Stuff real estate agents do – pictures

Joe Spake- ca. 1998

We real estate agents like to put our pictures on everything:  business cards, advertisements, our web sites and blogs, the doors of our cars, and For Sale signs.  This post is not about the various levels of professionalism displayed in pictures of  the properties we service, but the pictures we display of ourselves.  Quick!  Name 3 professions where personal photos are used for branding as much as in the real estate industry.

Do you know how hard it is to get a good promo picture done?  We do, because we keep on using them, and using them, and using them until we don’t look like them anymore.  Memphis photographer Steve Roberts did the portrait of me on the left back in 1998 – one of the best pictures ever taken of me – I could still be using it.  Some would, I guess; but I just don’t look like that anymore.  I did get a lot of mileage out of it, though, and I still occasionally use the caricature that was rendered from it.

Joe Cartoon

As Elvis probably said about his 1956 pictures after he bulked up in the ’70s, I just don’t look like that anymore.  That reddish beard turned to grey somewhere along the way and had to be shaved off when Katy brought home the package of “Just for Men” to touch it up. I gave up on the bow ties (see caricature) and can’t even remember how to tie one anymore.  In 2007  I had another portrait photo done . I didn’t care for this one either.  It made me look like a stodgy and portly old guy, so I never really used it.

Joe -2007

I am interested in how and why real estate agents use their photos in print advertising, like those boxes in the Real Estate section of the newspaper:  Name, Photo, Slogan, and the plea to please work with me; or the photo grid layouts of “top producers”.  So many faces.  As a consumer, if you were looking for an agent would you go through the grids to pick the best looking agent to work with?

I think that, if you are going to use a picture in your branding, it should look enough like you that someone should be able to pick you out of a crowd with it.  How would you like to make an appoint to list your home with someone based on their picture, and not recognize them when they showed up on your front porch?  I have used my own pictures in this post so as not to offend my colleagues who are still using their glamour shots from the 199o’s or 1980′s.  I still like the 1998 shot, but this one more currently reflects my current appearance, personality and demeanor.

Joe- now

Of course, if I needed a more formal shot for business, I guess I could use this one

Tagged as: Advertising, real estate, stuff real estate agents do