ATTN: crafted a four-part custom campaign that highlighted specific issues that emerged from Zillow’s report. Some installments of the series also organically incorporated Zillow economists to authentically establish Zillow as a thought leader on these issues. For other installments, the ATTN: team cast a wide range of people with firsthand experience combatting the reported issues. For example, in an installment about homelessness, ATTN: visited and interviewed a man who became homeless as a result of rising rents.

Zillow has long been a pioneer in confronting these intense topics, but the release of these videos distilled their complex findings down to conclusions and personal stories to make them more accessible to a broader audience.

ATTN: created and produced four videos, each highlighting one of the following issues: Homelessness, The Mortgage Gap, The Cost of Cities, and Rural America. Each hosted video featured at least one individual who had firsthand experience with the issue, as well as community organizers, policymakers, or other experts.

Each video was distributed through ATTN:’s social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and this multi-platform strategy enabled us to garner a high volume of organic video shares, comments, and views.

The videos were released beginning on September 27, 2017, approximately 1-2 weeks apart:

Homelessness - September 27, 2017

The Mortgage Gap - October 13, 2017

The Cost of Cities - October 20, 2017

Rural America - October 27, 2017

With over 13M impressions and 4.5M views, the campaign not only surpassed the original views goal of 4.2M, but it also exceeded ATTN: median benchmarks for branded content and the Facebook branded video content industry benchmark. Moreover, retention on the Facebook videos outperformed ATTN: branded averages, which suggests that the campaign was successful in telling captivating stories that kept viewers’ attention and sparked substantive conversation. For example, commenters started discussions around policy initiatives that could make housing more affordable and even candidly shared their own experiences combating rising rents and homelessness. Overall, the amount of views fulfilled ATTN: and Zillow’s goals to give life to Zillow’s insights about housing concerns and pain points for minorities, millennials, rural communities, and lower to middle class residents of large cities.