The surprising truth about the real role of money in creating a culture of excellence.

New Home Marketing Cycles

Are you spending less on marketing today than you were a year ago, and increasing sales?

New home marketing used to focus on peaks and valleys. Spend less when sales are strong, spend more when sales are slow. This made budgets harder to manage and sales forecasts more difficult to project with accuracy. Worse, it constantly put marketers and home builders in the position of reacting to market trends.

But what if you could proactively build an asset based marketing strategy that actually lowered marketing costs over time, regardless of changes in the economy, seasonal trends, and natural downturns of the sales cycle?

You can. By investing resources early in the sales cycle of a new home community, you can dramatically decrease new home marketing costs at each stage of the sales cycle. Even better, initiatives that you invest in early in the sales process can pay dividends in the form of website traffic and fresh leads for months to come.

Here’s 3 ways to decrease your marketing budget by investing resources early in the sales cycle:

Establish Prominent Home Builder SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is asset based marketing. Investing dollars early will pay dividends of website traffic and leads throughout the sales cycle without increasing marketing dollars. A strong presence in the search engines reduces or eliminates the need for expensive PPC campaigns, saving home builders thousands of dollars in new home marketing costs. Even better, SEO continues to work even after the budget has run out, unlike PPC which requires an ongoing investment.

Build Home Builder Social Media Networks

Social media networks that are actively managed and grown during peak times in the sales cycle can provide strong returns when sales are slow. Invest resources early in the sales cycle to build an online community that creates a consistent pipeline of prospects that are moving through the sales process. Social networks that are strategically managed also increase SEO, which lowers home builder lead generation costs. This can eliminate thousands of dollars from your marketing budget.

Increase Home Builder Website Conversion

For every 1,000 visitors to your website, how many are converting to leads by providing their contact information for follow up? Every lead that you capture early in the sales process is one less that you have pay for at the end of the sales cycle. Make sure your website developer and marketing team has built strong conversion tools into your website from the beginning, and test often to increase your conversion ratio. Conversion is the single most important factor in translating website traffic to sales office visitors. A passive website that does not convert a high number of website visitors to leads is the biggest drain on new home marketing budgets. This can cost home builders thousands of dollars unnecessarily during mid-cycle and closeout phases.

Investing resources of both time and money early in the sales cycle can minimize the impact of downturns caused by the economy, seasonal trends, and natural stages of the sales cycle.

Are you building an asset based new home marketing plan? Contact us to find out how our experienced team can help you get started.

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted here. We’ve taken some time to reposition ourselves to better serve the home builder community. Here’s how:

When we started Idea One Media we began as new media advocates who saw an opportunity for home builders to reduce marketing budgets and reach more buyers.

Today, after two years, more than a hundred campaigns, and thousands of generated leads, we realize that the impact of the internet on our industry is far greater.

The internet (combined with the economy) has changed more than home builder marketing. It has created a fundamental shift in how we do business that is impacting the role of every level of a home builder organization.

It isn’t about SEO, SEM, Facebook, Twitter, or blogs. Those things alone will never sell homes. They are only tools.

It’s About Change.

Change is hard. Change in any environment is hard, but when the economy is falling out below you change is even harder. We cling to the way we have always done things because it feels safe. Then we realize those things aren’t working anymore and we know we have to change.

But it doesn’t mean we embrace it.

Adapting to the cultural shift that the internet has created as an industry is about more than managing metrics and marketing. It’s about managing change within an organization at all levels. It’s about inspiring and educating and training and leadership. It’s about survival for the next decade.

Over the last two years we have seen how this change has impacted different levels of an organization. We wanted to do more to help organizations drive results today but also adapt as an organization for tomorrow.

So we took some time off to work on better tools for a wider audience. Here are some of the observations we made of how these changes impact different levels within an organization, and the tools we’ve been working on to help each level within a home builder organization.

Home Builders and Executive Management

We rarely meet a home builder or executive that doesn’t get why internet marketing is important for their organization. The statistic of nearly 80% of home buyers starting their search online is hard to ignore. Add to that the cost savings of an internet marketing campaign and on paper it’s just good business. The idea wasn’t the problem. It was developing confident leadership in a discipline that was completely new that was the challenge. What are the benchmarks of marketing performance? What is a reasonable marketing budget? What can I expect to pay for a cost per lead? What kind of ROI should I be looking for from each marketing channel? What resources of money and staffing and training will I need, and how will I manage those?

The constant change of the economy and the emerging popularity of new tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more has left leadership in a constant state of change. Add to that the pressures of banking partners, shareholders, diminishing returns and constricted financing and most home builders and executives were challenged to create decisive leadership.

We decided to shift the focus of the Idea One Media blog to the unique challenges of leadership in re-engineering a home builder organization for the internet age. We hope to provide information that enables leadership to make informed decisions about internet marketing, create new benchmarks for performance and provide case studies.

Sales and Marketing Managers

Caught between executive leadership and front line sales and marketing professionals, sales and marketing managers have been pivotal in how quickly and efficiently a home builder organization has adopted new media in the last year. I would argue that they are the single greatest variable in determining not only if a home builder utilizes new media, but how well and how deeply. Sales and marketing managers are responsible for coaching, training, and establishing goals. Research of how new media is used by competitors and within the industry also typically comes from this role.

This role is far more powerful today than in years past because sales and marketing managers are no longer constrained by big budget approvals to execute on marketing initiatives. But with new freedom comes new responsibility. They must oversee compliance issues in a medium that presents a variety of formats and channels, each presenting new disclosure requirements and questions.

Most importantly, this role has the task of bridging the closing, escrow tracking, community management, and legal expertise of industry veterans who are frequently computer averse with new technologies and skill sets.

Resistance to new media at this level is very difficult to overcome and can significantly impede a home builder’s ability to meet sales goals. But where can sales and marketing managers go to find out more about new media, how it’s used, how it’s measured, and how to coach to it?

We knew that this group would face many of the same challenges as executive management and owners, but we also knew they had a greater role in managing the details. We wanted to have resources on the Idea One Media blog that addressed some of their management questions, but we knew they would need more to support their front line teams.

Front Line Sales and Marketing

This is where the rubber meets the road. These are the people responsible for executing new media initiatives. From social media management to internet lead follow up, both time and money is lost if front line sales and marketing personnel are not executing.

So how do inspire the teams that are responsible for execution?

Changing the fundamental ways that we do business requires more than a pep talk and a few good ideas. It takes education, training, and resources that front line people can access. Resources that not only provide training, but that also give them a sense of ownership in developing innovative new ways to drive sales.

That’s why we developed Builder Target, a website designed specifically for the needs of front line sales and marketing teams. This isn’t rhetoric about the promise of new media, but rather immediately actionable information that helps front line teams drive results today as they build new skills for tomorrow.

We also developed Builder Target to be a coaching tool for managers. Our goal was to create a common ground for all front line professionals regardless of where they were on the internet marketing learning curve.

So that’s where we’ve been. Our ambitious vision is to provide tools and ideas that can help you drive results that impact your bottom line no matter where you are in a home builder organization.

We hope you visit often and that we bring value to your continued success.

Rethinking Buyer Communication

Let’s say hypothetically that your marketing team (maybe that’s you) ran an online campaign that, in 24 hours, generated more online leads than 12 weeks of physical traffic in the sales office. Within two weeks, none of these had yet converted to an on-site sales visit.

Would you call this campaign a success or a failure?

To accurately answer this question there are, of course, several other factors to consider:

• How much did the campaign cost?
• How effective was the follow up effort from the sales team?
• What was the content quality of the download and did it sufficiently fulfill the promise made in the offer?
• Was there an automated follow up effort that moved them down a defined sales path?
• Is the product price point market appropriate?
  
• Was there a clear next step outlined for the buyer?

However, in the current market environment (and I would argue in all markets both strong and soft) we too readily confuse “Did it work?” with “Did it work today?” when analyzing the success of a marketing campaign or initiative. We want to walk buyers to the altar right after we have offered to buy them their first drink.

It’s understandable. We have real and immediate pressures: paying the bills, keeping a job, appeasing an executive team, assuaging construction lenders, and talking shareholders off the ledge. There is nothing wrong with needing and expecting quantifiable results (contracts and closings) today. It is a healthy and necessary expectation in every business, including ours.

The difference is that the results you achieve today (contracts and closings) are very likely the result of a marketing campaign that took place last month, last quarter, or even last year. Online registrations do not represent a buyer who has moved through the first several cycles of the buying process and is ready to write a check. Very often they are simply potential buyers who have given us permission to contribute to their discovery process.

The truth is that every marketing campaign lasts six months or more. Beyond the initial result, marketing and sales have to work together over a period of time to contribute to a meaningful discussion with the buyer that informs their buying process. Too often we follow up with a couple of phone calls and then relegate the leads to a mass email marketing campaign. After all, if they didn’t call back or didn’t come into the sales office after the first couple of emails they can’t be serious buyers, right?

If this post feels discouraging because you are sitting in a sales office waiting for the next sale or an office looking at Q3 projected closings feeling the weight of a clock over your head, I have good news. Remember that marketing campaign you ran three months ago? Six months ago? The leads you gathered are likely further along their buying process than the new leads you bring in today (after all, remember how dismal last December was? Or March?). Don’t give up after a few phone calls or a few emails.

Their silence doesn’t necessarily mean they’re absent.

Maybe it just means they’re listening.

PS. The hypothetical campaign? You probably guessed (because you’re clever) it wasn’t hypothetical at all. The builder pulled the plug on online marketing after two weeks.

How do you communicate with potential buyers today?

More importantly, how do potential buyers hear and interpret your message? Your product? Your brand?

Buyers today form relationships differently. They research differently. They process information differently. They build trust differently. And their sphere of influence is different today.

They Twitter. They blog. They instant message. They commune on MySpace and Facebook. They share on YouTube and Flickr. They can find virtually information on anything and anyone (including you) with a few keystrokes typed into a search engine. They get nearly all of their information, news, and entertainment online.

They form relationships differently today. We know that. Within the new home industry, we have collectively worked to develop online strategies to reach the estimated 80% of potential homebuyers who start their search on the web.

But are we already too late?

Just as we are working to catch up with how to communicate to them on the web, they’ve moved on. They’re now mobile. Email is being replaced by text messaging. The internet on their desk is being eclipsed by the wide variety of phone apps that can do anything from give directions to make a dinner reservation. The former captive audience in front of the tv became the quick-to-click audience in front of a monitor. Today they have become a distracted audience on the go.

In the midst of their world, where is our product? Our message? Our brand?

How will we reach them?

If it seems as though the challenges of the current housing market are already tapping out all of your resources, the thought of creating an effective online strategy can seem overwhelming.

We have good news.

1.    An effective, integrated online strategy can cost up to 50% less than a traditional marketing campaign alone.
2.    You likely already have all of the prospects you need. They just aren’t being effectively engaged.
3.    Online strategies are more measurable, more flexible, and more personalized than traditional one-size-fits all media.

This isn’t about large spends on Adwords or other paid advertising. This is about building credibility and trust online. It’s about creating an intelligent strategy that drives new leads online, even if you stop advertising.

We know that the last ten or twenty years that we have spent in this business are no roadmap for the next ten to twenty. The past is irrelevant. Those of us still here are left with the charge to start new, be bold, and most of all listen to what our buyers and potential buyers are already trying to tell us.

After all, don’t all revolutions begin because an establishment failed to listen to the people?

We have been remiss in our blog updates as of late due to an expanding team and expanding responsibilities.

Part of this expansion has included the shift from a virtual company to a fully dedicated on-site team. This has been a critical move for us, as it enables everyone to work collaboratively and much more quickly through new initiatives, the continual testing process, and product launches.

We’re excited about this accelerated model, but one of the key challenges for any collaborative team is the task of overcoming the creative cancer of can’t.

“A page can’t be designed a certain way,” despite the fact that it will increase our SEO.

“A particular metric can’t be tracked,” despite the fact that a client is requesting it.

“We can’t put a call to action in a specific online location,” despite the fact that it will increase conversion.

“We can’t test that many pages,” despite the fact that it is critical to our success and that of our clients.

Can’t is an expensive word, and not just for marketing components of the  homebuilder industry. It is an expensive word at any level of the hierarchy, and we work within an economic climate where can’t is too readily believed.

“We can’t sell homes at these prices.”

“We can’t sell because we don’t have a marketing budget.”

“I can’t follow up with my prospects because I’ve called them already and I don’t want to bug them.”

“We can’t make that construction change.”

We all nod in resigned agreement when we hear these excuses, collective victims to our circumstance. We think, we’ll just have to accept lower conversion rates, status quo websites, and generic reporting metrics. We’re powerless to do anything but wait for our price reductions, increased marketing budgets, and for our prospects to decide to come back through our sales office doors on their own.

This is all patent nonsense.

Can’t is one of the most expensive words in business. It stunts creative problem solving and it disempowers the collaborative process. Whether that collaboration is between a team, various levels within an organization, or the give and take of the front line sales process, it’s difficult to achieve anything beyond mediocrity when the culture of can’t is allowed to foster and thrive.

So how do we manage through a culture of can’t?

Most often can’t is simply a shortcut to the real answer: I do not have time to research how to do this, I do not believe making another round of calls to the same prospect list will produce a sale, I feel overwhelmed, or I don’t understand the importance of this in the context of the bigger picture. All of these are valid responses within current industry realities, and all of these can be identified and more easily managed than the communication and productivity roadblock of “I can’t.”

Identifying these true underlying themes within an organization requires a little more time, a lot more listening, and sometimes the willingness to hear things that can be difficult or uncomfortable. However, this investment can make a team feel more heard, more valued, and more inspired to take the initiative to work through creative roadblocks to greater profitability.

How much did it save to pass on website improvements, veto a long term email strategy, or reject A/B testing for your landing pages? How much did it save you to say good enough is good enough? How much value did it bring to your organization not to go out on a limb with new ideas?

More importantly, how much did it cost?

A Tale of Two Builders

The picture below is a real world example of a home builder who made those same decisions. The pie chart below is from Google Analytics and is a breakdown of the sourcing for website traffic.

This builder (we’ll call him Home Builder A) is saving his company thousands of dollars per month in new media costs. His online presence has no bells or whistles, just a static landing page and a few emails to his database of several thousand whenever traffic dips. 

source: Google Analytics

He is saving thousands per month in marketing costs. Or is he?

As the diagram indicates, virtually all of his traffic is direct traffic, meaning that a visitor has to physically type his URL into their browser. It’s a strong indication that this home builder is relying on traditional media (in this case, radio and print) which is significantly more money invested each month than a cohesive online strategy.

Further, the low percentage of traffic from referring sites indicates that his database of prospects have begun to tune out his sporadic email marketing messages. Less than one half of one percent of his database is clicking through to his landing page.

Home Builder B has a different approach. He knows that traditional media still plays a role in his overall marketing plan. However, he has also embraced low cost new media initiatives to increase visibility among the 80%+ of buyers who start their search online.

source: Google Analytics

This diagram shows a balance between traditional media (direct traffic), an SEO program (search engines), and online marketing through paid search, social media, a consistent long term email campaign strategy, and online PR (referring sites). His commitment to long term relationship building has paid off: his emails reach a click through rate of more than 30% and his sales office traffic is the highest in his area.

Which home builder are you?

If your marketing plan follows the same strategy as home builder A, you already know the cost. Stop advertising for even a week and traffic – already anemic by economic and consumer fear factors – drops below the point of creating enough volume for your sales team to convert even a single sale. Like the proverbial rat in a wheel, you feel compelled to keep spending to get results.

If your marketing plan follows the same strategy as Home Builder B, you know that the success of your community does not rely on whether or not you place a display ad this week. The organic traffic generated from your SEO strategy will still drive prospects to your website. The testing you invested in for your landing page means that you can feel secure that you will capture a larger percentage of visitors to leads. Your sales team does not need a radio spot or a full color display ad in order to have leads to drive to the sales office.

So how much did you save by passing on those website improvements, creating a veto of a long term email strategy, or rejecting the investment of A/B testing of your landing pages?

In the end, how much will it cost?

Yesterday I wrote a post about what it would take to move a buyer through an economy of fear to the action of buying a home.

So, when my assistant Danielle told me later that day that she had purchased a home, I was curious. What was the specific tipping point for her?

She is in her mid-twenties, recently engaged, and is purchasing with her fiance. The following are her answers, unedited. She bought a foreclosure because there were no new homes within her price range. However, there are lessons here for all of us. In particular, her long buying cycle and the role of the internet in influencing her decision.

Q. What was the number one reason you decided to buy a home now?

A. The number one reason we bought was we felt like it would be stupid NOT to buy right now (hello…lowest prices in almost 10 years AND insanely low interest rates!?!). Also, we both feel like paying rent is like “throwing money away.”  We want to start building/investing in something of our own.

Q. How long had you been looking for a home?

A. We’ve been watching prices of homes for over a year (maybe even two).  But we’ve been seriously looking (found a realtor, looked at maybe 10+ properties in person/week, and not to mention viewed pretty much everything that was in our price range online every single night) for about two or three months….we actually didn’t think we’d find something this quickly (we thought we’d take up to six months) but a great home popped up in a neighborhood we liked, so we jumped on it.

Q. How did you first find your home (internet or drive by)?

A. Internet-our realtor would send us lists of homes that fit our needs almost daily and we’d tell her which ones interested us.

Q. How long did you look on the internet before viewing a home, and how much research (crime, prices for the area, financing) did you do?

A. At least a year.  Even when we were living in Roseville we’d look at prices in the Bay Area (so maybe even 2 years).   We would find homes on the internet that we liked (we used ziprealty a lot) and then on the weekends we would check out a bunch in one area (maybe Green Valley one weekend, Brentwood the next). If we got a good feel for the area then I was the one who would do more research on the area (I have to admit-I was worried about crime a bit at first in Concord, but once I compared it to other towns I’ve lived in it made me feel so much better!) Same thing goes for prices for the area, most of this research was just obvious from us watching the prices so closely, but we also looked up stats and trends online about the different areas we were looking into.

Q. Who was most influencial on your decision – parents, friends, etc.

A. Both of our parents have been very influential…Steve’s dad actually has been buying tons of foreclosed properties in the mid west for the last year (he even bought a historic hotel) and turns them around and rents them and he’s been making a killing at it.  We are very lucky because he actually is helping us with our down payment-that’s how much he wants us to start “investing in our future”

Q. Why did you decide to buy at a time when the economy was so uncertain?

A. For a few reasons:

The most important is that we’re really lucky that Steve has a secure (and great) job in these crazy times.  He works for a company that sells lab equipment to Veterinary clinics/hospitals/etc, and they just had a record quarter.

We also told ourselves that we wouldn’t buy until the prices were low enough that our we could easily make our monthly payments with both of us waiting tables or doing some other min wage job (Also, we have a roommate who is moving with us, so that really helps).  Some people are out there saying that you should wait until the market turns to buy, but we think as long as it’s easily affordable to us, it’s a good investment.

And, what is probably what was the deciding factor- our mortgage/tax/insurance all together is going to be much LESS than what we pay for rent in our tiny two bedroom apt.  We thought about it and decided really the only thing we’re giving up is the fact that we are month to month in our apartment, and even then, if worse came to worse we could move out and try to rent the house out.

Plus, as my dad said to me, if things get so bad that we can’t afford to pay our mortgage we’re going to have a lot more to worry about than about possibly foreclosing our house (like standing in bread lines…)

Maybe a grim way to look at it, but I think it’s true.  I feel like it’s a good risk to take even though the economy is so uncertain.

One of the most basic of human responses to fear and uncertainty is inaction. We can feel frozen in place, unable to make a decision because there isn’t enough evidence for us to feel confident in the outcome. 

It’s true of our buyers, and it is also true of ourselves in how we run our companies in a time of economic uncertainty. 

I preach optimism. I don’t always live it, but it’s certainly the direction I try to steer towards. I do this mostly because the alternative has no real upside. But as I see the stretch of “For Lease” signs in retail windows along my street and big box stores left empty, there is an impact. It’s impossible to ignore the realities. 

I know buyers see the same realities. Buying a home today in the wake of mass layoffs, dwindling retirement funds, and housing price declines is largely a leap of faith. As home builders and those who serve them, we have to both understand and respect this. 

In my work I am forced daily to answer the question: how do we move buyers through fear to a point of decision? 

Get Out. Reaching beyond the confines of your model home complex to speak to potential buyers in informative email campaigns, feeding positive news into online PR portals, and creating video tours that enable buyers to engage are just a few examples of virtual outreach. Just because your traffic is down doesn’t mean people aren’t listening, it means they are retreating in their buying process. Meet them where they are.

Don’t Sell. If you want to move a prospect to action, solve a problem before you sell a product. Maybe buyers are confused about current tax credits. Maybe they don’t understand current financing guidelines. I recently switched email distribution vendors after a series of emails from the new vendor that consistently solved problems. It didn’t feel like they were trying to sell me anything, it felt like they were trying to help. What problem can you solve for a buyer?

People First. Your product is not so compelling or unique that it will move prospects off the fence. Neither is your merchandising, your seven dollar brochure, or your big ad.  The single greatest asset in a fear market is salespeople. People move through fear to action when they trust what someone is telling them. Coaching salespeople beyond qualifying for wants/needs/ability to purchase to values based selling is a key component in moving prospects to action.

Listen. One of the greatest and most underutilized new media tools for homebuilders is online surveys. The more you ask prospects about their experiences, their opinions, and their feedback to your product the more trust you build with them. In the current economic climate people are nesting and gravitating toward products and companies that they know and trust. You do not have to be a big builder or a builder for several decades to earn the attention of today’s buyer, but you do need to be an engaged builder. Ask a prospect one question and you will win out over a hundred of your competitor’s messages.

Selling homes in today’s fear market takes trust, and trust takes patience, time, and a consistent and dedicated effort. The good news is that it is not expensive, the bad news is that no amount of money can create a shortcut. 

www.pultelaundry.com

Have you seen this in your area?

I was watching an episode of Iron Chef on The Food Network earlier this evening when a commercial came on. It appeared to be a low-grade, local ad that featured a young woman dealing with the frustrations of a laundromat. It was catchy in that it was so bad. It caught my eye and I was curious to find out what they were selling.

It surprised me to find that it was Pulte Homes, and they were selling me on the idea that it was time to “move on” to my own home.

They instructed me to visit www.pultelaundry.com, which of course I did. I was greeted by bright colors and a funky beat. There were three videos all speaking to the challenges of urban rental life: laundromats, difficult parking, no garage. The videos contained attractive young people in mini- Coopers and copy written for a young audience: “Spending Time at the Laundromat? Not Cool. Spending time in your new home with laundry? Way Cool.”

(The commercial also promised me a free iTunes download, though at the time of this writing they were no longer available.)

Pulte builds several communities in the area but listed only three, all entry-level urban projects in the East Bay.

There are a lot of things about this campaign that I can respect: vertical marketing by region, product type, and buyer profile for example, instead of Pulte relying on their behemoth corporate site to connect with young buyers. The videos weren’t slick and high gloss; they definitely had a campiness that caught my attention more than a corporate ad would have. And they did go beyond the cliche and boredom of “stainless steel appliances” to speak to real issues that urban renters face. (I remember those days of parking blocks away in the rain at night in SF.) It was a fresh message that spoke to buyers on a different level than “Rates are low, prices are low, how come you’re not buying, what are you some sort of idiot?”

So I applaud Pulte and the venerable Stone Group for their efforts. My husband and I talked about the ad. We visited the website. I viewed all of their videos. I will probably talk about it in developer meetings all week. I am blogging about it. Isn’t that all what all marketers hope for?

So for that, Pulte, bravo.

But I have some questions:

Why wasn’t this also posted on YouTube? After I visited the website and viewed all three YouTube-y (oh sure, it’s a word) videos I clicked over to YouTube, positive that they had been posted there as well. After several searches (turning up some fairly unflattering Pulte videos), I saw no sign of it. Aren’t young hipsters who live in urban areas and drive mini-Coopers more likely to see the videos there than on The Food Network on a Saturday Night on Valentine’s Day no less? (Ok, but I have an excuse. My in-laws are in town.)

Why can’t I embed? This would have been solved by posting on YouTube, but you can’t go viral if you make it hard for people to share you. I could have put your video here, for example. Free advertising. Of course there is the notion that you wanted to protect your copyrights, in which case you either haven’t seen the video or it’s time to review the strategy of posting videos online in the first place.

Why doesn’t the “Connect” tab actually do so? If you’re marketing to Gen Y, “connect” means something very different that here’s our generic email address and our physical location. Connect means FaceBook and Twitter and a blog. I can respect that this is a campaign and you may not be ready to make that kind of commitment, but at least provide the ability for visitors to connect with a real person without coming to your sales office. Because chances are that most of them will not without some interim relationship building mechanism that makes you stand out beyond a clever campaign. This is more true of Gen Y than any other age group.

“Join” doesn’t fool me either. Just as “connect” means something different to generation 2.0, so does “join.” Filling out a registration form isn’t “joining” anymore. Friending, following, tweeting, commenting. This is the new fluency of what it means to join.

Why was the button to turn the sound off so hard to find? Ok, maybe that was just me.

It’s possible/probable that Pulte already knows this (and really, so much more – they’re Pulte) and are simply in phase one of their campaign to reach out across the generational culture barrier to see what works. Kudos to you, Pulte.

But how much more traction would all of our campaigns have if we did not speak to Gen Y, but with them?