Tag Archives: marketing

I Hate This Trend

You’re not selling this house. You’re not! You’ve just made your living room look like it’s the size of a postage stamp.

Guys, please, I beg you, THINK. When you want to sell your home, you must think about the buyer. You have to get into the mindset of ‘the masses’. Most people do not want a giant sectional sofa taking up all of the real estate! It short circuits the buyer’s mental process of buying. And here’s a little known fact for you: Most people cannot ‘envision’ the space without your stuff in it. They see the sectional sofa as hogging the space and blocking the aesthetic. And they are correct, by the way and more importantly, that huge trendy sectional has just hijacked their imagination.

And it’s not a judgement of your decorating taste. If you like it, do it. You do you. I’d actually love to plop down on that sofa in the picture. Would I buy that house? No. The room’s too small (I’m chuckling). BUT when you want to sell that space, you have got to back your taste into the space behind marketing. I’ve studied marketing; I can even recommend colors. But I don’t do that. I love it when my buyers get to see a lovely space that looks like a HOME. Yes, even with pictures. The days of ‘minimalism’ are fading fast, but maximalism is already blasé. The happy medium and the quicker sale aesthetic, is somewhere in between. Speaking of colors in marketing…if your living room is vibrant orange with purple trim, I’m gonna recommend a change.

Now, do I think you have to sterilize your space? NO! The home should still look like a home. But you have to remember, you are selling space. Big, wide open space. Even people who want more delineated spaces want those individual spaces to look big. And when they stop walking and start to place their OWN furniture in their mind, that’s a GREAT thing. But they never get there if their senses are overwhelmed by MASSIVE furniture crammed into a small space. So here’s what I advise my sellers.

You are moving. This will soon not be your home. Start thinking like a buyer, and ‘rearrange’. Take a deep breath and let go of the emotion (I know that’s hard). Think about your sales price now. Maybe get a small storage unit and put some items in there. TRUST ME. I cannot tell you how many times my buyers turn around and leave when they think the spaces are too small. And there’s this: So many people put the back of a sofa right across the room where the fireplace is the focal point.

The fireplace wall is the ‘money wall’ for your home. DON’T BLOCK IT. Switch the furniture placement to open that view while you are marketing your home. People say, “Wow!” when they see the sweeping vista (okay that’s a bit hyperbolic) from the kitchen island to the fireplace. If you have the floor plan where there’s a dining table between the kitchen island and the living room, don’t put tall decor on the table. Make the VIEW un-interrupted all the way to the ‘money wall’, because they WILL stand behind that island to view the den or living room with the fireplace. They will. It’s okay to put decor on the table (I would), but don’t let it grab the attention of the buyer who is trying to decide if this space will work. Think: SQUIRREL! So…what about that buyer’s decision process:

Buyers enter your home and their creative brain takes over. They immediately start thinking how they would live in that space, and they think about how they would put THEIR stuff in it. The home should have a comfortable temperature, it should SMELL good (don’t put the fragrance things in the outlets; it makes buyers think you’re hiding something). Open the blinds and push back the dark curtains (better yet take them out). Let the sunshine in. Sunshine is a wonderful psychological marketing tool and it’s FREE. Don’t have gigantic decor on spindly tables (danger) and take the pet snake terrarium to a friend’s house (don’t laugh; I’ve had that happen). Think like the masses.

Now about that sectional: Here’s my editorial. Sectionals are a smart marketing tool for furniture makers. They get to make a sectional cheaper than regular sofas and make you think they’re worth more money. So they create the “everybody’s doing it!” idea and of course people fall for it and they pay more money. In marketing, that’s called affiliation. And it has worked. And it’s the bane of my existence unless I’m showing a huge home to my buyers because chances are, the dreaded sectional will be in the living room.

Contemplating Jaguar’s Crash

It’s everywhere; we cannot avoid it. The news is Jaguar. Jaguar is finished, Jaguar has gone woke, heading to a stock price of a buck. The CEO’s going to be axed. Agreed. But why? That word, why, will no doubt be on my tombstone. I always want to drill down to the reason. I think it’s about creativity. Creativity is dying.

Think about how many re-releases, how many remakes, how many copies we see. Good grief, why remake Snow White? How many Star Wars are there? The VW bus is back, but it’s a Buzz now. OMG. Make something new, for God’s sake. I’ve noticed that, aside from Elon, creativity, new ideas, great leaps forward for society, have disappeared over the horizon. Only Elon is standing in the breach. Why is nobody trying to copy him? Because, no talent and no drive. Too much work to copy Elon and work, well that’s not gonna happen. Too many video games and too many men wanting to be their version of women. That’s insulting, by the way. It’s cultural appropriation. Dark red lipstick, a midriff tank and a falsetto voice make a costume, men. A costume.

What happened to men who couldn’t wait to get a car they could ‘work on’? Where are the greasy hands picking up tools out of the toolbox? Where are the guys building computers…or anything…in the garage? Where are the ideas like having all music in one little rectangular box? What’s the next fiber optic idea? Data at the speed of light stuff? Nobody?

It used to be the case that ideas overflowed from colleges and universities. Art, technology, ideas that pulled society forward at breakneck speeds leapt from campuses, flowed like rivers. But not now. It’s SO bad now that the new Jag ad, for example, actually says, “Copy nothing”. Well I think that’s a subliminal admission that copying is the only way anybody these days can graduate. So Jag jumped onboard the woke train, when it had already left the station. No wonder the knees are scratched and bruised. People who should never be in charge are pushed to that position because of woke-ness, not because of training or education. For those of us who lived in the age of a huge technological leap, it’s depressing and we’re trying not to read the writing on the wall. But we have functioning brains.

Another thing. There is an absolute aversion to paying attention. To looking around. To reading the room. People are so desperate to be unique that they copy EVERYTHING. It’s all they can do because the think tanks are indoctrination incubators now. There’s no: How can we leap forward as a society? How can I make things incredible? No, now it is: How can we destroy society, tear it down, be anti everything? Destruction doesn’t work. Problem is, if we don’t read that room, we’ll miss the big train. Does anyone else see the irony of desperation for uniqueness causing a limp, deflating picture of deadly imitation?

Yeah, I think Jaguar is devoid of creative people, ones who like wrenches and power tools. I think Jaguar is so desperate they want to be Target. I mourn.