Real estate · Chicago
A listing that sits only gets cheaper
A sign going into a front lawn on an overcast morning. A study made for a real estate agent, and the category that took the most attempts, because the two obvious pictures both turned out to be unreadable.
A study, made for a category rather than a named business. Client work appears here only once the client has seen it and agreed.
01
The brief
A seller's fear is not that the house will never sell. It is the slow version: weeks on the market, one price cut, then another, and a final number well under the one they were promised at the kitchen table.
02
Keys in a palm
The first attempt was a set of house keys handed into an open palm, which is the single most common image in the industry. It scored 1.75. Judges read it as a car, a rental, a locksmith, and unclear. Keys are used by everyone for everything.
03
The lockbox, and the sharpest failure we have on record
So we tried an object used in almost exactly one industry: a realtor lockbox on a front door handle. It failed too. The judges answered a key safe, home security, and a lock. People classify the object in front of them, not the industry that happens to use it. That result did more to shape our method than any success did.
04
The picture that worked
A sign going into a lawn. It is not subtle and it is not an interesting object, but it is unambiguous, and it carries the whole story in one frame: this house has just gone on the market, and the clock the ad is about has started.
05
The grade
The finished clip initially came back below the plate that produced it. The motion model had drifted the exposure toward evening, and warm low light reads as lifestyle rather than transaction. Graded back to the flat overcast of the original plate, it recovered to four out of four. We now grade every clip back to its plate before judging it.
Measured
What the test said.
Every piece is shown to four different models with the sound off and the captions stripped, and each is asked one question: what is this selling? The numbers below are those answers, including the ones that went against us.
- Category recovered, no captions
- 4 of 4 judges, after grading
- Recovered at the plate stage
- 4 of 4
- Keys in a palm
- 1.75 clarity
- Realtor lockbox
- Read as a key safe
- Ungraded clip
- Below its own plate
The category that proved an object can belong to one industry and still communicate nothing. Recognisable to a professional is not the same as legible to a stranger.
Yours
Get a spot made for your business, free.
Ten seconds, one moment, in your brand, put through the same test as everything above. We make a set number free each month. Tell us what you do and what you would want people to stop on.