When I first saw Ann Cutbill Lenane’s real estate ad on the screen in the back of a NYC taxi – I thought it was genius! Turns out it was.
Taxi TV! Wow. Talk about a captive audience!
Ann Cutbill Lenane is the ‘OG’ of creative real estate marketing in NYC. She was the first real estate person to take advantage of movie theater ad screens. Ann created ads for her luxury NYC properties to entertain movie goers while they waited in their seats for the movie to start in the days before movie seat reservations were a ‘thing’.
She did that for 14 years before taking her “Annie Gets It Done” commercial highlighting her exclusive real estate listings and placing it onto the screens in the back seats of NYC’s yellow cabs.
So, it was no surprise that Ann who advertises on Taxi TV in NYC was featured in a recent Sunday New York Times Real Estate Section article called “Valuable Real Estate in the Back Seat.”
Those back seat taxi ads not only showcase some of New York’s most ambitious real estate agents and their luxurious properties but they’re also ‘geo-targeted, meaning real estate agents can restrict their ‘ads’ to only be shown while the taxi is traveling in certain areas or on certain streets where they have listings.
Ann, who’s an agent with Douglas Elliman, says buyers like to aspire and they want to see ‘into’ these apartments and this marketing strategy has translated into property sales.
Ann will tell you herself that NYC is a tough real estate market right now for sellers to get the prices they had been hoping for. But after 38 years of doing real estate in NYC, Annie prides herself on knowing just how to price an apartment and how to interpret market data with insider knowledge.
Even so, having just read that NY is #1 in the U.S. for people with marketing mindsets, I figured there must be a lot of competition for buyers these days? Does Ann worry about that?
“No, I’m always pushing it. I was the first one to advertise in the movie theater. I was the first one to advertise real estate in the taxis and I’m gonna be first to do something next. So, you know, I’m not worried about it, as you said, OG. So, I’m always gonna be out there and thinking creatively.”
Speaking of being creative…
Annie typically makes 30-second slide shows of her listings, but along the way this single Mom of 2 daughters decided to risk throwing into her ad, that she was also looking for a Mr. Right!
“That ad went viral and over 15 million people saw it around the world. I was on Good Morning America, they took it and put it on the teleprompter in Times Square, I mean there were articles in China and Russia. I was getting phone calls from men in jail. I have not found the perfect man, but yes, I sure got a lot of attention from all over the globe.”
Ann didn’t find “Mr. Right” (yet) but she did find 2000 women who were rooting for her to find Mr. Right!
And Ann turned those champions into followers and friends, by creating women’s empowerment events to bring them all together under the group name “Wise and Wonderful Women”.
That’s actually how I met Ann in person as well as other wise and wonderful women at an event she threw a few years ago at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY.
“Well, it’s so funny because what actually came out of the Man for Anne Taxi ad was all of these men were reaching out, but almost an equal amount of women reached out and wrote to me, because in the ad it says, “ if you love your mother but you still don’t live with her and have a kind and generous soul and can appreciate a 56-year-old, fit and fabulous woman, give me a call.”
Women were writing me, and they would come up to me
and they still do, it’s five years later. And they said it was so brave. And I said, tell me why it was brave. Was it because I said I was looking for love? And it was like a kind of a knowing glance, and I said, or was it because I said I was 56?”
“And they said, yes.”
“So, I said, that’s got to stop. “
Ann was inspired to do something that would lift women. She founded “Wise and Wonderful Women to educate and empower women 50 and older. All her events are free.
“I didn’t get the man but I got 2,000 women so I have 2,000 women that are part of the wise and wonderful women, and we do monthly events that are free and empower and educate women focusing mostly on women that are over 50. But I’m finding that my 23 and my 24-year-old daughters need our wisdom too and need to hear the topics that we are also interested in. We did one on heart health, we’re doing one on launching financial grown-ups, on estate planning, all kinds of things and I learn, and these women learn as well, and many friendships come out of these events. “
“So, wow the ad worked all right. It didn’t end up with what I thought was the prize, the gold ring, right? But the Wise and Wonderful Women came out of it. And that to me, when somebody tells me that it changed their life or it saved their life, which is what happened recently with some information that we shared during a heart health dinner, how cool is that?”
Very Cool!
Known as “Annie Gets It Done”, Ann Cutbill Lenane is ranked as Elliman’s #1 Manhattan Broker for Transactions. She has been voted the Real Estate Board of New York’s Broker of The Year and transacted billions of dollars in sales in Manhattan over her career.
She also gives back. In 2020, in response to the sanitation department budget cuts, she co-founded and still runs “One Block”. This very successful non-profit fills 1000 bags of trash on the Upper West Side EACH WEEK with the help of volunteers and paid workers who were formally homeless! She also founded a literacy initialed in the Bahamas where she has a rental property and is a proactive member of the community there as well.
Interested in Taxi TV ?
I read in the NY Times article that NYC has two service providers for anyone interested in knowing more about how to advertise on the screens in the back seat of taxis: Curb and Creative Mobile Technologies. To advertise on Curb Taxi TV, agents can purchase ad space directly from Curb or through its sales partners like Firefly.
Enjoy this podcast of my live Interview with Ann Cutbill Lenane on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen the audio transcript is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
0:00:00
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show!
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0:00:03
Well, one thing’s for sure, when you’re in the business of real estate and you’re on
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0:00:24
vacation and somebody calls, and they want to make a deal, you’re no longer on vacation. Anyway, hi guys, I’m Debbie Nigro. Well, when I called this gal to see if she wanted to be on the show this morning, last minute, because I had read about her in the New York Times this weekend, she jumped because she’s that kind of girl. Ann Cutbill-Lenane is somebody who I have admired since the first time I was in her company, which was at an event she threw not too long ago, in the Westchester area with all these cool women who came together for a night of networking -and I’m like well this girl
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0:01:19
knows how to do it right now. Ann is a top-tier realtor in New York City she’s selling all those luxury apartments like you can’t believe luxury how much we’re talking about luxurious here and she’s an agent with Douglas Elliman.
One day I was in the back of a New York City taxi not too long ago either and all of a sudden this Ann comes up on the TV screen and I’m like wow is she like on TV in the back of the taxis talking about herself and real estate.
2
0:01:45
I go this is genius. So yeah I was right because there was a big story this weekend in the New York Times called ‘Valuable Real Estate in the Backseat’ and it was all about the real estate industry and the listings that are you know what’s happening on that screen actors scripts small screens and taxicabs and and had a big feature in this article and I’m like I got I got to talk to her about this. So she is checking in from the Bahamas
1
0:02:11
Thank you for reaching out to me, so yeah, it was a great article.
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0:02:27
Great article. Wow. You know, I did see this ad a long time ago. And I’m like, I thought I thought you were brilliant. And then I’m thinking, wow, what a captive audience you’re selling New York City real estate or doing that.
1
0:02:39
So all the taxis have a, you know, kind of a GPS in them. And so and that’s what the city uses to figure out what the traffic patterns are for the taxis, but for advertising it’s perfect because the buyer for my apartments are not on the lower east side at 2 a.m. So I can have them targeted to certain areas and certainly time frames in the city. So as the taxi is driving over that line, let’s say it’s 57th Street to 96th Street or something on the West side, the ad will go on
1
0:03:16
and it will count as a view as long as the person hasn’t shut it off or left that area. So we can have up 200 to, depending on the time of year, 500,000 views in a 30 day period, depending on how much you spend.
1
0:03:32
And it’s really relatively speaking for the really target market, not that expensive. But what’s happened, and the article spoke to it, is that I kind of, I gear my ads towards the properties. And so, you know, here’s, you know, 101 Central Park Blast, and here it is.
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0:03:53
But a lot of the brokers are now doing kind of mini commercials for themselves. And, you know, something kind of a takeoff on like the office or something. So it’s taken on a life of its own, but I have been doing this for since 2019, I guess.
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0:04:09
Oh yeah, you were the OG with this,
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0:04:10
because I remember. Exactly.
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0:04:12
And you were always ahead of the curve.
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0:04:13
Did you, how did that first idea first come to you? Were you in a taxi and thought I should be on this thing?
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0:04:19
No, so I used to advertise in the movie theater. And that’s really where a lot of my base clients had still remember because, you know, remember the days that you didn’t have a reserve seat. So you’d have to get there an hour in advance for some hot movie.
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0:04:37
You’d throw your body, you know, kicking people to the side. You’d throw your body over a bunch of chairs and then you’d have to sit there for 45 minutes until it started, until even the preview started. So there were ads in the taxi,
1
0:04:51
and there were ads in the theaters. So that’s where I would advertise. And then of course, when the reserved seats came around, there was no reason for anybody to get there early. And so there was really no market, in my humble opinion, in the movies.
1
0:05:04
People still do advertise there. But then, okay, so then I don’t even know, honestly, I must have seen it in the taxi, and that’s where it started. But the wild thing was, as I was, as I was filming, as I was filming my last movie theater ad, and I was standing there, and I was saying, yeah, and I was waiting for the guys
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0:05:22
to set up the camera. I said, yeah, I’ve managed to sell billions of dollars worth of New York real estate, but I haven’t been able to find a single divorced dad to remarry. And I said, you know what, that should be the, that should be the ad. And it took probably a year or so for me to just put it together and I kept thinking about it and I was like, you know what, I’m advertising the taxis but really the great way to really cause people
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0:05:48
to look at it is if I do something that’s so relatable that’s completely out of the box. So that’s what they also referenced that in the ad, sorry, in the article and they spoke to me advertising for my love life in the uh in the I know I know I thought that was great did you ever get any interest for that love ad like it went viral 15 plus million people saw it around
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0:06:18
the world I was on my god good morning america they took it and put it on the teleprompter in times square I mean there were articles in China and Russia I was getting phone calls from men in jail I would say that’s funny man that is so funny anyway I have not found the perfect man but yes I got there was a lot of attention let’s just put it that way from all from all over the globe you
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0:06:47
know where you’re gonna find them in a taxi accidentally. You know I didn’t realize how big this curb taxi TV is. Obviously, I’ve been in New York City and in and around and bombing around for thousands of years so I’ve taken a lot of taxis but ever since Uber and Lyft got involved, they were hurting the taxi industry but yet there are still I don’t know almost 10,000 taxis still running around New York City.
0:07:44
You really was a terrific story focusing a lot on you about this real estate in the backseat of a taxi and geo-targeting allowing agents like yourself to restrict their ads to certain streets and it sort of played into a big study that was released today. I don’t know if you caught it about the best marketing personalities in the country by state and New York was number one. They did a study of the top 10 states dominated by marketing mindset and like a third of New Yorkers have marketing oriented personalities.
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0:08:07
You obviously have one. Clearly. Yeah, clearly. But do you find that you are up against a lot of competition because of the other marketing minds in town?
1
0:08:19
No, I’m always pushing it. I was the first one to advertise in the movie theater. I was the first one to advertise real estate in the taxis and I’m gonna be first to do something next. So, you know, I’m not worried about it, as you said, OG. So, I’m always gonna be out there and thinking creatively.
1
0:08:38
But you know what, what I love about it is that it just, it’s something that I’m only gonna do what I feel comfortable with. It has to be organic. It has to be natural for me. Same thing with social media.
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0:08:52
I just, you know, I feel that in marketing, in social media, the best thing that we can do is to not, I mean, marketing is something different, right? I wanna show my property. I don’t need to show myself. People know who I am.
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0:09:07
But why would I, in my humble opinion, why would I be out there just marketing myself when I’m not marketing a property as well. Let me take that opportunity because that’s what my clients pay me for. But I don’t know, maybe I should, I mean there’s got to be a way that they’re going to be able to put ads in Ubers. I mean they have to be. That’s just a matter of time. But one of my very brokers in London, he’s not doing it anymore, but I remember what he would do was to carry about a bunch of cards and for the taxi drivers and the Uber
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0:09:43
drivers, he would say if anybody is in the back and they’re looking for real estate, here’s my card, give it to them and I’ll whatever, give you a hundred bucks or something. And he said it was amazing for his business. There’s a lot of people in there that are looking for properties.
0:10:36
industries to be part of these things. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Well, it’s so funny because that actually came out of the Man for Anne Taxi ad because what happened was all of these men were reaching out, but almost an equal amount of women reached out and wrote to me and said, because in the ad it says, you know, if you can appreciate, you know, if you love your mother but you still don’t live
1
0:10:54
with her and have a kind and generous soul and love your mother but still don’t live, sorry, love your mother and still don’t live with her, have a kind of generous soul and can appreciate a 56-year-old, fit and fabulous woman, give me a call. So people, women were writing me and they would come up to me
1
0:11:08
and they still do, it’s five years later. And they said it was so brave. And I said, tell me why it was brave. Was it because I said I was looking for love? And it was like a kind of a knowing glance and I said, or was it because I said I was 56?
1
0:11:23
And they said, yes.
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0:11:24
Right.
1
0:11:25
So I said, that’s got to stop. And I had just simultaneously moved into Hudson Yards and I was doing those events where you came in at the New Bergen Museum and I was able to accommodate 70 women sitting down and that’s out of that taxi ad I didn’t get the man but I got 2,000 women so I have 2,000 women that are part of the wise and wonderful women and we do monthly events that are free that are you know empower and educate women
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0:11:53
focusing mostly on women that are over 50 but I’m finding that my 23 and my 24 year old daughters need our wisdom need to hear the topics that we are also interested in and so we just did you know we did we doing them on heart health, we’re doing on launching financial grown-ups, you know estate planning, all kinds of things and I learn but having these women learn as well and also the friendships that come out of that. So such a wonderful thing you know people said did it work I was like wow
1
0:12:23
it worked all right. It didn’t end up with what I thought was the prize, the gold ring, right? But the Wise and Wonderful Women came out of it. And that to me, when somebody tells me that it changed their life or it saved their life, which is what happened recently with some information that we shared during a heart health dinner, how cool is that? It’s very cool. You are very cool
2
0:12:52
I’m I’m amazed that your energy is always the same. I have high energy too, and I’m a good energy girl but you seem to have an extra load and Are you chilling out right now in the Bahamas? Are you taking a break? No as a matter of fact
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0:13:06
I have a house down here. It’s a rental property and Yeah, I was I was redoing a kitchen and all my countertops just arrived all an inch short on a boat that now I have to turn around 4,000 pounds later and have to go back. So chilling out, it sounds so glamorous. She’s calling in from the Bahamas. I’m flying back to go to work later on today.
1
0:13:30
But no, it’s a place that I’ve had for 20 years. In my spare time I also run a literacy camp down here. Everybody knows your name down here and I love that because it’s a sense of community. And I think that’s part of the wise and wonderful women. It’s part of what I like to nurture on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where, you know, I feel like a sense of community and, and especially after the pandemic, to people feeling connected is so important. So anyway,
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0:13:58
I’m happy down here, but probably not going on right now.
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0:14:03
No, I don’t think you’ve got a lot of chilling out in your jeans and cup building. But anyway, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time. Thank you so much. When I saw you in the story, I even went and bought the New York Times to read the whole story. You know, it’s six bucks.
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0:14:17
That’s why everybody reads it online.
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0:14:18
Whoa.
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0:14:19
You know, it’s so funny.
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0:14:20
It’s six bucks and 6,000 pounds. No one in my team could find it.
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0:14:22
You’re a known New York Times person.
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0:14:23
I got it.
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0:14:24
Yes, thank you.
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0:14:25
I got it for you. I’ll send you.
1
0:14:27
I’ll save it for you.
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0:14:28
Thank you so much.
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0:14:29
Yeah, you got a deal.
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0:14:30
Valuable real estate in the back seat of taxis. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ann.
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0:14:33
You’re a pioneer.
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0:14:34
Keep it up, man. I love your big ideas. Thanks, my dear. Take care.
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0:14:38
Good luck to you.
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0:14:39
Safe travels, all right?
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0:14:40
Safe travels. Yeah, you’re going to read the story. I’m going to post it, and it’s all about marketing real estate in the back of a New York City taxi, and Ann was the first person to do it. She’s a big part of the story that was in the New York Times yesterday. You know, it’s part of the marketing mindset, right?
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0:14:54
You know, it’s part of the marketing mindset, right? What are those other states who have all these people with these marketing minds?
Transcribed with Cockatoo
