Hendys ads & Internet
Over 50 years ago, Hendys now unique form of honest (and sometimes amusing) way of describing properties wasn't quite so unique. In the 1950s and 1960s estate agent Roy Brooks (based in London) was vivid, to the point of being brutal, in what he wrote in his ads, in The Observer, about the properties he was selling.
The copy that I write for Hendys ads, our website and our pages on Rightmove were inspired by (not plagiarised from) Roy Brooks. The honesty however, is certainly there. If a property is a wreck then I will tell you so ('potential for sympathetic restoration' is simply NOT in Hendys vocabulary). But, similarly I was being totally truthful when I described, last week, 12 Highbury Street, Meanwood as the best one bed back to back I had ever seen - certainly at £137,500 (and I have been valuing properties since 1970!).
The amusing bits in our ads and copy (I have many personal favourites) include my parody, in last weeks YEP, of The Animals hit 'The House of the Rising Sun'. This parody was for the marketing of 'Glenview' at 209 Harrogate Road, Chapel Allerton. The wording was, I hope, funny and was written because the lovely owner of that house wanted Hendys to sell it so she could give me Carte Blanche with the copy. She's a senior exec in advertising - I was flattered! In the first day of marketing Glenview after the ad, we showed two viewers over this large (six bedroom) property, priced at £440,000.
Another property we recently marketed had a garden so overgrown that I wrote about Tarzan, in his loin cloth admiring Jane's backstroke in the pond that I eventually found in this jungle like garden! Honest, full of quirky imagery and slightly surreal. BUT lots of feedback and importantly interest shown by prospective purchasers - even at £347,500.
Yours sincerely,
Nigel Crinson