In today's online real estate market, Realtor.com's competitors have focused their marketing on an oversimplified "one-click" home buying process. As anyone who’s tried to buy a home knows, the process is much more complex than one click. So when realtor.com dug into its differentiation and opportunity to challenge its primary competitor for brand superiority, all of these problems revealed a real opportunity and set us up to out-market the competition.

To work, our strategy needed to accomplish three things: Challenge the status quo maintained by primary players in the category around the generic and promised idea that home buying was as easy as the click of a button. Elevate the conversation to discuss the realities of home buying with people looking for real help in the process. And then, make it personal, highlighting how real people aren’t really looking for a dream home; they’re looking for a home they can dream in. Why? Because real beats the dream.

But, in today's world, be it through television, celebrities, influencers, social media, there are very unreal expectations on what life should be. So, in April of 2019, Realtor.com® launched “Homes for the Real of Us℠,” a creative campaign that celebrates the truths of home-buying and showcases to consumers that real homes always beat the façade of dream homes portrayed across real estate advertising, reality television and social media.

This subset of the campaign uses targeted media to intercept people while they’re watching content that sets them up for real estate disappointment and preemptively calls it out. All spots aired within a TV show with unrealistic homes on networks oversaturated with house porn—HGTV, Bravo, VH1, MTV and The Food Network.

Each spot opens with footage that parodies a different reality TV trope and a branded realtor.com “Public Reality Announcement” ticker. The ticker scrolls across the bottom of the screen as an announcer explains that these “reality” shows are really fun to watch but the homes they take place in are not at all realistic. Each spot invites viewers to find “Homes, for the real of us” on realtor.com.