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rience by making phones an emotional, aspirational and trust-ed companion. It’s like a buddy in your pocket. Mobile engage-ment that succeeds recognizes that the device is in someone’ship pocket, or literally held close to the heart.

Instagram? Good. Mobile display ads? Bad. Yelp is wildlysuccessful because smartphone users can tell their personalstory or secret to their trusted device—and get positive feed-back for it. Facebook engagement with friends is likewiseinsanely popular. Buying durable goods? Not so much. Mobileand social are great for maintaining relationships with peoplethat already know your voice and approve of hearing from you.

Visual media is great for attractingnew eyeballs because it’s a passiveexperience.

I’m shocked more marketersaren’t focusing more on creativeuses of video to attract new resi-dents and building local image.But it’s coming.units: Do you think creative

“disruption” is a good thing? How,in fact, can creative disruption helpto drive innovation, especially whenit comes to multifamily marketing?

Lefkovits: Creative disruptiontends to be a good thing for con-sumers by bringing more authenticvoices, and more human-scaleengagement with the content of otherpeople. If you’ve built a business onthe broadcasting model, creative dis-

ruption is probably a terrible thing because itundermines the information monolith that you’ve built.

But consider how Craigslist has empowered advertisers andcreated a new, personal response channel: it’s unambiguouslygood for everyone but the disrupted. I predict that, by 2014,we’ll see the first ILS get into the business of aggregating notjust reviews but property site portals, Facebook pages, YouTubevideos and other user-generated content in an effort to stayahead of the curve and harness all of the creative disruption.units: What about specific technologies that are affecting

apartment marketing now? Lefkovits: For now, the dominant apartment marketing

technology is search. When intelligent networks and contextualadvertising really blossom, we’ll see a dramatic change in how

Social media. Ratings and reviews. Smartphones.SEO. The arenas commanding attention from apartment marketers and technologists continue to expand, as do the tools, products and services

offering solutions to find, engage, convert and retain residentcustomers.

According to Joshua Tree Conference Group President andApartment Internet Marketing Executive Producer SteveLefkovits, the ability to make emotional impressions on ouraudience of prospective renters will redefine and revolutionizeapartment marketing during the next several years. Ultimately,it won’t be how you can sell to a prospect, buthow you can make them swoon.

Lefkovits spent time with units forthis exclusive interview in advance ofthis year’s conference AIM 2013: TheArt of Creativity. units: Hi Steve. We see the

theme for AIM 2013 is about the Artof Creativity. Can you explain howthat relates to the current status quoof online multifamily marketing?

Lefkovits: One of the world’sbest ad agencies (Goodby Silverstein)has the mantra that “Art is the SecretWeapon.” It makes sense. It’s the ulti-mate form of emotional engagement. Inthe first generation of digital technology,we were satisfied to have an online pres-ence. In the next generation, we had toprove the ROI on things that worked. Nowthat consumers are definitively online, therace is to more engaging advertising, better communicationand providing a more valuable experience.

If “information wants to be free,” then consumers andadvertisers are going to want creative involvement, such asbetter photos or actors in their videos and stories instead offeatures. As advertisers, we know that people share music,images, videos and laughter. Our next generation of advertis-ing will reward creatives who can engage with creative storiesand emotion.units: How do some of our newer and emerging channels

like social media or ratings and reviews apply to these conceptsof customer engagement?

Lefkovits: The iPhone revolutionized the customer expe-

The annual AIM Conference, set for April 29-May 1 in Huntington Beach, Calif., will deliver an in-depth look at relevant marketing trends that could be applied to the apartment industry.

Multifamily Marketing Gets Emotional

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smart consumers find their next home. They’ll ask an intelligentengine like WolframAlpha, “What’s the best place for me tolive?” Using their social profile, family info, demographics andwork site, the search engine will return results based on pricesdelivered from querying revenue management engines and rat-ings and reviews and deliver not just the best location, but theoptimum term and the best time to lease and the name of theleasing agent to contact.

It’s coming, and it probably will be some smart college kidwho hates today’s search process who will mash it up. The toolsare available today. I’d bet on it.units: How close are those tools to already accomplishing

this for apartment marketers? Lefkovits: WolframAlpha is probably the most “story-

based” or narrative search engine available today. In the nextgeneration, you’ll be able to tap your own emotional state, deliv-er a voice query to your phone about what you feel like and itwill deliver contextual recommendations to satisfy you.

It’s all here except for the natural language interface that canderive meaning from indefinite statements and preferences. Butthe voice technologists are working on it. Voice analysts canalready divine the emotional state of a user in large brushstrokes. The rest is coming.units: How will all of this bring us back to the idea of

being more creative as apartment marketers at AIM?Lefkovits: Our keynote this year will be delivered by

Deutsch LA executive vice president and group planning directorDoug Van Praet, the author of “Unconscious Branding: HowNeuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing.” Most ofus are familiar with Doug from his work on the Volkswagencampaign and the mini-Darth Vader commercials. His messageon the power of emotive marketing, his vision of marketers asmodern day poets and the undeniable results of connecting toconsumers on an emotional, creative level couldn’t be moretimely for multifamily marketers. Which isn’t to say we haven’tmade serious creative strides in how we market our apartments:we’re holding the inaugural AIM Video Awards this year andalready have been wowed by some of the compelling storytellingand emotional engagement from our early entries.

As always, AIM won’t forget about providing tactical take-aways with proven ROI. We’re pleased to welcome back GaryAngel for an exclusive look at what creative beauty reallymeans in digital apartment marketing—and when to properlyinvest in it. units: Thanks Steve, we look forward to seeing you then.Lefkovits: Thank you.Editor’s note: For more information or to register for the

Apartment Internet Marketing Conference, visit www.multi-familyrevenue.com.

Steve Lefkovits is Joshua Tree Conference GroupPresident and AIM Conference Co-Executive Producer.

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