In this episode of Broker’s Angle, Hal Coopersmith sits down with Or Lev-Cohen of Trophy to discuss how branding, marketing, and AI are changing the way commercial properties are marketed and leased. From transforming older office buildings into desirable spaces to using AI to streamline business operations, Or shares his approach to helping landlords and brokers attract tenants and stay ahead of the competition.

Transcript

Hal Coopersmith: Your business is helping people market their commercial real estate properties.

Or Lev-Cohen: Yes, and more specifically Manhattan office.

Hal Coopersmith: How did you get into that?

Or Lev-Cohen: So I started my career in Tel Aviv. I’m from Israel originally. I started working in the tech scene over there, worked at a startup, kind of grew there, and then I wanted to go into business for myself. So I started doing what I knew, which is servicing tech companies. So I started a company doing marketing and branding for tech companies in Israel. And after about two years, business was, was going well, but I felt like I wanted more. I wanted a, a bigger opportunity and, and I was started to look for it, and then I had this kind of random encounter with an office landlord in New York. Somebody reached out to me through my network. I knew nothing about commercial real estate at that point. And they, they told me, like, “There’s this company, they bought a, an office building in New York, and they want a website for it. So, can you do it?” So again, I knew nothing about the topic, but I was intrigued, and I was– I always loved New York, so I started looking into it. And as I was exploring, you know, how people market office buildings in New York, I was struck by a huge gap that I f- I felt intuitively. I saw buildings, you know, worth hundreds of millions of dollars and being marketed with, like, $500 WordPress templates. So I was like, “What’s going on here?” Like, there’s a lot of value in these buildings and these leases, and they’re being marketed, like, kind of as an afterthought, and I knew that we could do a better job. And after a while, I just, I was so intrigued by the opportunity that I started to divert all of my attention into that, and then after a couple of months just, you know, closed down my, tech business and moved to do only this.

Hal Coopersmith: So if I were to say to you the responsibility to market an office building is that of the agency broker or the listing broker. Wouldn’t that be sufficient?

Or Lev-Cohen: So the brokers are responsible for getting the tenants and doing the leasing, but at least in New York, which is the market that I know, the landlord is the one deciding on what we invest in, right? So unless it’s like this huge new development, the brokers work with what the landlord provides. So in most buildings that we work on, which is kind of the, the redeveloped Class B, the landlord or the owner decides, “Okay, so this is a new development. We need to arm our brokers with better materials. Now let’s, for example, create a really nice website or create good brochures.” So it’s kind of a, a joint decision, but the landlord usually decides.

Hal Coopersmith: Your area is a Class B property. There’s been additional investment made into the Class B property, and we want to get the word out?

Or Lev-Cohen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So for example, right now, we just published a case study. We worked with Czar Property. They redeveloped completely a building on, 18th Street, we helped them get the building from 40% to 80% leased in four months, and some of the leases were at $125 a square foot for a 100-year-old building. So that’s exactly the transformations that we help landlord and leasing teams do. Take an old building that maybe the brokerage community, is not really aware of or kind of wrote it off, and bring it to market new and improved and help people notice and start coming in and do leases.

Hal Coopersmith: What does a website do for a commercial property?

Or Lev-Cohen: I see it as a few different functions. First of all, when you have really good marketing materials, brokers notice. So brokers have a mental map of the properties, of the options that they’re bringing to tenants, and a building that has good marketing materials kind of stands out as, okay, so these guys are serious, like they’re going to do work on the building and also good marketing materials are memorable, so the building stays top of mind. Second, on the agency side, so the, the leasing team, once they have a good website, and by that I mean a website that tells a good story, a compelling story, shows the building in a good light, and also is up to date, right?

All the availabilities are up to date, all the plans are there. It saves them a lot of time, instead of kind of digging into their files for the old– for the newest photos or for the newest plans, they just send the link and it’s easy and fast. So that’s number two. Number three comes in at the later point in the leasing process, and that is tenant due diligence. So if you’re a tenant, you’re considering maybe you’ve toured three or four buildings, now you got to decide to get that internal buy-in, to, to get that consensus. People, like the stakeholders in the tenant company will talk amongst themselves and pass materials amongst themselves. So a website, again, is the easiest thing to pass on, and if it does a good job, then the tenants doing due diligence, are going to look more positively towards the building with a strong, you know, compelling website. So those are the, the three jobs. So, keeping the building top of mind for brokers, making the leasing team’s life easier, and helping tenants decide and pick your building.

Hal Coopersmith: And I can envision this for myself if I’m talking to my team and we want to move to a different location, say Hey, we could either go to the different locations, or you could just take a look at this website, and you’re able to get buy-in because one building has a website and the other building does not have a website.

Or Lev-Cohen: Yeah, something like that. So the other building would probably have, like, some brochure or some PDF that you maybe have, maybe lost. and the building that has a website is easy to access, it tells a compelling story, and it makes the, the building differentiated and unique as opposed to kind of a generic listing that you can just swap one for the other.

Hal Coopersmith: So you said this yourself that these commercial properties are very large businesses, small, medium, or large businesses, and a lot of them don’t have websites. What have you found as the reason why buildings have not marketed themselves in these sorts of ways?

Or Lev-Cohen: I think it has a lot to do with the state of mind of the ownership. So we have a lot of very, established, very old companies here in the city, and they’re used to doing business a certain way, and that includes what do we invest in, like what, what do we put money in, when we redevelop a building or when we lease up a building. And in the past, you had no websites; you didn’t do any marketing, if at all. Maybe, you know, a few brochures, and you just let the brokers do their job. And I think in where we are today, people are so used to evaluating products online, and I think that is maybe the key point. Like, office space is a product, like you would buy an iPhone, like you would buy a car. You would do a lot of due diligence into the product before you make a decision, and the obvious move is to look up online, “What can I find about this product?” And I think as technology gets more and more ingrained in buying decisions. a website becomes more critical, and most owners are still not there in their thinking of like how do people make decisions on leasing.

Hal Coopersmith: So you have provided information. Okay, you’re a landlord, you’re an owner, maybe you’re an agency broker, and you say, “Look, our building should have a website as opposed to not having a website.” Then what makes what you’re doing a little bit more unique?

Or Lev-Cohen: So I think we talked a lot about websites, but my approach is a bit more holistic. So it’s not just website versus no website. It’s how much effort do we put into the branding and marketing of this property? Do we invest in good photos? Do we maybe name the building, which also has a lot of psychological impact on how people consider, the property. So for example, we just published our first market report looking into all 3,002 office buildings in Manhattan, and listing for each one, do they have a, a website? How do they invest in marketing? And along the, the, the website question, there’s the naming question. So we see, for example, a lot of buildings where like in the Grand Central area, renaming the property to make it clear that it’s close to Grand Central, 5 Grand Central, 10 Grand Central, et cetera. So also the naming is another question. I think the big difference between what we do and what other, agencies do is that we are solely focused on this. So we only do marketing branding for New York office, which is something very unique, and I can pretty confidently say that nobody else is doing it. There is no other company in the world which is focused solely on this, on this use case, on this, product. So we have a lot more knowledge than anybody else on the topic. so that’s one. And two, again, we have this holistic approach where we don’t just take what we’re given and, and, you know, put it online. We work on the photos. We work on the renderings. We decide, on the positioning for the building. Who are the competition? What is the tenant, that we’re looking for, and how can we sell specifically to them? So it’s this very deep, look on the building and an effort to, to give it the best platform that we can.

Hal Coopersmith: So how do you do that deep look?

Or Lev-Cohen: We start with our knowledge of the market, where the building is, the sub-market, the size, the age, whatever. And then we also work with ownership and the broker team to learn their perspective on the asset. Of course, you know, they’re asking rents, how they’re underwriting the property, and then we devise a strategy that includes positioning and also, which assets we’re going to create for the building, and we build this plan and then execute it, so again, we do, renderings, and we stage them for that specific tenant. if we’re looking for law firms, we’re going to make the images show law firm-like layouts and furniture. So we really think about every detail, and take it from, from A to Z.

Hal Coopersmith: You talked about your tech background, and then there’s certainly the marketing aspect to have a marketing mind for this. But when you’re explaining this, what strikes me is kind of a real estate focus, also that you kind of understand the real estate aspect of what’s necessary.

Or Lev-Cohen: I think the point is that we’re not just marketing people coming in from the outside and, and looking to learn about real estate and then do a decent job. We’re at this intersection between real estate, marketing, and tech. So we’re trying to come from within the industry, be very, very knowledgeable about the material, and that way we can both do a very good job and also make our clients’ lives easier.

Hal Coopersmith: Should a broker who is on the agency side trying to lease out their building, should they see you as a competitor in a sense? Or how should they view what you’re doing in terms of their role?

Or Lev-Cohen: So we’re definitely not competing with the brokers. We work jointly with them, and I see us as a kind of superpower for them, right? Because brokers work with what they got. If they have bad marketing materials, then they have to kind of do the best with it. But if they have very strong marketing materials, if the building is well-positioned, if there is momentum that we’re able to create, then their lives leasing up the building become easier and business goes faster.

Hal Coopersmith: And right now you’re just focused on office.

Or Lev-Cohen: Exactly.

Hal Coopersmith: Not retail and not Brooklyn.

Or Lev-Cohen: No. Only office, only Manhattan, only leasing. By the way, we don’t even do investment sales. Only this specific profession, this specific type of deal, and that’s what makes us the biggest expert on the topic, basically.

Hal Coopersmith: So you talked about your learnings from the landlord side, why they’ve historically not done marketing, marketing that needs to be done. What have you learned as you’re doing this what tenants are interested in?

Or Lev-Cohen: living in this industry, again, we’re talking to everybody, so we’re talking to owners, we’re talking to agency brokers, we’re talking to a lot of tenant reps because they’re one of our end users, so to speak. So what tenants are looking for is definitely location, you know, ease of commute for their team. And I think another interesting point is that to do good marketing, you have to understand the motive under the motive, so to speak. So when somebody says they want to be close to Grand Central, what’s under that? And I think what’s under that is they want to attract the best talent. They want to retain the best talent.

So for example, when we’re, marketing a building, we will try to weave in messages around this topic. If you have this great amenity center and if you’re close to public transportation, that will enable you to get the strong talent that doesn’t want to take three subway lines to get to work. So we’re trying to understand everybody along the chain and then create the strongest messages that resonate with them.

Hal Coopersmith: So why does what you’re doing not work for retail?

Or Lev-Cohen: I’m not saying that it doesn’t work. It’s just not what we’re focused on. And also, I think that the office market is different than the retail market because of those end users, because of the tenants. Marketing to a firm, leasing maybe several floors of office space is different than marketing to a restaurant or a phone repair shop, right? It’s a different kind of deal, different people involved, different numbers. So it creates a different kind of industry. So it may be work for retail, but I think that the opportunity that made me come into this industry in the first place is the size and the scale. You have big buildings, big deals, big companies, you know, involved. So that makes everything more valuable. So if we’re able to take, you know, 100, 200,000 square foot building, and we’re able to lease it up 1, 2% faster or, or 1, 2% higher rents, that’s a lot of money. And that’s where we’re looking to create the value for our clients.

Hal Coopersmith: Is the marketing aspect the only service that you offer?

Or Lev-Cohen: So we started off with marketing. That was the core, the core team that I had when I, when I moved in from tech. And the interesting thing, and we talked about it a little bit, is that in the last six to seven month, we started going gradually deeper and deeper into AI for ourselves. So we started building internal tools and automations, and right now I can already say that this has completely transformed the way that we do business. The amount of repetitive tasks that we used to do, like, you know, CRM work, research, reaching out to leads, business development, has gone down to zero. So right now where we are, we’re only focused on decision-making and strategy, and AI and automations are doing a big part of that. So the next logical step after seeing this incredible, opportunity is bringing that to our clients, and that is the next step for Trophy. Working with our clients, with owners and leasing teams to see where they have these manual repetitive tasks and where they are not efficient, and where we can help them.

Hal Coopersmith: You mentioned, because of an introduction to a, a landlord, and then you thought, “Hey, there’s a business here.” And just kind of going into the origin story, maybe to the, the marketing. And how did you see this as a business, and what are the biggest problems you have right now in terms of getting more business?

Or Lev-Cohen: So I think the crux is the other side of the strategy of being very, very specialized. Because when you’re very specific in the work that you do, that logically narrows the number of customers that you can work with, right? If we only do office and we only do Manhattan, and we only do, right now class B and B+ buildings, that’s not a huge slice, right? So we’re very focused on building those relationships and expanding our network within that small community. So that would be the biggest challenge I, I say right now.

Hal Coopersmith: Is growing the influence within the community.

Or Lev-Cohen: Exactly.

Hal Coopersmith: How are you able to get an owner over the hump to buy your services?

Or Lev-Cohen: I think, the challenge with marketing in office leasing is that office leasing is very interpersonal, it’s very complex. There’s a lot of people involved, as opposed to simple online purchases like Amazon, for example. So it’s hard to measure the impact of the marketing materials. So right now we’re focused on one, working with owners who already believe that this is valuable and necessary, and two, building the infrastructure and analytics to show that tenants are actually behaving the way that they, that we think they do. Like, for example, that they’re interacting with the website, that they’re doing due diligence, so we’re able to build that proof. But I think to answer your last question again a little bit, we’re trying to augment our marketing services, which are dependent on timing and acquisitions with AI services and kind of having these two lanes to work with the same customers. Again, bringing our expertise to, to work, but having these two different services.

Hal Coopersmith: At least in terms of the traffic for the website, you said expecting how tenants behave. How is traffic to these websites?

Or Lev-Cohen: So the smaller buildings don’t get a ton of traffic, but again, it’s not about the numbers, because if a tenant is looking to lease one or two floors, that’s a meaningful deal already, and if we’re able to push that over the hump, it doesn’t need a lot of visits.

We just need the one decision maker to see the website and go through the availabilities and the photos and, and commit. So it’s not about numbers, it’s more about quality of visits.

Hal Coopersmith: And at least in terms of AI, that’s certainly a buzzword, and a lot of people are talking about AI, so I want to unpack that a little bit more. But in terms of automating repetitive tasks, what are repetitive tasks that you’re seeing among owners?

Or Lev-Cohen: So among owners, we’re talking mainly about acquisition and deal evaluation, right? They get blasted tons of OMs and deals, and they have to decide what’s worth looking into. And right now, they have to go through manually each OM and try to feed it into their models and do quick underwriting. So that’s something that’s definitely automatable and we’re already starting to do. The other thing is, building information and construction coordination. So every landlord has a portfolio of building. Each one has different things going on. They have construction, they have build-outs, they have permits, they have a lot of things going on, and it’s hard to know what’s going on where. So that’s another thing, bringing all this information together, and, and organizing it and helping teams, communicate around it. An interesting one that I want to bring up for brokers is outreach and lead generation. Brokers have their CRM, their list of people, and they want to reach out to people every once in a while, right? So the problem is that a broker, when it comes to that point in their day and they do want to reach out to, to John Doe, they then have to go through the person’s record. What did we talk about? What is happening with that company? Maybe we have to Google them or something like that. And they have to collect and compile information, and then they have to reach out.

So all of those actions, collecting data, parsing it, compiling it to a, a compelling message, whether it’s an email or a text or whatever, those are exactly the things that AI excels at. So if we take that 20, 25-minute process, and compress it down to one minute, just checking, you know, the information, checking the email and pressing send or maybe editing it, we’re talking about 20, 25 minutes times 10 or 20 or 30 a day or a week. That’s a lot of broker time. so that’s definitely a low-hanging fruit that we’re already looking at.

Hal Coopersmith: And that’s something that you’re doing already, that if you have a listing or a website with Trophy, that you can assist the listing agent to do outreach?

Or Lev-Cohen: So that’s one use case. We’re also working with people that don’t necessarily have our website, but we have a relationship with, and they see themselves struggling, and they know that we are able to help. So we’re starting to, to look at these kinds of projects.

Hal Coopersmith: So when you do AI, for example, I’ve kind of seen this in my profession as well. I’ll ask there, and there’s one that’s out there, a professional AI lease abstracting company to abstract our lease, You know, and all that they do is lease abstraction, and it’s still not all the way there. How does your AI model work, and how are you able to replicate some level of success? Because for me, and even for lease evaluation, the AI models are helpful, but they’re not there.

Or Lev-Cohen: So it’s a good question, and I think the solution is, one, you have to develop methods and infrastructure to help you get from where most people are, if most people are not even at the point where you’re talking about, like, we have this dedicated AI product that we use. Most people have ChatGPT or Claude. They throw stuff in there. They get something back. Maybe it’s disappointing, maybe it’s good, and then they move on. And the shift is to moving from that tactical one-time approach to a systematic approach. And when I say systematic, I mean that you have a toolkit of AI processes that are running that you can tap into and get high-quality work, and when something’s not right, you correct that toolkit, or you, improve the model’s knowledge and you say, “Okay, if you did this wrong, this is the things that you have to fix, and then the next time it’ll do a better job.” So just a small technical point. It’s not that we have better models, but we have better methods. And I think that the other side is knowing where the limits are. So right now, AI is very, very useful, but to get it to its best, outcome, you still have to work with it and understand it and build some custom infrastructure.

It’s constantly improving and evolving, and I talk to my clients and they say, “Maybe we should wait because it’s still a bit complicated. Let’s wait for it to be simple and easy.” The problem with that is that by the time it’s simple and easy and everybody can just do two clicks and get the best results, everybody has it, right? If you want to get ahead and if you want to have an advantage, you got to start messing with it when it’s still not perfect.

Hal Coopersmith: What does a world in New York City where Class B owners are doing effective marketing for their buildings and they’re all using AI agents and they’re all using your services, what does that world look like?

Or Lev-Cohen: That world looks like the buildings are marketed as premium, unique products and not as generic swappable listings, and I think that’s the big shift. When you start treating your building and your office space as a product, and you find its unique selling points, and you know who you’re marketing it for, then you start standing out. So if everybody used our service, which is, not necessarily where we’re aiming, but if more and more landlords used our service and, and treated marketing seriously, their buildings will become More unique, they’ll lease up faster. Brokers are going to remember them and think about them when they have to, come up with an answer to a requirement. And there’s going to be a clear story around that building and why it’s the right choice versus just, you know, something that you can just walk out and go to the other side of the street.

Hal Coopersmith: So it’s a little… What if, if I understand what you’re saying, is in the way that you could just have an office building and have it unfurnished and no build out, that those days are kind of gone, that you have to furnish and build it out a little bit. That now it’s not just about that and making it turnkey, but also memorable and thinking about it, and owners are already thinking about it as a business, but a business that needs a little bit more marketing and nurturing than in that same transition from, “Okay, here’s the water in the desert, come get it,” as now it’s, “Okay, you have different options.”

Or Lev-Cohen: Exactly. And helping tenants understand the value, because the mistake is to think that people instantly get what you have in mind. But in reality, a tenant comes into a, a demoed or a, a white box space, it’s hard for them to visualize. Or they see the building in a specific location, it’s not instantly clear why that location is good. So you have to feed it to them. You have to help them see, “Here, the space is white box now, but here’s what it’s going to look like. And we’re at this and that address, and here’s why it’s good.” You have to help them see it.  I have… I actually have a cool example for AI usage specific to, to this podcast. So as I was preparing for the podcast, I wanted to, I wanted to talk about the right things and not forget anything. I used AI to rehearse. So I asked Claude to download the last four or five episodes, analyze the conversations, and see what you talk about, what the, the main topics are, what kind of questions, and then I created this profile for the podcast. I then took this PDF file and I put it in my iPhone’s Claude app, and I put it on voice mode, which is where you kind of do a phone call with Claude And then that phone call is like you interviewing me for the podcast. So I’m running around in the city between meetings, and I’m being interviewed for the podcast, and then I’m figuring out, “Oh, Hal asked that.

I should have talked about that instead.” And then I’m refining my answers. So that is just like a, a silly example, but imagine if you could do that for any important conversation, a sales conversation, a conversation with your boss, with your tenant, whatever. You have all the information, whether in your head or, or in your CRM. You just have to fit it in a certain way to the AI model, and it then lets you come as prepared as possible, and imagine what that does to your results.

Hal Coopersmith: So how well did the AI do in terms of predicting our conversation?

Or Lev-Cohen: It wasn’t a perfect prediction, but even saying things out loud and, and imagining what that would be like and touching on the important points was super valuable. I think if I didn’t do that rehearsal, my, my answers would’ve been much less refined and correct.

Hal Coopersmith: Well, that is a wonderful note to end things on, Or Lev Cohen, thank you for being a part of Broker’s Angle.

Or Lev-Cohen: Thank you.