Upping the ante in the property listings war, online real estate group REA has launched a national TV campaign starring Hollywood great Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The series of ads titled ‘Australia Lives Here’, which reportedly cost millions, began airing nationally on Sunday in an aim to spruik REA’s property listing website realestate.com.au
See the initial ad below.
The premise of the humorous ads sees Schwarzenegger wanting to return to buy a home in his native Austria but mistaking it for Australia.
It can only be assumed the News-owned REA used its considerable weight in Hollywood (it owns 21st Century Fox) to lure the big-name star.
The ads were created by local creatives BWM Melbourne and were filmed in the US by acclaimed director John Hamburg (most famous for the Meet The Parents films).
REA group manager marketing strategy Natalie Feehan, said of the series of ads: “Australia lives here is the culmination of six months of work refining and re-articulating the brand strategy to support realestate.com.au’s future growth."
“The brand has been known and widely accepted as Australia’s number one property site.
"The fact is, we know our audience engages with our site throughout the property cycle, not just when they are buying and selling, so we wanted to expand perception of the site by creating an engaging campaign that tells a story.
“Through Arnie’s discovery of realestate.com.au, we get to see other parts of the site that are helpful for consumers, like suburb profiles, sold price information, investment data and editorial content,” Ms Feehan said.
The series of ads are slated to run at prime time across both free-to-air and PAY TV and it’s hoped they will expand across online, social media, print and outdoor media.