In fact, if agents are branding themselves "in addition to" your brokerage brand, your brokerage brand either sucks badly or is not being enforced. Let's say your brand promise is "Service with a smile." Why would you ever want one of your agents creating a personal brand of "Service with a laugh," or worse, "Service with no smile"?

That agent undermines your brand and points to either a weakness in your brand promise (i.e., maybe you haven't gone past the baseline table stakes) or a failure to enforce the brand promise through training and management. Obviously, if your agents are branding themselves ... then you have not defined a brokerage brand.

From the agent's perspective, I would ask, "Why are you with a brokerage whose brand is so meaningless and ineffective that you have to brand yourself in addition to or instead of the brokerage brand? Why pay them a cut of your earnings?"

The reason agents don't switch to a brand that means something - either to a consumer or a Realtor - is because there are relatively few real estate brokerages that actually mean anything.

An example - I'm working with a new client who came to me because of the combination of my brand - me and my blog, and my brokerage's brand - Nest, both of which, to him, represented professionalism, quality and that we "get it." It's a small battle that we've won, but I'll take it.

If Realtors are branding only their company, what do they as agents bring to the table?

We're not Macy's employees nor are we Target employees; heck, most Realtors aren't employees at all.  Each agent is different, but that doesn't mean the brand has to be void of meaning.

Realtor

One entry found.

Main Entry: Re·al·tor

Pronunciation: \ˈrē(-ə)l-tər, -ˌtȯr, ÷ˈrē-lə-tər also rē-ˈal-tər\

Function: collective mark

—used for a real estate agent who is a member of the National Association of Realtors

Re-al-tor, ree-la-tor, Real-TOR ... I'd just like there to be some consistency. :)