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Bio
Michael Broder serves as president and chief executive officer of Brightline Strategies. Prior to forming the company in January 1999, Mr. Broder served as campaign strategist and media consultant to several gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional candidates throughout the northeast region during the 1994, 1996 and 1998 election cycles. He also served in the Office of Political Affairs in the first Bush Administration.
Mr. Broder’s work has received numerous awards including: Pollie, Telly, ADDY, AMR Gold Medals, and the International Television and Video Association Award of Excellence. He has lectured at the George Washington University’s undergraduate School of Political Communications and the Graduate School of Political Management.
Mr. Broder holds a B.A. in Political Communications from The George Washington University, a M.A. in Campaign Management from the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, and a J.D. from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.
Brightline Strategies
BRIGHTLINE IS A RESEARCH AND ADVISORY SERVICES FIRM FOR THE HIGH-STAKES BUSINESS OF REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT, MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT.
For 20 years, we have helped some of the most recognized names (and many other “up and comers”) shape their strategies, mitigate risk, drive preference, pace and premiums, maximize asset value and expand portfolios across markets and borders.
While we specialize in real estate, past engagements span a diverse client base including technology, life science, energy, sports, professional services, and non-profits. This diversity ensures every client benefits from the cross-pollination of our lessons learned and results achieved.
BORN FROM THE SCIENCE AND DISCIPLINE OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS, WE BELIEVE REAL ESTATE COMPANIES ARE CANDIDATES AND EVERY DAY IS ELECTION DAY.
Each day, prospects vote with their “preferences”. Tenants with a “like” or “retweet”. Brokers with their recommendations. Financiers with their investments. Policy makers with their advocacy. The media with their stories.
In today’s information democracy, all of these constituencies affect reputation, market demand, pace, premiums, retention, and overall portfolio value. Just like assembling a winning election-day coalition, it’s all about the connections we see and how we help you bring them together to deliver better paths to growth.
Show Notes
Company & Current Role
- Founded in 1998 providing primary audience research for predictive analysis for developers and owners about tenant demand and about site locations (3:40)
- Primary audience polling data approach (5:00)
- Use focusing lens of polling data and what drives decision making and overlays it with traditional real estate data to understand influences on user decision making (5:20)
- Developers typically differentiate property by what they build not by understanding their tenants’ potential needs (6:45)
- This approach has always been important, yet had not been addressed before they came into the real estate field (7:10)
- His political experience brings in the understanding of user needs (7:30)
- Pandemic has accelerated the needs to understand the end user’s potential (8:40)
- Critical set of insights to understand what the pandemic did to the real estate markets (9:15)
Origin Story
- Grew up in an active political household in Connecticut (10:20)
- Whetted his appetite for politics- primarily the campaigning side of politics (10:30)
- It’s a “one day sale”- election day mentality (10:50)
- What moves which sets of people to make decisions in elections (11:35)
- Liked the intensity of a political campaign, yet not necessarily the results and governance (12:15)
- Father was an attorney and became more political after taking over his father’s local practice in Connecticut (13:10)
- He thought he might seek elective office at some time in his life (14:15)
- Whetted his appetite for politics- primarily the campaigning side of politics (10:30)
College & Law School
- Attended GWU and studied Political Communication and then a Masters degree, as well (15:20)
- Learned about political campaigning and electioneering history (16:10)
- Marketing is now more like politics now (16:30)
- Polling really accelerated with mass media (17:50)
- Sophistication of data analytics behind campaigns became more important (18:50)
- Moving people on TV and online in short sound bites now (19:30)
- Knowledge is not as “deep” as it once was (20:00)
- Michael Deaver was a mentor to him while in graduate school (21:00)
- Offered him an internship at Edelman Public Relations (21:30)
- More about shaping opinion to drive business outcomes (22:40)
- Attended law school at Catholic University (23:30)
- Took a leave of absence for election cycles (23:45)
- Dean of law school enjoyed talking politics (24:00)
- 1997 was centennial year of law school and he was engaged to help CU’s law school grow its stature to influence potential students and was the beginning of his business (24:30)
- Engaged to help CU to improve their application rate (25:00)
- Subsequently engaged by 17 more law schools to help them promote themselves (26:00)
- Law schools are in various tiers and each school wants to maximize its potential and he helped them target their most likely candidates to attend their schools (26:30)
- Saved the law schools considerable marketing and mailing costs by segmenting audiences to the appropriate groups (28:30)
- Practices- Questions are framed to understand variances of responses (32:50)
- Build subsets of groups to understand tendencies (33:10)
- We look at a 95% research variant…pretty confident (34:45)
- Take precautions for integrity of data (35:20)
- Law school strategy (35:50)
- Move them up in rankings (36:20)
- Law schools used their “day” students’ statistics about LSAT & GPA, which was higher usually (37:45)
- Moved CU up to the top of the 2nd tier of law schools (39:00)
- Top 10 schools didn’t need more applicants, but driving preference among the schools (39:20)
Evolution of Brightline Strategies
- Segued business to Universities’ undergraduate programs and subsequently into the life sciences business (41:20)
- Celera Genomics became a client (41:50)
- Biotechnology businesses needed to be segmented from the pharmaceutical business and helped them grow with appropriate communications (42:20)
- When the internet became viable to apply to their analytics, their targets were readjusted from “disrupters” like biotechnology to the “disrupted” like the real estate industry (47:00)
- Transition to real estate industry (51:00)
- Recognized need for industry to understand customers (51:30)
- Knew someone in the office building industry who wanted to understand its portfolio’s direction in tenant typology in 2011 (52:00)
- Understanding tenants’ anticipated needs (53:45)
- “Experiences over things” (54:30)
- Pandemic accelerated the trend over a decade to require this need (54:50)
- Office is changing in ways people haven’t expected in the past (56:30)
- No one else doing the “predictive analytics” in the real estate space (57:30)
- In 2016, Brightline concentrated its business exclusively into the real estate space (57:55)
- Retailers understanding was ahead of the office and multifamily businesses (1:00:00)
- Approach for “lease up” he looks at typology of anticipated tenants’ needs (1:01:15)
- Natural clustering of tenants and users and their target needs (1:02:15)
- Build segmented product addressing target audience (1:03:00)
- Decision becomes financial in a commoditized market (1:04:20)
- Ask “Who are my customers going to be?” and build for them specifically (1:04:45)
- Why program things in a building if it doesn’t drive specific demand? (1:05:50)
- Can draw from location and several safety and security issues, some factors are critical (1:08:00)
- Filtering process give a target hit list for prospective tenants (1:09:50)
- Collection, storage and filtering process for data (1:11:00)
- Know almost immediately when a client outlines a project what data needs to be assimilated (1:12:00)
- Factors and insights from population tendencies (1:13:00)
- Take tendencies and layer them over the market data available to create typologies of potential tenants and users (1:13:20)
- Provide analytics to apply to data points to predict what will happen (1:14:30)
- Determine premiums, loyalty, and advocacy with factors that correlate highest (1:15:20)
- Allocation of resources toward the correct audiences (1:15:50)
- Important to connect with tenant’s needs, not just sell a building (1:16:30)
- Insight case study (1:17:55)
- New condo project in DMV
- Thought that the prospects would come from immediate market, yet it was absolutely false and the property actually attracted buyers 45 mins. to an hour from the site were the better prospects due to the analysis provided by Brightline (1:18:15)
- Increased sales rates by 13.5% month over month by looking at the appropriate target audience (1:19:45)
- Sequencing products in the right order is critical (1:20:15)
- Ask prospective tenants what the most important thing…soundproofing is the answer for high end tenants (1:21:15)
- First research was in retaining tenants primarily in office space (1:23:00)
- Tenant experience management (1:23:45)
- Project a “world class” experience (1:24:20)
- Analyze existing building to understand typologies for prospective tenants for vacant space (1:25:00)
- Gather purest measurements from tenants without bias from landlords (1:25:30)
- Attributes percolate to the top from frequent reactions (1:26:45)
- Among attributes that were rated “world class” are the most important things to build for tenant needs (1:27:15)
- Will tenants pay a higher premium if the most important factors are included? (1:27:30)
- Hired by a company that experienced attrition and couldn’t understand its source (1:29:30)
- Understood that there were systemic issues in the portfolio (1:30:15)
- Research among employees as well as tenants (1:30:30)
- Internal issues in real estate landlord’s company that affect the tenants’ experiences (1:30:50)
- Differentiator is evaluating both organizational issues and what tenants really want (1:31:45)
- Evolution of four walls and outside before and now workplace experience is most important including the relationships (1:34:00)
- Building relationships is now more important than ever (1:34:30)
- Many roles are not built for extroverted people…that person should not interface with customers/tenants (1:35:30)
- Experience matters (1:36:30)
- What brings office tenants back to the office? (1:37:00)
- Culture, collaborations and communication (CCC) (1:37:40)
- Functionality and purpose of office space will revolve around culture, collaboration and communication (1:38:15)
- People will be more distributed in workforce (1:38:50)
- Far more limited use of space for the CCC activities (1:39:15)
- Doesn’t believe office will ever go back to what it was before the pandemic (1:39:45)
- Why would anyone want to go back to what it was? (1:41:00)
- When do we bring people back and for what purpose? (1:41:15)
- Collaborative environments- excited when there to keep continuity of culture (1:41:40)
- His company has not lost a beat but had a few collaborating meetings (1:43:00)
- Brightline Strategies (1:45:00)
- Evolution- Worked with disruptors and recently worked with the industries being disrupted (real estate) (1:45:30)
- Taking company to a larger scale (1:46:20)
- Research consultancy is limited on an analog basis (1:46:40)
- When pandemic hit, had lots of studies ongoing and had to put them on hold because respondents were not in the mode to respond to polling (1:47:20)
- Slack time allowed them the opportunity to pivot to a SaaS model (1:48:00)
- Data tells a story- what story is analysis telling someone and now the AI technology allows for creating a SaaS model (1:49:20)
SaaS Platform
- rckrbx– new company that provides a SaaS approach to their business is now in Alpha for Q1 2022 (1:50:45)
- Demand ID Platform- Effectively assess an investment hypothesis (1:51:20)
- Prospect Micro-targeting and Engagement Platform (1:52:00)
- Segmentation models allow how to approach target markets (1:52:15)
- Target audience- developers, planners, leasing agents, investors (1:53:10)
Managing Risk
- Narrowing risk in sectors (1:55:40)
- New building (1:56:00)
- Investment risk (1:56:15)
- Leasing risk
- Operating risk
- Preserving money based on analysis that more clearly targets the appropriate audience and saving time and money in marketing the space and designing the building (1:57:50)
- Predictive analyses that are holistic and can avoid pitfalls (1:59:00)
- Optimization or risk mitigation (1:59:30)
- New building (1:56:00)
Team
- Team building (1:59:50)
- Political world was critical due to its sophistication and how it converts to analysis (2:00:30)
- One day sale mentality (2:01:15)
- Apply methodologies to business challenges (2:01:30)
- How to structure an amenity program to make it important and understandable (2:02:00)
- Writing skill is important- telling a story that is explainable and understandable (2:02:45)
- Distill to infographics
- Capable of distilling complexity to simple actionable steps (2:04:00)
- Check the ego at the door (2:04:15)
- Advice needs to be right and achievable (2:05:00)
- Truth in applying data (2:06:00)
- Human nature
- Political world was critical due to its sophistication and how it converts to analysis (2:00:30)
- Karl Rove is a master in simplification as a political analyst (2:07:45)
- 2016 election campaign for Trump- Trading floor including social media agencies (2:08:45)
- New platform (rckrbx) may cannibalize consulting business (2:13:45)
- Pandemic creates opportunity for change and analytics
Personal
- Life priorities (2:14:50)
- Leave an imprint on industry (2:15:30)
- Personal life has changed because of pandemic (2:16:00)
- Two children activities
- Work in Jewish community (2:17:30)
- Advice to 25 yr. old self- “Be Patient” (2:18:30)
- Billboard Statement- “If knowledge is power, we build superheroes”
Postscript
- Colin Madden interested in data analytics and appreciated this interview
- Disrupter- establish credibility from analytics
- Humans are predictable with enough data and analysis
- 95% accuracy on several events
- Indistinguishable from “magic”
- Office building business is a “commodity product” and in an arms race
- Need to focus on the tenant and anticipate what they need
- Start the flywheel once the tenants’ needs are understood
- Retail performance measured by sales
- Office and apartment tenants may need to provide feedback per the lease obligation
- Surveys can be annoying and invasiveness is unavoidable sometimes
- Google has too much information
- Consider users of office space like a hotel guest
- Acceleration of 10 years for data’s importance from pandemic
- Ability to write important
- Icons Webinar- Matt Kelly and Ray Ritchey
- Predictive analytics
- Offer- Iconic Journey in CRE and webinar (john@coeenterprises.com)
