I saw these YouTube videos over a year ago, but I thought they were too racy to discuss on my blog.

However, after yesterday’s article about Neo Property in The Globe & Mail, I think the door has been opened.  Some of these videos are NSFW.

I warned you – didn’t I?

I first saw this video about one year ago, and I got a good kick out of it.

I’m always enthused by new and creative ways of marketing products and services, especially in an industry that is often starved for out-of-the-box thinkers, or where the market for a product or service is depressed.

I remember last year – showing this video to a few people in my office, and one of my female colleagues remarked, “So what?  They’re a bunch of pigs marketing towards men who only want to buy a product if a woman is half-naked in the advertisement.”

Well, then what do you call this one:

You have to give it to this real estate marketing team – they’ve got all the bases covered.  Men, women; gay, straight.  They might not have a video for the older demographic, but how many 70-year-olds are buying houses by watching YouTube videos?

While I’m never afraid to rock the boat with my political commentary or my outrageous opinions on real estate, it’s another thing to post racy videos on my blog.

I toyed with this decision for quite a while, but since the article in The Globe & Mail yesterday failed to put a picture (or a video) to their description, I figured, “What the heck.”  After all, when the Globe article explains, “the most popular ad features a lingerie model tied to a chair and talking to a 911 operator as a rescue squad races toward the home. To help them find the property, she describes the homes many amenities,” can you really picture the video that I posted above?

Sometimes, words just don’t do justice.

Ian Adams and Adrian Jenkins are two real estate brokers that work out of the Gold Coast in Australia, and sell mostly high-end homes.

They don’t have a reality TV show like the Josh Flaggs’s and Chad Rodgers’ of the world, but they do have something that the other 6,000,000,000 people on the planet have: access to YouTube.

I’ve seen a lot of Toronto Realtors start making YouTube videos for their listings or just their adventures in the city, and good or bad – I still think it’s better than what the other 99% are doing.

A couple of years ago, I spoke out against the “status quo” in real estate; that is, the legions of Realtors who work 20 hours per week, have the same headshot from 1988, and still run advertisements in the newspaper.  I took some heat, but eventually, people caught on that the “Internet” is here to stay, and it’s where everybody starts their housing search.

Personally, I think the advertisements by Neo Property are ground-breaking, and probably the best thing I’ve ever seen in real estate.

If you’re selling a $4 Million house in Australia – a depressed market to begin with, are you going to call the 60-year-old Realtor who was the top seller from 1985 through 1996 that advertises in the Brisbane newspaper?  Or are you going to call the guys that spend $15,000 on videos that get 1,200,000 views on YouTube?

At the end of the day, it’s about results, and if Ian Adams and Adrian Jenkins are selling high-end, luxury houses in a down-market while other agents have listings sitting for week after week, then these two guys are worth all the hype.

And not all their videos are the same.

You can scroll through YouTube and you’ll notice that not all these advertisements show half-naked women.  There are also half-naked men, as well as some well-produced, James Bond-like themes.  I’m not sure I see the appeal to the rapping midget, but apparently the house-sellers get input on the videos themelves, so perhaps one owner had a thing for short people.

They’ve also done a little cross-branding as well.  One video (that I definitely will not be posting on my blog…) features a “Playboy Golf” star named Jennifer Katchel (sidebar: what the heck is Playboy golf?!?!), and it could be argued that putting the brand name “Playboy” next to your $4 Million piece of real estate will add cache for a demographic that likely buys based on image more often than value.

While I don’t see this sort of thing working in Toronto, maybe it could work in Los Angeles, and it could certainly work in other areas of the world where advertising is already far more racy than we’re accustomed to seeing in North America.

And if I offended anybody with the nakedness above – I’m sorry.  But just give your boss the URL and I guarantee he or she will be watching these videos in about ten minutes.  These advertisements are the very definition of what can go “viral” in today’s Internet-world, and I think that’s exactly what the two Aussie Realtors intended…