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Bob Bemis Gets It
By: Michael Wurzer,
flexmls.com
Posted: Sunday, January 20th, 2008, 8:28 pm MST
Category: Bob Bemis, Video
Here’s a comment Bob Bemis, ARMLS CEO, left over on the FBS Blog following a post about video. A new day has dawned when MLS leaders start talking like this:
Greg Kilwein’s quote is important. I’m convinced that MLSs need to reexamine their purpose, their definition, and their mission in the face of growing competition from all sides. We MLS operators won’t continue to serve our realty constituents if we just keep doing the same old thing – facilitating cooperation, hosting data, and doing our best to make sure the data is factual. MLSs that will thrive will be those who recognize that the MLS IS a marketing medium and can serve two audiences (agents and consumers) equally well if they put their minds to it. That means not only allowing but also offering innovative tools and techniques that convey what is “uncommon” about each listing.
The YouTube approach will give many MLSs heartburn. There is no way to control the content, and what many MLSs fear most is loss of control. I heard of one system operator who banned a particular virtual tour provider because the VT-Op had the audacity to allow agents to change the captions of the photos/videos without oversight of the tour vendor. H-O-R-R-O-R-S. And since the MLS’s screening bots couldn’t read the captions, they just banned the tool. So rather than give agents a new tool, with which to be innovative and different, they took away the tool because in the hands of a very small minority it might be “dangerous.”
We as an industry need to do better than that.
As an aside, I watched the video and immediately went to Google to see if there was any application for Auz-Bloc in Phoenix. We don’t have a snow problem, quite the opposite. It’s 115+ here in the summer. I don’t know how long Jeremy’s video and blog have highlighted this listing, but he managed to capture the top four spots on the first page of the Google search for “Auz Bloc Arizona.” The top spot includes the address of the house – Jeremy, your seller has to love you. But it also shows what reach these new marketing tools, new media, and new thinking can have.
Bob Bemis
Arizona Regional MLS
January 21st, 2008 at 9:35 am
Michael-
This is outstanding. Thanks for highlighting this to me. I may not personally be ready to create videos for my listings, but that’s an adjustment I fully expect I will need to make, to stay competetive. Of course, thinking about how much REALTOR.com would like to charge me to allow video on my listings has me cringing right now….
January 21st, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Our MLS has gone through many changes along with tecnology over the years and will continue to do so. We all must remember while the bells and whistles of technology could enable us through MLS software or other means to be very creative, we also must conform to the NAR Code of Ethics and ARMLS Rules etc. as real estate professionals. YouTube, Google etc. don’t answer to the higher authority that we do, so we must look before our creativity causes us headaches.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:18 am
[...] posted about a video from Jeremy Hart and a couple of the comments here at the FBS Blog and over at Phoenix Real Estate Technology Exchange highlighted questions about the “branding” at the beginning of the video, which I [...]
February 4th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
[...] A couple days later, I spoke with Bob about the challenge of pulling all of our thoughts together into a single mission statement. Basically, he said that the words we put together in those two days were not the most important part of the exercise, that it will be the actions that ARMLS takes (as a result of the directions set) that make the difference at the end of the day. Wise words from someone who gets it. [...]