Who made the rules?

Real estate company web sites and the obituaries

When I read the paper I always take a peek at the obituaries. Just checking to see if I am listed. Recently I got to thinking about how similar the obituary section of the paper is to real estate company web sites.

Real estate company websites usually include a page with pictures of agents,  a brief bio and maybe some details about the services they provide. There is a banner across the top, with the name of the real estate company on it. The obituary pages of the paper are similar, there is a banner across the top and then pictures of people with a brief bio, and details about the services.

There are other similarities. I look at the dates in an obituary and see that the person who passed away was born in the 1920’s, which means they would be in their 80’s today, yet the person in the picture looks to be in their 20’s or 30’s. This seems to be true with the photos of agents on real estate company web sites too. I have met agents who are at least 20 years older than the web site photo. Yet the pictures in the obituaries somehow look more natural than those of agents on their sites.

Not all obituaries have pictures with them. The same is true with agent bios on real estate web sites. For the obituaries the picture section is simply left blank, on the real estate web site the place where the picture should go, will have a shadow of a face, the company logo or a for sale sign.

I wonder who made the rules about real estate company web sites.  Did they get their ideas one morning as they were reading the obituaries?

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