Everyday some poor sap of a real estate agent is in the media trying to get us to believe that the market has turned and good days are just around the corner. They quote numbers of prices being up 2% from last year and just ignore that that was down 30% from the year before. Everyone of them claims to be really busy, so why do they need to protest so much and why do they seem so desperate. They may be busy, but they aren't making much money that is for sure. A look at almost any market in the USA shows the most important statistic for any broker just sucks...not price...liquidity. No transactions, no money.
My dog Suzie just had to have her leg taken off because of cancer. If we hadn't done this she was going to die. She moped for a few days but then just seemed to decide that she was now a three legged dog and was going to make the best of it. She now proudly skips everywhere and is swimming, chasing and loving life just as she ever did. She reset to the new reality and got on with it.
Of course if Suzie was a "Realtor Dog" she wouldn't have done this. Instead she would have looked at her stump everyday and then excitedly barked..."it's growing back", "it's growing back". If we could speak mutt that would have been OK for a few days but after it not actually growing back we would have had little choice but to ignore her or shove her in the garden.
As it is not legal in most states to put your Realtor in the garden or chain them to the fence, we have to try and hope they can get Suzie's message metaphorically. Stop looking to the past to predict the future. Stop telling us that the old price is coming back, we know it isn't, we read the papers. Instead, adjust to the new reality and tell us what is really going on now. Be informed, not just about around the corner but around the world. Don't tell us prices haven't gone down if virtually nobody is selling anything. Be different. We don't need promoters any more just like we don't need Palm Pilots or Hummers. We need experts not bullshitters.
Real estate agents. Be honest. Which are you?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Myth of Luxury
I have not been blogging for a while as I have been working on a new book I am co-writing with Ross Honeywill of the Social Intelligence Lab about the importance of understanding the NEO and Traditional typology in the modern business environment. It is often said that everyone has a book inside of them, which if is true for me, it is definitely stuck in there and finding it hard to work its way out! Thankfully I have Ross to do all the hard work that I can talk credit for at a later stage.
I have just returned from speaking at the Ragatz Fractional Conference in San Francisco and I have to say it was a strange experience. Speaker after speaker was repeating the mantra of demographics (there's lots of people in the world) and wealth (some of them have money). It was a little like watching the band playing on the Titanic - nice to a point but not exactly relevant to the situation at hand.
What has evoled for us over recent months is that it has become clear that it is absolutely vital for people to rethink and understand who their audience is and NOT under any circumstances get stuck in the middle between NEOs and Traditionals. Apple is making a fortune out of hitting almost every NEO touchpoint will effortless skill, and Wal-Mart isn't doing too badly driving home the value message to the millions of Traditionals out there. What you don't want to be is not as beautiful or unique as the Apple of your particular industry, nor do you want to be priced higher than the Wal-Mart of your sector either. The middle is the worse place to be.
This brings me on to the subject of luxury. Thanks to the very nice people at Calistoga Ranch I was driving an S-Class Mercedes last week and it got me thinking. When I was a kid and my dad had one of the worst cars on the road, a Vauxhall Viva (simply dreadful) I remember getting a lift in my friends dad's Mercedes. It wasn't just a different car, it was a different world. The seats were made of dead cow as opposed to my dad's vinyl ones, the windows rolled down at the press of a button rather than a sticky handle and the stereo, now we are talking. My dad's car had a radio and this being late 1970's England it had about 4 stations on it, all of them bad. My friend's dad's Mercedes had a a stereo with lots of speakers. I distinctly remember thinking that David Bowie must have been sitting in the back seat so good did Star Man sound, but then Rod Stewart must have been hidden in the trunk. Never has Maggie May sounded so good.
Why does this matter? Well the modern S-Class was very "nice" but it wasn't really that different from lots of other cars. Pretty much any car these days comes with pretty much everything that used to make the luxury cars, well luxury. The differences are now incremental; a slightly better stereo, cooled seats in the back for nobody to sit on, a nasty little noise that told me someone was in my blind spot to save me the draconian step of having to look over my own shoulder while over taking. Not exactly David Bowie and Rod Stewart are they?
Then I realized. With so much of the emphasis upon selling us luxury in almost every element of our lives, what most people seem to have not realized is that we already have it. Granite counter tops, rain showers and wood floors in our houses, music at our fingertips, foods from around the world and access to pretty much anything we want whenever we want. It doesn't mean that luxury isn't still desirable, it just tends to be incremental, like the S Class. That makes it far less valuable than it used to be.
S0 what is valuable? Valuable is something I don't have; something that makes my life immeasurably easier, more beautiful and more memorable. Valuable is design that excites, technology that frees and experiences that linger in your mind and you want to share. These are worth paying for, whatever they cost.
Learning the difference may well be the difference between prosperity or joining the whistling with the band on the Titanic.
I have just returned from speaking at the Ragatz Fractional Conference in San Francisco and I have to say it was a strange experience. Speaker after speaker was repeating the mantra of demographics (there's lots of people in the world) and wealth (some of them have money). It was a little like watching the band playing on the Titanic - nice to a point but not exactly relevant to the situation at hand.
What has evoled for us over recent months is that it has become clear that it is absolutely vital for people to rethink and understand who their audience is and NOT under any circumstances get stuck in the middle between NEOs and Traditionals. Apple is making a fortune out of hitting almost every NEO touchpoint will effortless skill, and Wal-Mart isn't doing too badly driving home the value message to the millions of Traditionals out there. What you don't want to be is not as beautiful or unique as the Apple of your particular industry, nor do you want to be priced higher than the Wal-Mart of your sector either. The middle is the worse place to be.
This brings me on to the subject of luxury. Thanks to the very nice people at Calistoga Ranch I was driving an S-Class Mercedes last week and it got me thinking. When I was a kid and my dad had one of the worst cars on the road, a Vauxhall Viva (simply dreadful) I remember getting a lift in my friends dad's Mercedes. It wasn't just a different car, it was a different world. The seats were made of dead cow as opposed to my dad's vinyl ones, the windows rolled down at the press of a button rather than a sticky handle and the stereo, now we are talking. My dad's car had a radio and this being late 1970's England it had about 4 stations on it, all of them bad. My friend's dad's Mercedes had a a stereo with lots of speakers. I distinctly remember thinking that David Bowie must have been sitting in the back seat so good did Star Man sound, but then Rod Stewart must have been hidden in the trunk. Never has Maggie May sounded so good.
Why does this matter? Well the modern S-Class was very "nice" but it wasn't really that different from lots of other cars. Pretty much any car these days comes with pretty much everything that used to make the luxury cars, well luxury. The differences are now incremental; a slightly better stereo, cooled seats in the back for nobody to sit on, a nasty little noise that told me someone was in my blind spot to save me the draconian step of having to look over my own shoulder while over taking. Not exactly David Bowie and Rod Stewart are they?
Then I realized. With so much of the emphasis upon selling us luxury in almost every element of our lives, what most people seem to have not realized is that we already have it. Granite counter tops, rain showers and wood floors in our houses, music at our fingertips, foods from around the world and access to pretty much anything we want whenever we want. It doesn't mean that luxury isn't still desirable, it just tends to be incremental, like the S Class. That makes it far less valuable than it used to be.
S0 what is valuable? Valuable is something I don't have; something that makes my life immeasurably easier, more beautiful and more memorable. Valuable is design that excites, technology that frees and experiences that linger in your mind and you want to share. These are worth paying for, whatever they cost.
Learning the difference may well be the difference between prosperity or joining the whistling with the band on the Titanic.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)