Interviewer: Thanks for coming in and talking at Rese today! It was really great seeing you and you gave us some really good insights in what’s gonna be happening over the next couple of years and also what’s happening currently. For people that didn’t make it here today, I would love to be able to share some of the things that you did share with us for some idea on what’s happening at the planet I suppose for the moment.
Toby Johnstone: Absolutely! I guess the theme of my presentation was change and how the rate of change is accelerated. And we see it across all parts of the industry, whether it’s social media, traditional media or even just the real estate industry, the pace of change is accelerated. So what we’re trying to do is stay ahead of the curve so that we can come to events like this and share what we’ve been up to. I have to say it’s an honor to be out here. You have all the thought leaders of the industry in one place for 2 days. And it’s nice to be involved.
Interviewer: Yeah, it’s been great. I know you spoke about plenty of things today, but there were some really exciting things that obviously are happening in your business now, is there any of them that you can share that may be coming up?
Toby Johnstone: Well I always think that if you want to speak to someone in the business and get an idea where it’s going, you speak to the chief technology officer and our CTO, Mark, is a bit of a mad genius and he has identified 3 areas that will be big. The first is voice, everyone is using voice search now, how do we as the main players in that space go with such a visual platform? But there’s no doubt in the world that it’s headed to voice search. The other is AR and VR, you know what’s better and what you should invest in and we’ve kind of landed on the promise of AR and we’re investing in that space and then the big question mark is AI, how is it gonna shape the way in which we connect with people and the technology we use? And our view is that the best advancements in AI might not even know are happening cause they will be things that make life easier for you or help you get to your goal quicker, not necessarily the robots of Terminator or any other representation of AI that we see at the moment.
Interviewer: Sure! I think that I was sitting next to someone in the conference and when you were talking about how big voice is going to be, they said to me they use it a lot. I don’t use it much but I haven’t been an early adopter on many things. Do you think it benefits being an early adopter and giving things a whirl?
Toby Johnstone: Well I think voice still has a ways to go. I’m an early adopter of home assistants, I think they’re fun. It’s incredible how quickly people give us privacy for cool new tech and features. I think it’s got a way to go, but all indications are that we will have smart homes, home assistants and if they will make our lives better without subjecting ourselves to privacy issues, then I’m all for it.
Interviewer: Sure! If you had one tip for an agent right now, what they should do to obviously benefit property and looking after their customers and utilizing your portal and the other things that you guys offer, what would that be?
Toby Johnstone: Well at the moment, we believe in partnerships, we really want to partner with the leading agents in each market. So we offer leadership insertion media, which is as we discussed today, an incredibly important part of any sort of marketing campaign now. We offer premium print assets or magazines around the country and we’d like to hear our agents in those publications. And we also offer competition, we’re here to prove a point and want to work with the best agents and at the end of the days we want to sell homes and drive leads and we’re here to do that.
Interviewer: Sure! It was very insightful today and I really appreciate your time! Thanks for coming all the way up here to present!
Toby Johnstone: Thanks for having me!
Interviewer: Thank you!