Brand engagement, advertising, front page PR, education – you can have it all
LJ Hooker is an iconic Australian real estate brand that was started in 1928 by an orphan who strongly believed in persistence and determination. It has become one of the fastest growing national franchises with over 700 offices and 6,500 team members spread across the country.
The Challenge
LJ Hooker came to us with a common challenge for companies driven by innovation: How do we build and create a positive community sentiment towards our industry and further enhance our customer’s experiences through technology?
And then they added this, and our interest grew significantly: Can we build a positive experience of a brand whilst being able to educate?
Most of the time people’s perceptions of real estate agents are fairly negative, with a sometimes warranted perception that they are just sales-focused and ambivalent about anything else. To bring education into the mix would be an incredible challenge, but one we knew we could take on.
Community Engagement
And the first step required bringing in the man, the myth, the legend: Mr. Hooker Bear.
Mr. Hooker Bear is a 25-year-old mascot and veteran in spearheading LJ Hooker’s community-based activities. These include safety campaigns, learning opportunities and contributions to schools.
We analyzed and discussed thoroughly what the business goals would be, as well as the impact of updating and re-imagining Mr. Hooker Bear as the host of an engaging, educational iPad game.
We carefully reviewed all the previous marketing collateral related to Mr. Hooker Bear’s character and his involvement and success in previous LJ Hooker campaigns.
The goal of the sponsored game was to create an enjoyable experience for families with children when they look to sell or buy their property with LJ Hooker.
We suggested LJ Hooker use the opportunity to assist children’s education as well as put parents at ease during the interactions with the real estate agent.
From a brand engagement perspective, it would also continue to provide long-term positive memories for the children for when they grow up and experience that same milestone.
Business Impact
The result of our collaborative efforts with LJ Hooker was a customized, beautifully-illustrated game that is easy to pick up and play, providing kids with a fun way to learn spelling using motion and colorful visuals.
It received an overwhelmingly positive response from LJ Hooker’s franchisees at their national conference and strong support from their Australian CEO Georg Chmiel, who stated it was a clever way of building brand awareness.
As a PR bonus, it created attention from Australia’s most popular news website news.com.au. Their front page article on the game garnered 50,000 reads and became the most popular article for the day. It was also featured in real estate magazine Elite Agent.
Mr Hooker Bear’s Letter Pop Chinese
LJ Hooker has been so happy with the speed and quality of the game that they have commissioned a Chinese version of the game, which will further create more positive engagement opportunities for their rapidly growing Chinese clientele.
… [we’ve] never worked with a company that has come back with a reverse brief that so tightly matched our ideas / thoughts around what the product should be.” – Heather Hilton, Network Marketing Services Manager at LJ Hooker
Our team is proud of the results of our collaboration with LJ Hooker and can’t wait to continue helping them create opportunities to shape their digital future. It was fun and extremely satisfying to work with them to deliver a polished and engaging iPad gaming app.