Somewhere above the west coast, Alaska Air #AS642: A couple of weeks ago I made a joke about CoStar and Super Bowl commercials. 

The quip was in response to a primary investor (and then, a second) formally communicating to the company’s board that attempts to usurp Zillow were being conducted with all the accountability of a fraternity party planning committee. “Yes, we need a second a bounce house. And is three mules enough?”

The joke is on me because the company did indeed run a Super Bowl ad and like all the others, it was about as much fun as picking fire ants out of your nether regions. 

The budget was clearly reduced because the pitch combined both apartments.com and homes.com and was absent Dan Levy. On a couch wasting their comedic talents was the legend Jeff Goldblum and always likable SNL alumnus Heidi Gardner. 

The campaign’s misfire isn’t the fault of its celebrity mouthpieces. It was their message. It attempted to beat its top competitor by advertising it does the same thing as its top competitor. Virtual staging. School data. Nearby retail amenities. How novel. Do you guys have floor plans, too? 

It continued to emphasize the website’s traffic, something with which home shoppers simply don’t concern themselves. I don’t know how that obsession of CEO Andy Florance pushed through creative filters, even if it was meant to simultaneously appeal to agents considering a shift in marketing spend.

I simply can’t imagine a seller urging their listing agent to advertise more on one portal than the other. “I’d like to limit my home’s audience to one global real estate website, thanks. The fewer eyeballs the better.”

I wonder if Mr. Florance had final say on the campaign’s content. As a creative, I can tell you that giving a C-level edit permissions on anything other than a spreadsheet is an unequivocal fucking nightmare. I don’t want to use a joke to emphasize this argument for fear it’ll undercut its veracity. Just hand me a cyanide tablet.

I don’t have hard data but I know personally two agents who spent five figures in ads on homes.com and according to them, that money could have been put to better use on Kalshi wagering on whatever the frat house is doing with livestock. 

CoStar failed to move the needle because it failed to understand what so many industry leaders are failing to understand—real estate doesn’t need more ways to find a home. More over, agents don’t need another lead source. The only thing separating users of homes.com and Zillow is a browser tab. But in case it needs to be said again, Zillow had a 20-year head start.  

CoStar had billions of dollars to persuade homeowners in the United States that it’s working on real ways to make home buying less anxiety-inducing, that it can give them a reason to use the same agent when they sell. Creative could have been dedicated to recognizing and admitting that buying in this market is intimidating and selling is like being kicked repeatedly in the shin. 

There was a panel on the last day at Inman Connect New York that attempted to run this rapid but after finding its initial line pulled to shore and opted to portage around it. Way to dive in. I stopped taking notes less than halfway through.

Actually, the winner of the Super Bowl ad battle in World War Portal is Redfin and Rocket. Lady Gaga—in her second big game appearance of the day—narrates in song a refreshed take of “Won’t you be my neighbor” behind an interconnected storyline about overcoming the stressors of living in and relocating to a modern community. Broken families. Anxious teens. Judgmental neighbors. A lost dog. And then a major weather event. With all the subtlety of a WWE introduction, the ad even managed to filter the whole thing through the lens of the searing racial discord currently eroding the very intent of our nation’s founding—tying in beautifully to the halftime show.  

That’s what happens when you let creative people do their job.

I presume.