Opendoor is launching a new ad campaign featuring absurdist-style videos about how hard it is to sell a home the traditional way — with a real estate agent.
The ads, developed by the San Francisco-based creative agency Division of Labor, are airing online across Opendoor’s 10 markets and on TV in the Raleigh-Durham area, Opendoor’s head of marketing, Sheila Vashee, told Inman.
The 4-year-old company chose Raleigh for its reception of Opendoor and its general status as a smaller hub for tech startups, Vashee said.
Opendoor will also run mobile ads and has purchased 15 billboards in Raleigh.
Opendoor billboard | Credit: Opendoor
Opendoor ad | Credit: Opendoor
Opendoor has been working on this campaign for a few months, Vashee said, including conducting market research into consumers’ pain points in the homeselling process. Vashee declined to say how much Opendoor has spent on this ad buy.
“This video tells the story of the process the way our customers have told it to us,” Vashee said. “And it pokes a little bit of fun at it.”
The video ad, seen above, is the full ad Opendoor produced, although the company may cut it into smaller clips for certain plays.
The advertisement is similar in tone to ads produced by Purplebricks, the United Kingdom-based flat-fee brokerage.
But the Opendoor ad looks quite different from a campaign debuted by competitor Offerpad this month. In its ads, Offerpad takes a more serious approach, centering its CEO on a couch in a direct conversation with consumers about Offerpad’s value proposition.
Offerpad’s ads are set to run in Atlanta, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix and Tampa. Opendoor also operates in those six cities, which means its ads should air online there, along with its other markets, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Nashville and Raleigh. Consumers in those crossover markets should be on the lookout for both styles of ads in the coming weeks.
