When Christina Panos left the advertising world to join The Corcoran Group 21 years ago, she had a challenge ahead of her. How do you bring consumer marketing to a business traditionally focused on transactional marketing?
Founded by Barbara Corcoran, a former diner waitress in 1973, The Corcoran Group is one of the most iconic names in real estate. When Corcoran sold the business in 2001 for $66 million, the personality of the brand left and the company needed a new way to connect to consumers.
“We were really the only company that actually did any brand advertising within our competitive set,” explains Panos. “I was brought in to rebrand the company, to move beyond the iconography of Barbara and find a way to position Corcoran differently than any other real estate firm.”
Panos’ background included time at Mastercard where she saw first-hand how consumers connect to brands through emotion. “I was inspired to take the time to understand how consumers feel about the buying and selling process in real estate,” says Panos. “No surprise, what came out was that it is the most personal and emotional purchase you’re going to make in your life. That’s really what we built the brand around.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Panos from her office in New York to talk about building emotional connections, “Live Who You Are” campaign and how her days at Mastercard taught her about building brands with longevity. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about how you are telling the Corcoran story to consumers?
We have a human-first approach to real estate and our tagline, “Live who you are,” gets that across. It comes from the understanding purchasing a home really reflects who you are more than any other purchase you might make – it says everything about who you are, your values, how you live. But most firms only talk about real estate in a transactional way. I wasn’t from the real estate world when I started at Corcoran, my history was focused on consumer marketing and advertising – on what the consumer wanted or needed.
It seemed like a no-brainer to do research first to understand what consumers do want out of a company they’re looking to buy or sell with. What became apparent very quickly was that real estate might seem transactional because you’re talking about price-per-square foot, views and location. But at the heart of it really is emotion and personal connection. That is the perspective that we take towards the business. We put people first and have positioned our brand around that emotional approach. That’s really the ethos of the company.
Can you share some examples of how emotion is showing up in your marketing?
Our current brand campaign is called Be Home. We’ve been running it for a couple of years now, which is an extension of the original campaign we launched with the rebrand in 2005. The idea is that home is the sanctuary where you can let your hair down, be your authentic self with your friends and your family. The idea is to capture these everyday moments that are not extraordinary, whether it’s brushing your teeth before bed with your boyfriend, putting your children to bed at night or playing with your kids in the pool. We try to capture those everyday moments just to bring to life the beauty of home. It’s the way that we capture the moments. It’s the music that we use. They are short little movies, short little stories about home. They are a way for people to connect with the brand.
Can you talk about how the real estate market is looking these days and how you’re thinking about it going into the new year?
I never want to make real estate predictions because so much is based on inventory and rates but there are always people looking for a home. There are always people looking to sell. A lot of purchases are accompanied by a major life event, whether it’s becoming an empty nest or having your first child or getting married. Those things are happening all the time. I’m feeling positive about the year. It has been an interesting couple of years, but I’m feeling hopeful again.
Regardless of what’s going on in the world, our approach has never changed. It’s all about the home and how it makes you feel. Whether it’s the boom times or not, it doesn’t change the fact that home means something very special to everybody and that’s what we’re focused on.
For example, during COVID, obviously there was such a reawakening about the importance of home and what it means to people to have that refuge. We’ve always been speaking in that vernacular. It was very natural for us during those years. It really felt like we were in a very good place because that’s been our point of view all along. I realized that that’s just who we are. And as the market ebbs and flows, we obviously go along with it, but we just stick to our point of view and our values. And that has really worked for us.
Can you talk about the challenges you face in your role and how you overcome them?
The innovation challenge is probably the biggest one. There is so much out there. AI is all over the place. We get suggestions from everybody. Have you looked at this AI tool? And there’s just so much ground to cover and you really have to assess the tools for our industry. They have to meet a lot of different bars and be effective for people. By the time we figure out if something works, it takes a lot of due diligence. Figuring out that process, understanding what is new out there and making sure it’s scalable is the challenge as we grow.
Luckily we have a very amazing in-house tech team that builds a lot of homegrown products. They have built some incredible AI products this year that have helped make the life of an agent much easier, whether it’s having an AI generated bio or AI generated listing descriptions et cetera. Those are the types of things that are invaluable to offer to an agent that really saves time.
Can you talk about how your past experiences have helped guide your current role?
I started off in the agency world and got good experience in working with both the high and low ends of consumer products. MasterCard was probably the most formative experience that I had. When I started, they were about five years into the Priceless platform and I had a bird’s eye view into one of the most iconic brand transformations ever. I got to see how MasterCard took a very transactional business and found the emotion and created a platform and a campaign that still runs to this day. I’m inspired by brands that have consistency and longevity. I had this front row seat to a brand that was able to understand the value of tapping into emotion. I believe that battles are won on communicating product benefit, but the war is won with the heart.
Do you have any more marketing predictions for 2025?
Authenticity is something that we were always striving for. I’m seeing it more and more. I was really struck when Princess Catherine came back into the public eye after her time recuperating from cancer. The Royal family released a video of her and her family simply enjoying time together and while everyone can look at it with a cynical eye, I thought it was a very intimate look into everyday life as a real family. It struck me because, through our campaigns, we tell stories about people’s everyday lives. I like stripping away a lot of the artifice that you normally see. This just felt a lot more real. g
