickly gonna understand.

Based on the psychology and the psychographic patterns that you are dealing with to understand whether somebody’s a striver, a believer, a maker, achiever, psychographics is your business. Once you determine that you’re able to say, oh, I understand what they are. They’re price driven or they’re location driven, or they’re value, energy driven, or they’re whatever.

It’s got nothing to do with where they look, it’s got nothing to do with what they drive. They’ve no’s none of that. None of that’s got to do with their psychology. In my opinion. So story. Absolutely. But yes, everybody’s story is compelling. Every single one of you, I’m sure if we give you some air time, which apparently we’re not gonna do today, but I’d love to, it’d be great to hear your story and why the hell did you get into it?

What do you believe in, what do you care about? What’s the stuff that you’ve saved in your psyche that makes you passionate about what you do in this business? I mean, I love that. And so yes, that’s one thing. The second thing is, you know, what is. What is, it allows people to trust you. And what are you doing to develop something that gives you a point of view that says, this is why you wanna trust me?

Because the moment they walk out the door, they’re gonna go see another bunch of agents, cuz I’m sure your properties aren’t exclusive. If they are exclusive, then your job’s dead easy. Isn’t it. Just don’t f**k it up then if it isn’t exclusive, then your job’s harder because you actually have to deal with other people.

And so I think story is incredibly important and it’s not just about face value. It’s not just about the way you look, it’s just about everything else and feel again is the most important part of that. so if I was a new agent, the first thing I would do is not look my face on a business card. I’d put a QR code.

And the second thing I would do is drive that QR code for a dynamic page that has allows people to see as much as I want them to see about me in totality, because if I got Spencer’s business card with a tie on it, and I jumped on a video call with him, like he looks today with a Bitcoin logo behind him.

It’s probably a different vibe than what I was expecting. If I go to his page. And it’s linked life has all of these different dynamics. I could think this is somebody not only will I buy from, but I could hang out with, do I wanna be friends with a real estate agent, maybe, but maybe not, but you’re more open to it.

So I would just get a leg up, man, cuz everybody looks the same in this category otherwise, and nobody should be buying it. Anything at face value anymore, those days are over phenomen. So by the way, in the 18 months that I said in the psych that’s changed because there’s so much mobility in people moving houses and that whole psychology of hybrid working environments, you guys should be so busy that this call should have been 15 minutes.

Because you’re in the hottest category on planet earth. I can’t tell you anybody that, that hasn’t moved and I’m not just talking about moving physically. I’m talking about moving psychologically, you know, and they’re thinking about making radical moves. I got a bunch of friends that have moved to Florida.

God bless ’em in the summertime. I think it’s gonna be a hell of a sing. And, you know, if they wanna wave a we flag, we need more people to sort of maybe wave blue down there anyway, in my humble opinion that whatever that’s politics and that’s, that’s the us, God bless. We don’t do that. Sh don’t do that here.

What’s politics here. I’m Australian, man. I don’t care. I can’t focus anyway, but what’s really important. What I think is really important though, is people are making massive leaps in this psychology of change, not, oh, I just wanna move to this neighborhood just down the road. It’s like I wanna move cities.

I’m gonna go from Quebec to Montreal. I’m gonna move from bloody New York to Detroit. They’re making radical changes. And those changes are a beautiful opportunity because it, their psychology has changed. Their vulnerability has changed their. Dynamics have changed. And what I mean by that, you are in the business of understanding people’s needs on a 360 degree radius.

Not just, this is the place for me. This is the world for you. And here’s why, because it opens up so differently. A lot of people, when they come into it at face value are gonna look at the apartment or the house they’re looking at and saying, okay, that’s the bullseye, but what’s the halo. And how wide is that halo?

And is this a good decision for me to move? To Montreal from New York city. What is the greater picture here before a couple of years ago? It would’ve been here’s the property in this neighborhood have at it. Most of that, decision’s probably 80%, 20% of its slay. Now I think it’s probably inverted. And it’s all about the halo.

So I would, I think there’s a totally different kind of psychology around it. And by the way, that’s why you’re seeing a demand, the challenge with in the auto industry. Yes. They can’t manufacture them because of chip and supply issues. But also the auto industry is hot because people don’t wanna sit in public transport anymore.

So beyond real real estate, you’ve got autos that are taking. So both those categories, which are pretty big purchases for people, both of them are super, super, super hot. So you have a really agile experience, but let talk about three consumer behaviors. Before we wrap up here, things that have changed or things that made people feel, psychologically.

Out of the constant state of fuzzy that they’ve been in for the last couple of years are three things. One is comfort. So can you provide them comfort in the decisions that they’re making? I’ll give you an example. Unilever, you know, realized that in the height, summer in COVID, people were pounding more ice cream than ever before, and they couldn’t get them to them fast enough.

So they developed a drone delivery service. There a competitor, which was Hogan Barss came out with a, a container for the ice cream, then it’s double wall steel. So it won’t melt quickly comfort, comfort, comfort. I spoke to the C I did a CMO series of, interviews with people. I spoke to the CMO Smuckers and asked him about his innovation funnel for the while he’s in COVID.

And he said, Shie, we can’t even deliver enough peanut butter and jam to people to make them feel comfortable. We’ll let alone innovate anything. So it’s all about. You get it? The second thing is convenience. What are you doing? That’s convenient to somebody today because we’re still in a world where we’re feeling a bit fuzzy, man.

I don’t know whether I should be going out and hugging people. I don’t know whether I should. I mean, somebody I just met who, who recognized me on a plane coming back from Dubai, we had, were chatting with masks on, but when we got off the plane, we took a photo together without mask on because we’re all vaccinated and he’s bloody hell.

Got COVID. So do you think that made me feel great, hugging that lunatic I’m out? So the other thing, as I said is convenience. What are you doing to lean in convenience for people that feel very kind of disrupted today? Cuz they are they’re in a constant state of fuzzy and they’re disrupted. And the last thing is, you know, and by the way, let talk about convenience for a moment.

Louis Viton I saw somebody loved VLU Batton in this list here. dos. Dos. Yeah. Okay. I’ll go with that terrible English, but whatever dude. Louiston, they closed in the middle of the height of COVID for their E V I P clients. So their executive VIP clients, they open the store. So one person could walk in and buy whatever they want.

The second thing they did was they built this beautiful caravan that they pull out to people’s homes. So you could literally walk out your front door and into a LVU Tom pull up store, and then they sold hundreds of thousands of dollars on that thing. In the first place they pulled up. So convenience is really important.

Confident is really important. And so is nostalgia. So if you can tap into somebody’s nostalgia in their psych. It’s a game changer. Let me give you an example of somebody who did that really, really well. So Cadbury in the middle of COVID were just listening, listening, listen. And they realized that people were, everyone was talking about this product that has not been on the market for 20 years.

It’s called the orange flavored 12. So they thought, well, there’s so many conversations around this. Why don’t we just bring the product back? And they did. And they did a presale as a limited edit chocolate bone sold. So, if you can tap into people’s nostalgia. And their comfort and their convenience sounds very basic.

Then you’re gonna make somebody feel very warm, very fuzzy, and very aligned that you’re understanding what their constant state of fuzzy is because, you know, people are making decisions to do things. They’re making big financial decisions to do things, and they really wanna be confident in those decisions.

Is that helpful? Yeah. Very, listen, Shie I, I mean, we we’ll wrap it up there, but I mean, guys, I, I want everybody to pay attention here. This is, this is a very high level conversation about marketing and branding. And of course, when you’re talking about the periphery and the 180 that that Chingy described it’s about more than just a transaction or an actual product.

Right. we’re talking about branding and marketing, like again at a very high level. So hopefully, you guys have paid close attention and there’s some takeaways here, David, I wanna thank you very, very much, for giving us your insight this morning, you know, changing landscape that’s, you know, that’s an understatement, you know, in digital marketing, advertising branding, especially as it relates to.

Real estate is super, super important. The everyday sales, professional and agent incredible conversation, the pleasure was all ours, as you know. So I want to thank you very, very much big round of applause.