I love all the different forums that provide opportunity to share questions, thoughts and ideas about the property management business. The other day though, I didn’t like my response to someone’s question/post because I sounded like “a no fun, Debbie Downer".  The question was, does anyone know of a funny, but still professional, way to do video for an apartment community.  My response was that I wouldn’t do funny because people looking for a new home consider it a serious matter, not a matter for entertainment. I’ve seen lots of video’s that communities have made using pets, giving funny tours etc...where it’s obvious they had a lot of fun doing it and feel it was successful. The question to determine its success though is what was the objective?  Is it to promote camaraderie among staff, is it to show the light hearted side of the staff to the current residents, or is it to appeal to prospective residents to entice them in your community's direction? Anything you put on-line has the opportunity to affect the latter.  Like any other marketing project you have to have a clearly defined objective, in other words you need to think about the end at the beginning.   In full disclosure my company produces video’s for MFHI so it would be easy to construe that I have a bias. So I would like to use an analogy that most can relate to - finding a new hair salon.  Simply interchange apartment with salon and leasing staff with stylists.

You are looking for a new salon because 1) you’re moving to a new area  2) you are unhappy with your current salon 3) you’re now able to afford a more posh salon that offers more services.  Choosing a new salon is a bit scary though because the service they provide produces permanent results for a temporary period of time.  So you begin searching on-line and come across a salon with a funny video, full of antics about people getting their hair cut, colored, and permed…all things that the stylists creating the video would find funny because they live it every day.  It probably was a successful video in the eyes of the stylists…they were in it having fun, they produced it and saw the behind the scenes, and they “get" the inside hair dresser dilemma jokes.  Even many of their current customers will think it’s funny because they already know their stylist and trust the good job they do in reality.  But how might you perceive it…the person who is getting ready to risk letting someone new make you a “natural” blonde again?  Without question you will appreciate their sense of humor once they become your stylist and have proven themselves to you in a serious way, but does this funny video make you comfortable about choosing them to hold the scissors to next to your bangs that very first time? 

We all want to show personality and who doesn’t want to have fun? Humor is powerful but to be effective with humor as a marketing tool is risky.  If only the comedian and the back stage crew are laughing and the paying audience is not, was the attempt at humor a success?

So, back to what my original response to the video question should have been. Save your lighter side for after you've gained their confidence. For marketing purposes, show yourself at what you do best - being YOU as a leasing professional showing your community at its best in the very best way possible.