As publicity stunts go, easyProperty staging a funeral procession through central London to mark the ‘death’ of high-street estate agents has got to be one of the most ballsy.
The new online estate agency, backed by easyJet billionaire Stelios Haji-Ioannou, took to the streets of Westminster this week to bid farewell to what it calls the “traditional high-street wheeler-dealers”.
A three-mile New Orleans-style funeral procession, led by chief executive Rob Ellice as ‘chief mourner’, replete with horse-drawn coffin carriage and big band in tow, made its way through Westminster, the London borough with the most agents at 179, to Piccadilly Circus.
It didn’t take long for the backlash to begin. Fellow online estate agent eMoov’s founder Russell Quirk said: “easyProperty clearly has its own view on marketing strategy… but selling someone’s family home is a very serious business.
“The property industry needs a kick for sure… but I’d rather coax and cajole the industry as a whole than take a dagger to it.”
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