One of the property industry’s biggest recent re-brands has been the overhaul completed by 156-year-old estate agency Hamptons, which not only shortened its name, but revamped its look including an unusual approach to signboards – eschewing ‘For sale’ and instead using ‘Buy Me’.

The Neg sat down with Fiona Stewart, who joined the company as its marketing chief five years ago and who, as well as having helped steer the firm’s refresh, has some unusual views on how estate agents get their brand over to the public.

She makes the point that big companies that make food products or white goods –  for example – understand, invest in and place a value on marketing and creating a brand, while estate agencies have only woken up to this more recently.

Brand awareness

“In the past many agencies’ brands were defined by the houses they sold and the local staff associated with the company,” she says. “And that was sort of it.

“Consquently, when I arrived at Hamptons, ‘prompted’ awareness of our brand was under 30% but we are now at 50% in areas where we operate.”

While Stewart says that creating a ‘point of difference’ in the market is important, the uniquely personal nature of a customers’ dealings with staff within an agency means how they behave is a form of marketing.

“It is essential that, from day one, all our employees understand the values of the business,” she says.

A quick trawl through agent comparison sites like GetAgent or even Google Reviews bears this out – most comments don’t praise the agency, but rather the negotiator they dealt with.

“For example, if you ask people to describe Foxtons, they will tell you it’s young, brash, aggressive and full of people who ‘get it done’, as their strapline claims, but in my opinion they’re not always people you would want to spend time with,” says Stewart.

“I believe anyone dealing with an estate agent during an intense period like home moving want someone who has their best interests at heart, look after them if things are difficult, get things over the line.”

The personal touch

“So an estate agent needs a unique blend of professional and technical skills as well as the personal touch – I’ve worked at three different estate agencies now and their employees are all very different in the style, and way, they behave.”

Stewart says that when she joined Hamptons International, as it was then known, it felt ‘tired and bit dated’ and ‘lacked a bit of love as a brand’.

“The underlying business has always been strong and only yesterday I got an internal email about two people who were celebrating 25 years with us,” she adds.

“I think this speaks to the fact that Hamptons as an environment to work in, and how work with our clients, I would argue is quite different from other estate agencies.

We use marketing with a limited budget to set up a promise to our customers that they will be looked after in a certain way by our staff…”

“The job that that we do is to use marketing with a limited budget to set up a promise to our customers that they will be looked after in a certain way by our staff, as well as the basics like being on the major portals, ensuring the listings sell or rent their properties in the best way possible so we get the instruction.”

Wrong approach

Stewart points out, nevertheless, that many agencies take the wrong approach to gaining these instructions because 30% of all sales are created by vendors who ditch their first agent after a property fails to sell.

“Flattering potential vendors with high valuations to get an instruction doesn’t work and the Rightmove data shows that vendors who accept very high valuations will find their properties take longer to sell and are less likely to get the best price,” she adds.

Branches

One area where Stewart has strong views is branches. “I believe estate agencies need high street offices – it’s why hybrid firms like Purplebricks have not done as well as expected; people want an office they can walk into if issues need sorting face to face – and that’s why branch windows are very important.”

So why did Hamptons drop ‘international from its name’? “That happened because it was holding us back as a descriptor – ‘international’ still exists as a business of course and it’s growing, but outside the UK.

Stewart says instead ‘Hamptons – the home experts’ was picked because it worked with sales, lettings and all other parts of the UK business.

Nervousness

“Right up until the last minute there was nervousness about using the word ‘home’ because the rest of the industry used ‘property’.

“Traditionally the focus has been on marketing clients properties not the agent’s brand. “When I first joined the industry only Marsh & Parsons was marketing themselves and a sense of personality around their brand, but now that’s all changed.

Next move

So what next for Stewart and her team? She says her big focus now is artificial intelligence – AI – and working out how to harness the opportunity it may present. “We’ve already seen evidence of people searching for homes on platforms like Deep Research,” she says.

She also stresses that estate agencies will always need human beings but that firms like hers need to stay ahead of how AI will help agents do their job better and also home movers search more easily, even if that is bad news for the portals.

“Now that we have a coherent brand positioning for Hamptons, my focus is how to take advantage of the opportunities – like AI – that come along,” she says.

BIO: Fiona Stewart
After several years working outside of the property industry including for advertising agencies, Stewart joined the sector first at Strutt & Parker but later moving to Savills and then in 2020 joining Hamptons.