Camp + King’s campaign started the ‘Texts With Your Agent’ social video series for RE/MAX that turns viral UGC videos into hardworking content for the brand. The team find funny, interesting clips online and pair them with an overlaid text message thread between a client and RE/MAX agent. This reverse-engineering of UGC videos has become a really fun, authentic tool for the brand to reach a social-savvy audience.
The Problem
RE/MAX wanted to better connect with an audience that was increasingly drawn to digital ways of doing real estate, like home search apps and iBuyers. We needed to highlight the benefits of working with a real-life real estate agent in a way that would resonate with a group of people who would rather go online than pick up the phone.Ideation
The main hurdle was making spots that this audience would relate to. To help us out, we turned to viral videos as a source of content that’s already proven to perform well on social. What’s excellent about UGC is that so much of it is filmed in and around the home, which creates a natural tie to real estate. But beyond just houses, real estate is so connected to milestones and important life decisions - there’s a lot of humanity wrapped up in the trade. Because of that, we found it really wasn’t a big stretch to re-contextualize viral videos to create compelling RE/MAX stories.Once we had our videos, we added the storytelling via text exchange overlays between clients and agents. We chose text messages to both humanize our agents and show them in a modern light. We wanted to showcase them as funny, empathetic, and overall regular people who know a ton about real estate and even more about how to help you buy and sell.
Prototype and Design
The campaign reversed the traditional process; instead of writing scripts and crafting content to fit the narrative, we started with viral moments and built from there.Working with UGC didn’t come without problems. We had to juggle hitting key selling points for the brand with the reality that we couldn’t control what videos were out there (and licensable.) The process we found worked best was to avoid painting ourselves into a corner early. Instead of searching with just our selling-points in mind, we cast a wide net to find the best videos. Once we had a pool of videos, we pressure-tested which ones could be reverse-engineered into hardworking content.
