Posted by Jack on May 20, 2005 at 21:59:08:
Funny how the website has a hundred pictures of her from various magazine articles. But she doesn’t have any from that Maxim photo shoot, which is really the only one that most people remember.
Ugly RE Agents // Bikini RE Agents - Posted by Hank FL
Posted by Hank FL on May 20, 2005 at 17:38:41:
So a friend sends me a couple’a links and I thought of the “ugly agent” thread over here.
From now on I will only do business with realtors in bikinis.
Click on “Got RE?” for the billboard:
Related story:
http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21474~2862513,00.html
Bikini wearing real estate agent sells
The display of one Realtor’s assets draws attention in Belmont Shore.
By Don Jergler
Staff writer
LONG BEACH ? A blazer and slacks just don’t cut it for one local real estate agent.
Realtor Wendy Heath chose to wear a bikini on a billboard she posted earlier this month on Second Street and Claremont Avenue in Belmont Shore. The advertisement is turning heads quicker than a Naples Island open house.
Bigger pictures: Bikini-clad agent
“It’s kind of flipped people out,” said Heath, who reported receiving almost as many calls from Realtors upset with the ad as those voicing support. “A couple of agents are having a fit about it, but that’s because they just didn’t think of it first.”
Heath said visits to the Web site accessible at www.teamheath.com and www.shocktheshore.com have spiked 400 percent since the billboard went up on May 2.
But the large advertisement also led to the 34-year-old mother ending her association First Team Real Estate after it put her and management at loggerheads. She is now with Long Beach Brokerage.
The photo was shot by Heath’s husband, a general contractor, with the family’s digital camera on an Alamitos Bay dock near Bay Shore Drive. Also in the digital photo is Bruiser, the family’s English bulldog, who asks via comic-strip bubble: “got real estate?”
“I’m here to create relationships with down-to-earth people who want to do business with me and appreciate who I am,” said Heath, who lives in the Shore. “More than anything, it’s got people thinking.”
Heath, who has been a Realtor for three years, was with First Team for more than a year before the clash, which sent her and the billboard idea to Long Beach Brokerage when she introduced the concept after rejecting First Team’s promotional ideas.
“When I came up with this billboard idea, I ran it by them just to be courteous, and they said, 'Oh, no, no, no,” she said, adding that the First Team ads “were totally unacceptable, they weren’t who I am.”
She offered to remove the First Team logo from the ad, but the firm’s executives warned that she would be asked to leave the company if it ran, Heath said.
“Sex sells, but not in real estate,” said Rich Rector, manager of First Team’s Long Beach office. “I’m always somebody who likes people to think out of the box, but I told her she was going the wrong direction.”
Three options
First Team came up with three billboards with Heath and her dog that weren’t as revealing, and “she rejected all of them,” Rector said.
“It is absolutely not something that First Team can be a party too,” Rector said said. “It is totally unprofessional. Would you look at this billboard, and ask, 'Is this the person you would want to represent you in the biggest purchase of your life?”
Rector expressed safety concerns, noting that people can misunderstand the ad as a sexual invitation.
“I think it’s going to hurt her business a lot,” he added.
Thanks to a stint as a personal trainer with 24-Hour Fitness, Heath has a well-toned body and blond hair, but looks aren’t all that she has to offer, she said.
Heath graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a degree in humanities and a minor in business. After college, she worked for IBM in marketing and sales before going into real estate and raising a family of six. (Three of the children are her’s and three are her husband’s from a previous relationship).
In a competitive business like real estate, people are increasingly being forced to find creative ways to get people to remember their names, marketing experts say.
“For her to take a picture of herself and basically to present herself more as a sexy Realtor, I say more power to her because she is basically carving a niche out and making herself more memorable,” said Sean T. Haley, president of the Southern California Chapter of the American Marketing Association. “Will it hurt her sales? I don’t think so.”
Others innovated
Heath is not the first Long Beach Realtor to cast off the conventional, buttoned-down approach.
Sanford, now a national speaker with a self-published book that contains clippings of advertisements from his formidable years as a Long Beach Realtor, earned a reputation from an ad showing he and others on his JTM Brokerage team standing on a sand bar in Alamitos Bay.
The ad, which ran in the Belmont Shore Grunion Gazette, appeared as if the brokers were walking on water. It asked “What else do we have to do to show you we can capture the market share?”
The Biblical reference jostled other Realtors and drew community scrutiny, but that didn’t stop Sanford.
He followed with more outlandish ads which worked “amazingly,” he said, speaking from the Illinois headquarters of his Sanford Systems and Strategies, which he established after leaving Long Beach in the mid-1990s.
Such controversial ads equate to “top-of-mind recognition,” he said. “The problem is everybody has a (real estate) license nowadays, and unless you differentiate yourself, it’s tough to make a living.”
Heath, who turns 35 on Friday, said she believes the “decent amount of money” she spent on the month-long billboard run will be worthwhile.
She said, “It’s hard to market down here.”
Motor Scooters - Posted by Motor Scooters
Posted by Motor Scooters on June 05, 2007 at 03:01:06:
if u want to know about the Motor Scooters then go to the Scooter Parts available in the market scooter store but need the scooter safety and know how u can take it scooters and moped and also know about the scooters and motorcycle good to get a scooter classic scooters should be choosed for modern scooters can be done through the retro scooters an you can take it in types of scooters and the advantages of scooters and manage your difference between scooters and moped u can check it vespa piaggio also the old age scooters lambretta scooters and know about the used scooters.
Real beauties are the producers - Posted by John Merchant
Posted by John Merchant on May 21, 2005 at 09:59:39:
The best agent I ever had couldn’t have made it in a bikini, but that was the last thing I wanted.
What I wanted to see was a good P&S and boy did she produce them…3 houses sold within weeks of my listing with her for acceptable prices and terms.
However, I’m reminded of the movie where the canny agent, when showing an overpriced house to a guy, arranges to have an attractive female taking a bath in the tub when he shows it…she says “oh, I’m a neighbor and I come over whenever I can as I just love this big tub”.
So oddly enough the guy wants that house!
Re: Ugly RE Agents // Bikini RE Agents - Posted by Killer Joe
Posted by Killer Joe on May 21, 2005 at 01:44:49:
Hi Hank,
I gotta tell ya as a former resident of both Belmont Shores and Naples Island this kind of ad/billboard is not really considered risque by any stretch. It really does reflect the lifestyle of the community, that’s why we all chose to live there. It does make for good fodder though when taken out of context.
BTW, that guy Sanford was at the top of his game in the mid 1980’s and was always a top producer for JTM. His ads were always over the top. My favorite was his pose standing next to his Eldo, with the drivers door open and his left arm on the top of the drivers door and his right arm with a cell phone up to his ear. Back then cell phones cost $2500 and were about as techno as a walky-talky. But he looked like Johnny on the Spot, a man of action. He was quite the charactor back then.
Thanks for bringing back some fond memories…
KJ
also from Florida: - Posted by Jack
Posted by Jack on May 20, 2005 at 19:44:46:
Katrina from the first season of the Apprentice was a Realtor:
http://www.bigbtv.com/Images/RealityTV/Apprentice/FHMpics/KatrinaFHM2.jpg
- Posted by Hank FL
Posted by Hank FL on May 20, 2005 at 21:01:02:
We’ve disagreed on much before, but I suspect we are on the same page on this one.
Perhaps this as well: