Marketing Superstars - Vikki Kayne, Tracy Allen & Tasha Stancill (#28)

Vikki Kayne

Tracy Allen

Tasha Stancill

This episode is a panel discussion with three real estate marketing superstars, Vikki Kayne, Tracy Allen and Tasha Stancill, who have been delivering quality marketing and communications throughout their careers for over 20 years. They are well respected professionals who bring varied perspectives to their roles. While they each perform both internal and external marketing and communications services for their firms, their approaches and styles vary, as you will hear. I have known all of them for over 15 years and have great respect for their abilities and wide network.

Bios

Show Notes

Overview

• Vikki Kayne – Chief Marketing Officer of Eagle Bank (2:45)
• Tracy Allen – Director of Client Relations at ECS (3:25)
• Tasha Stancill – VP Business Relations for UrbanPace (Division of Long & Foster) (4:05)

In Depth Career Trajectory

Vikki Kayne

• Starting with Retail – Lerner (6:00)
• Commercial Real Estate clicked for her (7:00)
• Carl M. Freeman (also retail marketing) (8:20)
• Federal Realty (8:40)
  • Several mixed use projects around country
• First Potomac
  • Moved into office space marketing
  • Public company functions- Investor relations, messaging (11:00)
• CoStar – Media relations for a real estate tech company (12:00)
• JBG Smith – Year before Merger with Vornado, Public Company (12:50)
  • Perhaps the most exciting period in her career
  • Most breakneck pace in her career
  • Amazon HQ2 pursuit (15:30)
• Eagle Bank – Works with Susan Riel CEO (16:50)
  • Impressed with Susan and is very happy being there

Tracy Allen

• Tracy Allen as with Ralph Jensen Fire Protection in Business Development (20:30)
• Tracey Allen was hired away to ECS Consulting 20 yrs. ago (21:15)
  • BD for Mid Atlantic (12 offices) (22:15)
  • Director of Corporate Marketing (22:50)
  • Branding police at meetings (23:15)
  • BD is her passion (10 professional organizations)
  • Became a VP of Marketing during the pandemic (23:45)

Tasha Stancill

• SMPF- Fire protection BD (26:30)
• Joined Monument Realty (26:40)
  • Corporate Marketing- 8 yrs. there
  • Brand Police
  • Great Experience
  • Went through layoffs during 2008 (28:10)
• CBRE– Regional Marketing Mgr. (28:30)
  • 4 Offices regionally
  • Marketing assistance in all sectors
  • Networking is valuable
• UrbanPace (29:30)
  • Creative addition to all client pitches
  • Putting pieces together excites her
• Development manages the process (30:30)
• Brokerage was the clients (31:30)

Role of Marketing Department

• List of Marketing Dept. roles (32:20)
  • Communications- Internal and External
  • Business Development (Usually Indirect or Promotional)
  • Internal Guidance on Interfacing the Public
• Vikki Kayne – Communications (33:10)
  • Top down- keep consistent strategy
  • Succinct communications to empower employees
  • Provide tools to share
  • Hear message first hand from top management (Find the “spark” that really sends the right message)
  • Storytelling important
  • Nothing worse than an article being released without the right message
• Tracy Allen – Business Development (42:00)
  • Brand messaging critical (shows a badge for policing brand)
  • Engineers not comfortable to do business development, so she and her team helps them
  • Active in local organizations
  • Provides webinars to clients and on social media during COVID 19
  • Virtual calls to clients
  • Created “leads” groups internally and in industry settings
  • Virtual conferences opens up breakout discussions
  • Every reach out on LinkedIn she will make calls on the phone as well as Zoom (49:10)
• Tasha Stancill – Internal Guidance (49:45)
  • Last minute pulling presentations together
  • Internal service department that does not tie directly
  • Promote the right way
  • She now is part of all pitches so has influence
  • Debrief is important after a meeting for leadership to know the feedback (55:30)
• Vikki Kayne – Feedback loop is critical to stay on top of the external message (56:10)
  • What are we missing? (57:15)
• Tracy Allen – Client Survey after every assignment (58:00)
  • Good Feedback on Webinars

Youth Influences

• Tasha Stancill – Sports had a strong influence to bring about team building and camaraderie within companies in real estate (59:20)
• Tracy Allen – Only child and was a Military child and and an only child, so learned how to goi into a room and making friends. (1:00:20)
  • She helps people feel comfortable to make friends in difficult environments
  • She really enjoys being with people
• Vikki Kayne – It begins with curiosity. She is very curious and wanted to check on new opportunities (1:02:45)
  • Keep going until something works
  • Loves change

Why Marketing and Real Estate?

• Tracy Allen – Story about here Sr. year at Longwood taking more classes then and picked up on Marketing then and found her passion (1:04:10)
  • Looked in the newspaper and sent resumes to every Marketing opportunity
  • Just took the first job that she was recruited to join at Ralph Jenson
• Vikki Kayne – Got her first job at Lerner by “happenstance” as a concierge at White Flint Mall and joined the Marketing team there- keep an open mind (1:05:50)
  • Don’t make it fit…go with your gut on fit with a company
• Tasha Stancill – Interested in Sports Marketing, but joined a Fire Protection firm for BD (1:08:10)
  • Enjoyed the networking
• Vikki Kayne – Believes that marketing role is as important as any other for messaging and corporate communications and insight from the inside of a company (1:10:00)
  • Technology is difficult to stay current
• Tasha Stancill – No day is ever the same. Need to work with outside vendors, but have an inside perspective (1:12:00)
• Tracy Allen – Need an internal “branding police” to manage (1:15:00)
  • Fell into real estate and finds it exciting to look at properties where she had worked on it
  • More women in STEM
  • Story about two successive meetings from CREW to NAIOP- Being 90% women to 90% Men
    • Women have more career orientation
• Tasha Stancill – Likes real estate for the excitement of change and the people for a career (1:18:00)
  • Male dominated, yet women are advancing
  • Social justice making diversity a priority
• Vikki Kayne – Women’s network in the real estate space has accelerated with BLM and civil unrest (1:19:45)
  • Why aren’t there more males in marketing? Not as much “data lens” and research before as now more data and analytics attracting men
  • Women changing the number of seats at the table for themselves
• Tracy Allen – Women are aware and bring different perspectives (1:24:00)
  • Women can be quick on their feet
• Tasha Stancill – Women notice things that men don’t see sometimes in a meeting or presentation (1:24:35)
• Vikki Kayne – Feels she needs to be “metered” in conversation (1:25:40)
  • Men’s role in a female led company changes- “more inclusive”
• Tracy Allen – Women sometimes don’t “stand up” to men in “justifying” their position (1:28:15)
• Vikki- Needs to encourage female colleagues to stand up for themselves (1:29:15)
• Tasha– Encourage young women (1:30:40)

Pandemic Influence

• Vikki- Entertainment- on Zoom videos majority of day and learning technology to keep communications flowing internally. Remarkable how effective it has been, but feels a lot is missing (1:31:45)
• Tasha- VR now more important than ever (1:32:40)
• Vikki- Hybrid between office and home. (1:34:40)
  • Believes tradeoff of commute for personal meetings is worth it
  • Human connection is important
• Tasha– Quick collaboration in person is important (1:36:15)
• Tracy– Is physically in the office and came back in June. Likes to have the people connection. Client webinars keep ECS in front of clients during pandemic (1:37:30)
  • Walk during a webinar
  • More time with family

Recommendations to Young Professionals

• Tracy– Don’t take things personally and be willing to make changes (be flexible) (1:40:15)
• Tasha– Not too much structure (1:40:30)
• Vikki– Be open minded and have flexibility. Match what clients need. (1:41:15)
  • Takes a personality to adapt, listen and be flexible
  • Constantly learning about technological changes- keeping up with it is challenging
  • A great day would be where 25% would not have changes that alter the entire day
  • “Not driving the strategy, supporting the strategy”
• Tasha– Talk to as many people as possible to learn about the industry. Do informational interviews. (1:43:50)

Postscript

• Tom Amos cites John Wanamaker quote: “Half the money I spend on marketing but I don’t know which half” (1:46:20)
• Measuring the value in marketing is difficult
• What are the important messages to share about a company
• Every day is a new day

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