163: Why Auctioneers Should Be Careful with Auction Hash Tags (Part 2)

Spring of 2015 was a crazy time for art auctions. In New York alone, auction houses sold $2.3 billion in art.¹ There seemed to be a lot of high-profile pieces or collections in the news; and the all-time auction record for art was set, when $179.4 million was the high bid for a Picasso. Many within the auction industry justifiably bragged about the auction method with multiple Facebook posts sharing these jaw-dropping events and transactions.

Predictably, bid callers added the hashtag #OnlyAtAuction to their posts and comments. Like its newer and less-superlative brother, #AuctionsWork, the tag line held the hopes of auction marketers, trying to make hay on headlines. Even a strong, thriving industry hoped to gain more credibility and consideration from onlookers—a worthy goal, for sure.

Fast forward a few months, however; and that record got absolutely demolished. In case you missed it, Ken Griffin, a Chicago-based hedge fund manager, bought two paintings for a combined total of $500 million.

You read that correctly: half a billion dollars. That’s billion—with a b.

Griffin paid $300 million for a Jackson Pollock painting. That’s almost six times the auction record for a Pollock piece, which was set in 2013 at $58.3 million. Along with the Pollock, he also paid $200 million for a Willem de Kooning painting—almost seven times the auction record for a de Kooning piece, also set in 2013. ²

In related news, the current auction record price for a car is $38.1 million, set in 2014 for a Ferrari GTO. That’s definitely impressive—almost as astonishing as another Ferrari GTO that sold privately for $52 million in 2013. The world record for a private residence sold via traditional brokerage is now $301 million. That, too, proves multiple times the auction record for its asset category.

While I was scouring the Internet for this data, I searched and found neither #OnlyWithDealers nor #OnlyThroughBrokerage on Twitter. Same goes for #BrokerageWorks.

Perhaps these successful, professional marketers realize that our culture understands the value of both dealers and brokers. And perhaps auctioneers should follow their lead. It would be in our industry’s best interest, if we did.

If we keep telling consumers that things happen #OnlyAtAuction; and then they happen just as successfully (if not, sometimes, more successfully) without auction, then our claims ring hollow. When sellers see that #AuctionsWork but that sometimes other kinds of transactions #WorkBetter, we invite added comparison. Auctions often win those comparisons, but we can’t pretend that sometimes they don’t.

When we sell clichés instead of solutions, we lose credibility. Lean on empty rhetoric too much, and the industry gets a stigma . . . like the ones we currently battle: that auctions are only for fire sales and distress situations, that auctions are a last resort.

Rather than beating the drum of auctions, we need to pound the message of marketing. No matter how the transaction is conducted, the marketing that brings the buyer to an auction or to a listing or to a dealer is pretty much the same. Savvy marketers know to determine the likely buyer and then build a campaign of the multiple media, public relations efforts, and/or interpersonal interactions that are most likely to attract those potential buyers. When we in the auction community consult with sellers, we need to show them the advantages and disadvantages of each sales method—and then offer to help them with the one that best solves their situation.

Most of my largest clients offer their sellers multiple options, whether that’s buyouts, consignments, brokerage, or one of several kinds of auction. This gives them credibility. That lets the seller know that the marketer is more concerned about the seller’s gain than the auctioneer’s affinity for bid calling.

What will promote our industry best is the cumulative effort of professional auctioneers marketing their sellers’ wares in the best way possible. We don’t need hashtags or slogans to do that. We need more candor and flexibility—and a lot less ego and insecurity. In the end, our results will earn us a platform for competitive viability.

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Painting image linked to source.
Stock image purchased from iStockPhoto.com.

1. “New York’s Auction Houses Just Sold $2.3 Billion Worth of Art” by Valetta Zarya, fortune.com
2. “Billionaire Art Collector Ken Griffin Spends $500 Million on Two Paintings” by Rain Embuscado, news.artnet.com

162: Why Auctioneers Should Be Careful with #AuctionsWork (Part 1)

https://youtu.be/yquyzj1A2Zk

Sports Talk radio regularly includes variations on the above commercial. Every time I hear it, I laugh. I respect Johnny Bench, but the second-to-last line gets me: “And you won’t stink!”

Though it’s probably meant as a poke at Ben Gay and other joint relief creams, it also seems like an insecure proposition. Can you imagine if this were a closing line in an online dating profile or résumé? “And I won’t stink!” (That should be a given, by the way.)

You can learn a lot about a product or service by how it’s marketed: its brand position, its value proposition, its intended audience, its aspirational appeal, and more. You can even tell when the advertiser is trying to address unfavorable perceptions, or perhaps, when they didn’t focus group an idea enough.

Take, for example, Malaysia’s tourism slogan: “Truly Asia.” Their Asianness isn’t in question. Heck, it’s the only country of the fifty nations in Asia that has a[y]sia in its name. For whatever reason, they are spending their marketing dollars trying to convince the world what continent and culture they are—when we already know. Their travel website, by the way, has much better slogans: “Immerse Yourself in Wonder,” and “A Land of Unforgettable Experiences.”

For the last several years, auctioneers have been posting their own versions of “You won’t stink!” and “Truly Asia” on Facebook. First it started in memes, comparing auctions to tag sales (yard sales on steroids). Now, it’s in the captions for a lot of pictures from auction professionals around the country.

#AuctionsWork

It’s such an odd assertion.

When we walk into Walmart or Target, there’s no sign that says, “Retail works!” When we’re scrolling through Amazon, there’s no banner that says, “Online buying works!” Likewise, auto dealers don’t push “Dealerships work!” in their social media.

Of course, auctions work.

Perhaps not all the time and not for every situation or asset, but auctions have been a viable part of our culture for at least two centuries. A decade ago, the MORPACE survey estimated the annual sales from auctions in America to be $257 billion. Though that number seems high to me, even a small fraction of that number speaks to the credibility of auctions. To put that number in perspective, the U.S. film industry by comparison grossed $88 billion last year.

I checked: there’s no sign at my local cinema that says, “#MoviesWork.”

I’m not quite sure who #AuctionsWork is meant to convince: the general public or the auction practitioners. Industry spokespeople will say that the message is for consumers, but a hashtag won’t persuade a reluctant seller or buyer. If we want to win over the auction skeptics and agnostics in culture, we must leverage sales results and statistics, anecdotes and testimonials.

If auctions are the most transparent way to sell something, we must prove it.
If auctions are the fastest way to liquidate assets, we must prove it.
If auctions obtain the truest market value for assets, we must prove it.
If auctions generate superlative buzz and competition compared to other sales methods, we must prove it.

If we—individually and collectively as an auction community—can’t prove that auctions work, maybe we should stop regurgitating cliches about them.

You know who doesn’t use #AuctionsWork? Ritchie Brothers, Christie’s, Barrett Jackson, Sotheby’s, and eBay. They don’t need it. Neither do we.

While potty training children, parents inherently celebrate their child’s journey through the process. There are prizes and clapping and some version of “Yay!” Gradually, the rewards and celebration wane as the expectations of the child changes. In the vast majority of situations, parents are not congratulating their middle schoolers or college students for not needing a diaper. There are no graduation photos captioned with #pottytrainingworks.

The auction industry is past the Pull-Ups phase. We’re a vital, integral part of the economy; and we’re here to stay. It’s time we started acting like it. It’s time we stopped trying to convince ourselves that a hashtag proves our value to consumers. It’s time we out-marketed and outsold our competition, leaving them to wonder if their marketing methods work.

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Special thanks to Gillian Zimmerman for her freelance editing help on this post!