- An Australian real estate advert is going viral.
- The bizarre marketing video shows a couple dancing around a lavish new property with some peculiar features.
- One viewer pointed out that the bathroom is visible from the kitchen, and vice versa.
- Another noticed that a wedding photo in the living room didn’t match the dancing couple.
- After facing ridicule online, the estate agents took the video down from social media and admitted that they’d “missed the mark.”
Real estate ads are all the same these days.
A few sweeping shots of the property, maybe a drone-assisted panorama if you’re lucky.
Yawn.
That’s why Sydney-based estate agents LJ Hooker Bankstown decided to push the boat out.
For a modern, four-bedroom property in Padstow - a suburb in southwest Sydney - the firm decided to commission a video that has since been described as a "crazy suburban romantic spy thriller musical."
The dramatic film shows a man arrive in a Jaguar F-TYPE (notably stopping before his garage for some reason) and enter the house where he dances with his wife to the tune of some really bad house music.
The camera then follows the couple around the house as they get ready for a night out - only to decide to take a swim instead.
Eagle-eyed viewers noticed a number of peculiarities in the video, such as the fact that a wedding photo in the living room clearly shows a different couple to the one prancing around the building.
Others pointed out that the bathroom seems to have a direct view of the kitchen and vice versa thanks to some floor-to-ceiling glass.
Guardian Australia data and interactives editor Nick Evershed even tweeted a photo of the floorplan, which seems to confirm that the bathroom is indeed visible from the kitchen/living area.
also for those in this thread asking if the toilet has full line of sight to the kitchen/dining room, the answer is unequivocally yes pic.twitter.com/401KvhPqZO
— Nick Evershed (@NickEvershed) April 17, 2019
You can watch the full video here:
According to The Guardian, LJ Hooker Bankstown decided to remove the video from social media on Wednesday after it was widely mocked online.
"LJ Hooker Bankstown is always looking for new ways to market our listings; however, this time we missed the mark," it said in a statement seen by The Guardian.
A spokeswoman said: "We live and we learn."
However, Sam Nader, the estate agent who commissioned the video, told Guardian Australia that he was happy with the attention the video had garnered.
"I just wanted to do something different in the industry, and it really, really worked," he said. "I did one for a house in Illawong and it broke the record for the area. $3,205,000, sold before auction.
"Video gets attraction to the property, and the whole point of real estate is to get as many eyes as possible on the property. It was supposed to be funny. Whether it's funny, it's rude or it's sexy, every video I do is different."
The advert is arguably much better when paired with the theme tune from "Dirty Dancing," which, fortunately, you can watch below.
https://twitter.com/AttackOfTheClaw/status/1118358702820610048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw