Zoopla rejoins big-hitting PR company and appoints new research director

Zoopla has made a new appointment to its executive team.

He is Richard Donnell, who has been appointed as research and insight director.

His job will be to research, analyse and release more market information and insight, aimed at helping agents.

Donnell has had 25 years’ experience in property industry data and analytics. He started his career at Savills before moving on to Hometrack. He was part of the management team that sold Hometrack to ZPG for £120m two years ago.

Donnell said of his latest appointment: “These are exciting times at Zoopla.

“The business has strong brand recognition and a track record of innovation to better inform consumers and to help agents grow their business.

“There is significant scope to better leverage Zoopla’s unique data through market leading analytics and data science to deliver additional value to our customers and to inform the market on the most important market themes for a diverse marketplace worth over £8 trillion.”

It has also been announced that Zoopla has returned to top PR company Instinctif Partners two years after the businesses parted ways.

Instinctif Partners will be working closely with Zoopla’s new chief marketing officer Gary Bramall, and in-house PR manager Tim Vooght.

Among Instinctif’s other high-profile clients are Purplebricks.

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6 Comments

  1. GPL

     

    Take note OTM.

    Zoopla have woken up.

    What should have been a 2 Horse Race is in danger of becoming a 3 Horse Race.

    OTM surely isn’t here just to create a 3 Portal Market?

    …..that would be madness!

     

     

     

     

     

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    1. Bless You

      It is a 3 horse horse race. A race that on the market ruined for zoopla. hopefully the steroids ware off soon and o.m. closes. I can go back to only zoopla and save £800 a month then.
      #biggestOwnGoalEver

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      1. NewsBoy

        Only Zoopla??  Wow. You are a lucky person.

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        1. Bless You

          was on ‘only’ zoopla for 10 years before on the market piped up.

          Then had to go to rightmove as the agents in our city were split 50/50 before on market confused everyone.

          Then they dumped zoopla instead of rightmove…. couldnt write it. . .  muppets. i held on for 6  months but iam not bigger then the market.

           

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    2. NewsBoy

      They certainly need to wake up. 12,500 offices for OTM are serious numbers. I have started to notice that almost all agents in my area are now on OTM, including all the leading ones. I really, really hope it won’t be long before we can all come off Hoopla and Wrongmove. The first step will be to make sure we all religiously use the 48 hour delay. It is now just about the right time for this to start having a real effect. I don’t think all getting together to set this up could be considered as acting as a cartel – could it???

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  2. charlie.wright

    OTM failed to hurt Rightmove to begin with, but dealt a massive blow to Zoopla. However, as more and more smaller agents choose to walk away from RM as a result of their latest fee hike, being on Zoopla and OTM is now a viable alternative for these agents.

    Maths says that Rightmove’s price increase of 15% or more means it can afford to lose large numbers of its customers, and still show increased profits, which is all its investors care about. If its next annual report shows a small reduction in agent numbers, (which it can blame on failing agent businesses) but an increase in income and profits, the champagne corks will keep popping.

    The tide is turning slowly, but they’re not going anywhere for a few years yet. Ultimately I think they will suffer the same fate as newspapers and eventually become an optional marketing extra.

    It’s interesting to note that among BestAgent Marketplace users, the most used portals are Zoopla, OTM and RM in third place.

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