Advertising and advocacy in a time of COVID-19

Lots was happening in mid-March as a result of the growing coronavirus threat.

The realtor.com office in Silicon Valley had closed a week prior, followed by all our other offices. Sports leagues were suspending seasons, businesses and schools were shutting down, kids were home indefinitely and nothing else was certain as we learned what “sheltering-in-place” truly meant. Everyone was calling it “the new normal.”

And it is a new approach to life and to community and to work and to family and to socializing — one that nobody was quite prepared for, but one that most people have taken to with commitment and positivity; that is, when we aren’t ugly crying between conference calls or yelling at our apparitional roommate because a dirty dish was left in the bedroom, or because we stress-ate a jumbo bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (h/t Meena Harris).

Because much of realtor.com’s brand advertising is delivered through a scrim of wit and humor, we quickly reviewed all existing creative that was running across TV and digital; and we pulled some of it, in an effort to be sensitive to the growing — and emotional — challenges facing our country.

As a further reaction to reviewing our messaging in a time of COVID, I also began wondering how we at realtor.com — a leading home search tool, and connection engine between consumers and Realtors — could reflect on, and help frame, the new ways that home is perceived and experienced during these unprecedented times.

It was an opportunity, as well, for us to collaborate with our best creative thinkers both inside and outside the company — because at this unique moment in time we were all dealing differently as individuals with how our relationship and connection to home had changed quickly in the wake of this pandemic.

I reached out to our creative agency, Huge, and our internal creative team to chew on this question of home. The brief featured a few important requirements:

1. Any idea we conceived was meant to be for the greater good: to express our connection and alliance with the nation’s shared experience, even though definitions of home are as varied as our communities.
2. We were not to be advertising anything, and realtor.com was the least important part of whatever we produced — this was never to be about our business, but about our shared interest in the meaning of home. We were supporting a growing national movement (and set of local and state requirements) to #StayHome in an effort to flatten the COVID-19 transmission curve.
3. We needed to give back in a substantial, meaningful way: a donation of at least $100,000 to an organization or multiple organizations, supporting those on the front lines of this crisis — either medical workers, or those who were otherwise in need.

There was some expectation this exercise would be futile. I wasn’t sure if anything could work, if anything would feel right when so many people were hurting, anxious, unwell. But I knew we had to try, we had to think about how we could support all of these emotions and feelings that were shared alongside our family, friends, colleagues and even people we did not know.

The team came up with a range of ideas — some truly remarkable, at a very large scale that would be difficult to pull off with any expediency. But one in particular stood out to us collectively and became an easy choice to pursue: a “mini-festo” that would define what this ‘new normal’ meant to all of us, as home became more than a gathering spot or a place to lay your head. It would be a newspaper advertisement to start, and would ultimately grow to include digital video and social media as long as we could deliver them with the similar tone and humility.

We had to thread a very tiny needle, making sure we were not acting in a self-serving way — that we stood behind the words on the page and we believed deeply in doing the right thing for others. Could we answer the challenge we posed to ourselves, and could we make it matter?

We riffed on the words to define home during this national and global moment of solidarity. We removed our brand and campaign taglines from early versions of the page design and replaced them with our simple brand mark. And when we were ready, we laid it into a very basic structure that was shared with our executive leadership for their input and ultimate support.

We found Feeding America, which supports a network of 200 local food banks across the country (and which received a 94 rating from Charity Navigator). We worked quickly with them to validate the $100,000 donation and gained their agreement for the advertising effort.

We were awed and honored by how quickly and easily this idea garnered support both inside and outside the company and yet we still had to regularly confirm that our core objectives were being met: that the needle was threaded appropriately.

On Monday, March 30, we ran a full-page ad on the back cover of Section A of the national Wall Street Journal, and on Tuesday the 31st we expanded to the hometown newspapers of all the metro markets where we have offices, the employees of which are working remotely and managing through much change during these unprecedented times.

The aforementioned video and social media were developed with similar care and launch this week (see below).

It wasn’t easy to get to this point, and I regularly questioned whether our intent would come through. But doing so through such a collaborative effort, to support something so important, made all of this worthwhile. It was humbling and it was thrilling, even with circumspection driving our mission.

I have never been prouder to work at realtor.com, as we support Feeding America and as we join a national conversation about what home means during times of crisis, as much as during times of joy.

#StayHome

To support Feeding America’s campaign to feed those most in need during the current crisis, donate here.

And I would welcome in the comments additional examples of brands doing work during this moment of crisis that we can all celebrate.

A Story and An Ask of You

In early 2002 I was “post-9/11”-unemployed and subsisting on a freelance music journalist’s salary in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

I read a story in the Chronicle about 826 Valencia, a new project from a fantastic author and distant acquaintance, Dave Eggers. When the economy was in downturn, Dave had the audacity to launch a non-profit focused on delivering assistance to students, aged 8–18 with writing and other creative pursuits.

Dave and his co-founder Ninive Calegari believed, as I long have, that strong writing and communication skills are fundamental to future success in nearly any pursuit and that teachers, particularly those with limited resources in the public school system, could use some help. That it would be wrapped in a funny, eccentric wrapper (a la The Pirate Store, where all good pirates come looking for scurvy medication and lard) was part of its appeal, but at its heart 826 Valencia would bring together volunteers from across the Bay Area who wanted to work with children in need — many of whom were growing up in households where English was not a first, or even second language.

I jumped right in as a volunteer, working with kids right away. In the early days, our roof leaked when it rained hard, which led to volunteers swabbing the deck, and our “fish theater,” featuring King Karl the finned friend, entertained kids in the front of the store. I taught workshops in critical writing (“This Class Sucks”) and persuading parents. For 8 years I led drop-in tutoring at 826 Valencia on Sundays with my pirate-in-crime, Abigail, and got to see, first-hand, the transformative nature that warm, thoughtful guidance can have on children’s self-esteem, creativity and writing ability.

Our storytelling and bookmaking workshops bring hundreds of students to the center each year, and our in-school programs — including writers rooms in two local SF public schools — continue to stretch our reach to where the need is greatest.

Over the last 8 years, 826 Valencia has expanded its local programming into a national organization with locations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Washington DC, Boston, New York, and while I sit as an ex-officio member of the National board, my heart and first commitment lie with our growing organization in San Francisco.

After 9 years of volunteering at 826, I joined the 826 Valencia Board of Directors in 2012 and continue to watch our programs reach more and more students each year, while continuing our planned expansion into the Tenderloin next year. And for the last 8 years or so, my wife Michal and I have been making a meaningful donation to 826, while trying to increase the amount each year.

I am asking you, my friends, to consider making a tax-deductible donation today, to support 826’s existing programming, and our major Tenderloin expansion… coming very very soon.

http://826valencia.org/get-involved/donate/

Happy #GivingTuesday, and Happy Holidays to you all!

Andrew