Back Seat Marketers

Brands build meaning through marketing/public relations, the product proposition and what consumers come to think of it as. Zillow.com is a great resource for finding publicly available real estate information, and more mortgage services companies are using its value estimators.

Zillow.com announced that they intend to build a social community network where neighborhoods can provide information, pictures and recent events to flush out what living is like in that community. I get social networks are everywhere. I like marketing that comes from education, user displays and social interaction.

I don’t get why Zillow would ever agree to this kind of mission creep. It reeks of attempting to find more social relevance while the real estate market has tailed off. Taking on the National Association of Realtors and streamlining the closing process seemed so much more compelling for Zillow.

Stats don’t lie, traffic to Zillow.com and Realtor.com are just plain down:

From the Back Seat, this one looks like a stretch.