A couple of days ago I posted about Engagement through Real Estate Webisodes that a real estate builder created a bunch of "Sex in the City" type webisodes, Donovan Life, to highlight Vancouver's trendy Yaletown neighborhood.

I watched all the episodes today and I really think Cressey Developers are onto something.  I don't mean that everyone should now make sexy webisodes - but rather what we, as a society are evolving into.

Watch the clip above, episode 4, the final episode, and if you want to know more about Donovan Life and how it was developed - there's a link on the site that gives more detail .

One of things I'm seeing is that what works 5 years ago, 3 years ago, last month even, might not work exactly the same way today or the next day - in some respects. 

Yes, we always want to be entertained and engaged, and that never changes - but how we get to be engaged and how our interest is maintained is changing very quickly.

What Donovan Life accomplished is make me familiar with a part of Vancouver and get me to think about it - these characters, although fictional - were real enough that I became interested in their story.

Is that now what we're now looking for?  Why are we all watching YouTube now, spending so much time on the Internet - our whole lives are almost superimposed onto the Internet.  And it's not just the Internet, it's also Cable TV, Satellite Networks, Mobile Networks - almost as if we have an vast rich network, and a lot of noise that comes with it - at our beck and call, at all times - and its hard to get away from it now.

So now we come to websites and we expect to be entertained….right?   We expect more - we want a story to be told …..we want to know why we should buy the widget because we're really interested in the story more than anything else…and we want to feel good, alive, vital, sexy, all of it.

In an enviorment like this  - today - many sales pitches might fall flat - at least, the one's on the internet.   Take the architects I've dealt with for example and compare it to Donovan Life - does someone what to buy an architectual plan or would they like to buy the story behind it?  Does someone want to buy an apartment in Vancouver's trendy Yaletown neighborhood, or are they buying the story those characters in Donovan Life embody.

Now, consider what I wrote about in When Search Engine Ranking is not enough; why is it so hard to sell those plans?  Why is the conversion rate so darn low - not just for those architects - but for just about everyone in that sector.

Could it be that people are fed up with what they're seeing? Maybe they need the story behind the plans in order to engage with the content.

I guess, what I'm saying , is we've changed - and marketers have change too  - marketers need to entertain us, to engage us - giving features and benefits is probably not going to work that well, especially if your products or services are viewed as a commodity - and let's face it - if you got hundreds of architects selling plans and competing with each other - it's hard to tell them apart or even care who the architect is.

And that's why the conversion rate is low and that's what tactics like Donovan Life attempt to address. 

The real question is ….. can a marketer now become a storyteller?  Can they do it in a way that makes you feel alive - and is it interactive?  There's so many people that can't really get into that yet…they're just not ready for it. 

So….maybe that's the line of success vs failure now …. maybe the new marketing is engagement and entertainment - you can't just present a bunch of blueprints and say…..buy me……it's just not going to work that well, not in 2007 (and it was not working that well in 2004-2006 either).