R&W Lindfield's Quarterly Book 34th Edition | Page 5

Richardson&Wrench Lindfield
R&W underwent a rebrand five years ago,
why did you consider it needed a refresh?
Brand and marketing in any business should
always be evolving. As Winston Churchill said
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to
change often”. To a certain degree the speed
of technological change is driving the need
to constantly update and renew the tools of
our trade. Five years ago, Facebook was the
dominant social media with Instagram on the
rise. Today Instagram is ubiquitous and we had a
duty to reflect this in our marketing kit. Another
factor that can’t be ignored is that we are all
living in a much more designed world. People are
more visual than we used to be, the images we’re
exposed to are more polished and perfected,
and if you are in the business of creating desire,
you have to fall in with it – this is why much of
our new suite has a very editorial flavour as well
as Instagram-style photo layouts. We want to
deliver on-trend marketing to our clients and
agents.
Change is always disruptive. How do you
counter resistance to things like a brand
project?
Disruption can be a good thing and if you can
demonstrate to your franchisees the benefits
of change then they’ll come on the journey with
you. We see our primary role as providing the
right resources to our people to allow them to
concentrate on the job they do best – running
their businesses and providing professional
real estate services to their customers. But we
don’t develop new products and marketing in
isolation. A core group of principals, drawn from
a range of localities across New South Wales
and Queensland, form a consultative group
within our network for marketing initiatives such
as these. Their unanimous response on seeing
the first round of concepts was love, love, love.
I didn’t need any further confirmation that we
were on the right track.
34th Edition
To what extent does social media
influence the collateral and marketing
materials you are developing for
franchisees?
It is having a major impact on the way agents and
offices communicate with their customers so it
is essential that we provide them with the tools
to represent themselves in a positive way across
the social and digital space. The rules of on-line
engagement are constantly changing and both
Facebook and Instagram have changed their
algorithms to make it a less commercial friendly
platform in favour of genuine engagement. That
puts the onus back on real estate providers to
offer content that is genuine and compelling and
to work harder to build relationships.