Despite being the country’s most comprehensive property site, most Australians only knew realestate.com.au for listings.

We had to reposition the brand, demonstrate its full range of products and do it in a way that truly differentiated them from a growing legion of rival real estate listing portals.

So we created the “Australia lives here” campaign - and enticed Australia to discover the site through the eyes of the world’s most famous Austrian.

Via a carefully cultivated character on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, we seeded the rumor that the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to buy an Australian home.

Fans and Australian property enthusiasts, alike, jumped on the story and it quickly became a PR frenzy – creating headlines and news stories around the world.

Realestate.com.au then capitalized upon the rumor, releasing related blog articles and fielding TV and radio interviews regarding the particular property (which was listed on realestate.com.au) that Arnie was interested in.

The stage was set to reveal (what was to become) a nationally talked about ATL campaign – showing Arnie deciding to move back to Austria, and stumbling upon Australia's leading property site.

In the campaign he would go on to discover all of realestate.com.au’s features, with his house hunt playing out on TV, social media, digital, press and outdoor.

However, it was our unique PR-based approach that instantly established our new positioning line and catapulted its broader product offering into the national conversation.

Today, realestate.com.au is Australia’s undisputed market leader.

Attract Phase

7 weeks before our campaign launched, we created a character called Dylan, and seeded a credible back story through social media. He ‘landed a job’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger, confirmed by the star himself on Twitter. This gave Dylan a huge online following, so when he leaked ‘the bossinator’ was looking at a property down under, it created a PR frenzy - the manufactured story made international headlines, and set the stage for the launch.

Launch Phase

One week after the rumour – our campaign was revealed.

We connected the world’s most famous Austrian to realestate.com.au’s full suite of products - with a spot that was road blocked across every TV channel in Australia.

Over the next month, we released a series of films showing Schwarzenegger’s property journey throughout Australia (which he still thought was Austria). This was supported by PR, social, outdoor, press and digital.

-Over 5.6 Million YouTube views of campaign content

-Promoted campaign awareness up to 65% during campaign period

-96% positive sentiment on social channels

-Brand preference up from 41% to 47%

...And a small Australian town mentioned by Arnie in the campaign called Wagga Wagga, changed its name on their welcome sign to his pronunciation: Vagga Vagga.