Jeff Castner

Saturday night I went to summer school, not your typical summer school, but summer school as in Jimmy Buffett's 2009 summer concert SummerZcool.

Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would leave that event with a better understanding of marketing. That assumption couldn't be further from the truth. Buffett has an amazing ability to connect with his audience. Most of 30 or 40 thousand parrot heads have as much in common with Jimmy and his Coral Reefers as I do with the man on the moon. However Buffett connected with everybody. How did he do this....He Kept it Local.

Every imaginable reference to Chicago was made. He talked and sang about Bars on Belmont Street, Hamburgers at the Billygoat, Surfing Lake Michigan, Tourists from Iowa, Hookers from South Cicero and had people on the Southside of Chicago singing Go Cubs Go.

Much has been said about being the local expert. Buffett has been the king of local for his entire career. I have seen him in numerous places at various points in his career and each time he made me think the city and venue he is playing is special. It is this ability to connect that keeps this 62 year old, who has only had a handful of radio hits one of the highest grossing concerts year in and out.

Local appeal and local information is the key to keeping and attracting loyal parrot heads. Weather its real estate, or entertainment, people also want to feel the connection.

This afternoon as I was talking to a friend the subject of taxes came up. In case you haven't heard Chicago and Cook County, IL have the highest sales tax rates in the country. I like most people don't pay much attention to the sales taxes most of us pay. However after today's conversation I decided to look at the reciept for my purchases this afternoon.

A quick trip to CVS to purchase a 2 Liter of Diet Coke, some Bud Light (it is the weekend), a bag of chips, and a smaller bag of chips for my buddy is resulted in $1.61 in taxes. 11% in Sales tax...didn't we fight a revolution over this. (Reciept)

A quick analysis reveals the following:

Cook County Charges a 1% Liquor Tax

The City of Chicago a 4% Liquor Tax

There is a 13.25% Tax on my Diet Coke.

In addition to the above liquor taxes my 12 pack of Budlight was taxed an additional $0.92 (10.25%)
My Chips (Junk Food) were taxed @ 2.25%.

In addition to toll roads, state and federal income taxes, the taxes on gasoline, real estate transfer taxes, and God only knows what other taxes we pay daily, it is no wonder we find ourselves in the present situation.

Just as I was thinking, I haven't written a Blog in a while, my trusty Blackberry gives me the familiar chirp of a text message. Much too my surprise it is a message from a friend...."Can I buy you a drink or several tomorrow night or the next". Heck we are in the midst of a recession and I have a friend offering to buy me a drink or, as he put it several, George Thorogood quickly comes to mind. I quick reply yep what's up?

Then to my horror I get "I am buying a house". My first thought is it must be a FSBO or he must be buying it from a bank. I text back, "Is it a FSBO". The response, "Nope it is listed by Agent X, with Company X and I told her I am not using an agent". My one word reply "Stop".

My buddy, a single, intelligent, and wealthy commodities trader at the Chicago Board goes on to explain to me that he told the agent this is his first home purchase. It is beyond my comprehension that the listing agent would not have suggested some sort of representation for the buyer. In today's litigious environment this seems to very perilous behavior.

I can only imagine that this listing agent is seeing the sugar plumb ferries of a double bubble dancing in her/his head. An extra 15-20K in my pocket...A long Labor Day Weekend in the Caribbean.

Regardless of whether or not my buddy listens to my advice to get representation over one bourbon, one scotch and one beer tomorrow night, I am confident the sugar plumb ferries will quickly stop dancing as I will arm him with the information he needs to make intelligent decisions.

Once again I am amazed how reasonably intelligent people make very unintelligent decisions when it comes to real estate.

The first bad decision is the error of omission by the agent for not explaining the importance of representation. The second bad decision is the fact that my buddy is willing to make the biggest purchase of his life with Basil Hayden, Johnny Walker, and Augustus Busch as his representative. The third was when I believed my friend when he told me he decided he wasn't going to buy for at least another year, and I quit helping him look.

At least now I have plans for tomorrow night..."give me a triple shot of that juice".

Back in the Appalachian region of Eastern Ohio any of the above words would be cause for a playground fight.

Dude you are such a Twit! Tweet, Tweet, Tweet.....shout your mouth! Quit being such a peep, buckle it up and hit somebody!

Boy how 20 years has changed the landscape. Now if you twit and tweet to the peep you are cutting edge. Being relatively new to the game I am always looking for a way to twit, or tweet, to my peeps. Today while searching the net I came across www.tweetjunction.com. I am a new user to www.tweetjunction.com but it seems to me that it solves a problem we are all facing, how do we syndicate our content in a quick and effective manner. Tweet Junction seems to solve that problem. The best thing about www.tweetjunction.com is that it is free. I hope you see some usefulness with the site.

While performing my daily search of the latest and greatest I also came across www.peopleandproperties.com. This seems to be something pretty interesting. Active Rain localism meets the real estate franchise meets web 2.0. I tried to go back to the site before writing this post and most of the functionality seemed to be gone. However at 10:00 AM the site seemed to have promise.

As we all prepare for Independence Day, I can't help but think how our founders must have been considered delusional by King George and his minions. And when we consider the most radical thoughts it is real estate....People are entitled to own Property! Say what we will the right to own property is the foundation of the pursuit of happiness.

Thank you....To each and every one of you who help to make this Country a Country Owned by and for the People! Thank You to the Troops who are in the Deserts of Iraq protecting our Rights and showing others the power of individual freedom. God Bless the USA!

The other day a buddy of mine sent me one of the best blog posts in the history real estate blogging http://www.1000wattconsulting.com/blog/2008/01/i-am-not-a-lead.html (Thanks Marc for helping me find the post). In my opinion it sums up the Realtor/Client relationship in the web 2.0 environment we are now living in now, and quite frankly leaving quickly.

It wasn't long ago that we thought our fancy auto responders and drip campaigns where the silver bullet of customer acquisition (Guilty as charged your Honor). Auto responders, drip campaigns, pictures of our dogs, and an alphabet soup of letters that would make a scrabble champion cry, yea that is what will give me creditability as a professional.

John Q. Public takes a look at the stranger who is sending him/her pictures of their dog, with a strange string of letters behind their name is, and finds a glamour head shot straight out of 1950's Hollywood, or worse yet in my neck of the woods a 1920's Chicago Gangster pose.

Guess what, John Q. Public doesn't care. In fact it is kind of creepy. I get an email from somebody I don't know, telling me what I might want to buy. Get lost!

This leads me to the crux of my hypothesis. Doesn't permission based interactive marketing make more sense? I recently became aware of, and started using a software program called Rezora (www.rezora.com). Rezora gives agents and consumers/clients the ability to really establish a relationship. It is not a guessing game. It is not John Q. Public is on my automated home update list so he is a client. Rezora allows us to quit guessing. Rezora certainly isn't a new silver bullet, but I think it is part of the future.

The traditional thinking of Brokerage is Broke. This is evident by the financial troubles most companies find themselves in today. Print advertising is dead, try to advertise in the Rocky Mountain News (http://www.rockymountainnews.com/), social networking went from a college fad, to 30 million users and a growing revolution is in the air.

How much longer is the consumer going to accept us cyber-spying on them, how much longer is a 1" X 1" add in the news paper going to be considered marketing, how much longer are we going to put up with being kinda creepy?

Is there a new economic model on the Horizon? I look forward to your thoughts, there must be a better way.