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Season 2: Episode 2:  Matt Leone, Chief Marketing Officer gets honest about branding. We ask the person responsible for building a "hip" Halstead brand, and now for reinventing the 150-year old Brown Harris Stevens brand, how does he build a 21st Century brand in an era where...

Every Agent Thinks They Are Building a Personal Brand

If every agent is supposed to be shooting videos, publishing on Instagram, and creatively writing a real-estate blog, where does the agent's corporate brand fit into all of that? Building a brand that makes sense of 2000+ individual agents, each with their own personality, is hard work. What does it take to build a brand representing thousands of very different agents across very different markets in 4 states? How can you be all things to all people? How do we know when the brand is successful versus individual agent success? What did you learn from creating the Halstead brand that applies (and does not apply) when considering the Brown Harris Stevens brand? How does a mostly New York City brand evolve to include high-end suburbs of Manhattan like the Hamptons, Miami, Montclair and Westport? 

Our second guest is Chris Halstead, newly appointed in Connecticut as Executive Sales Director. We want to ask him many of these same questions from the perspective of someone charged with growing the suburban business. Following an initial career track in on the account management side for a leading global advertising agency, Chris transitioned to real estate in 2009, opting to carry the torch and continue to build upon the family legacy. Since that turning point, he has catapulted himself out of the gate and into the swift-paced NYC market. His star rose quickly and his professional acumen has already garnered him a seat at the table reserved for NYC’s “Top 5% Real Estate Producers.”  Now, responsible for the success of over 250 agents in Connecticut, he must  leverage what he's learned to make every one of those agents more successful. Chris, we want to know how does a successful New York agent make the transition to Connecticut? What is the biggest challenge your agents face? How are successful Connecticut agents adapting to a changing market in the post-covid era?

Just a few of the topics we'd like to explore:

- Let's explore corporate branding versus the personal branding of agents.

- How do you establish consistent brand messaging across five states and then reinforce brand standards across 55 offices and over 2,300 agents?

- Critical mass. How important is it to be a big firm with a global presence?

- How do we measure the effectiveness of our real-estate branding?

- Talk about the importance of brand partnerships, such as with the New York Yankees & Audi

- Brown Harris Stevens was established in 1873. Why is that important when some of our newest competitors were only invented yesterday?

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