For years, agents have been digging through National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) 990 forms trying to answer a simple question:
Where is our dues money actually going?
One line item that always sparks debate is marketing spend, especially the tens of millions of dollars paid annually to independent contractor Havas Media Group (nearly $43 million in 2024 alone).
That’s why this week’s Knowledge Brokers Podcast felt different from what agents have come to expect from interviews with NAR leadership.
For over an hour, NAR Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Bennett Richardson sat down with Byron Lazine and Tom Toole for a conversation that was not pre-screened, not scripted, and not built around pre-submitted questions.
The discussion dug directly into media spend, campaign strategy, and leadership decisions, with pushback when answers felt familiar or incomplete.
In short, Byron and Tom asked the hard questions that agents have been asking for years. And not once did Bennett sidestep a question with a “no comment.”
For an organization that hasn’t always welcomed direct scrutiny, that alone felt significant.
The Question Agents Keep Asking: Where Is the Money Going?
Havas Media Group came up first thing in the question round, and Byron asked the question he’s been asking on podcasts for years:
“Havas is a marketing and communications group. Their work that they’ve done…has not landed. It has not made any impact with consumers. Consumers went out and sued the crap out of us as an industry. So if anything, you could argue that it made the opposite impact of the one intended, of holding the value of the Realtor high in consumer’s minds.
“Yet today, we’re still pumping out tens of millions of dollars to Havas Marketing Group. We’re still working with them.
“I’d like to start with, why are they the right partner for our association?”
Bennett started with structure. The consumer ad campaign isn’t pulled from general dues. Of the $201 annual NAR member dues, $45 is a special assessment specifically voted on by the board and designated for the public awareness campaign. That structure dates back to 1998, when members first approved funding to drive consumer preference for working with a Realtor.
Then he addressed the mechanics.
“Havas is primarily a media buying agency… Today, we work with a smaller independent agency called Uncommon Brand Studio on the creative, and Havas is our media buyer. So 95-plus percent of those budget numbers that you’re seeing in the 990 with Havas are going towards buying ads.”
In other words, most of that spend isn’t agency fees. It’s media placement, flowing back to platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
The justification hinges on precision.
Bennett explained that NAR worked with Havas to benchmark 48 consumer behaviors across the home buying process. From roughly four million first-time buyers each year, they narrowed that audience to fewer than one million consumers most likely to be evaluating buyer representation.
“We quite simply could not have done that without a world-class data-empowered, tech-enabled, AI-first agency like Havas.”
That said, if the biggest criticism has been where the money goes, the second has been whether the strategy itself is outdated.
The Marketing Strategy Reset
Byron asked point-blank where we “failed with the ‘We are R’ campaign.”
Bennett brought up a conversation he had with James Dwiggins earlier this week, where they highlighted NAR’s shift away from focusing on the capital R in Realtor and the Realtor brand to focus more on what Realtors actually do.
NAR’s new consumer campaign, which started running this week, highlights how much more Realtors do than “just open doors.” Already, Bennett has been receiving positive feedback from NAR members, and Byron and Tom agreed it’s far better than past campaigns.
Byron connected that to Dwiggins’ company, Rayse, which makes visible everything an agent does behind the scenes.
“That’s why Rayse is so powerful. It’s showing the work that is being done that is either taken for granted or just not told to a customer.”
Even with the new campaign, Byron questioned whether the large spend is worth it. CoStar has spent over $1 billion in past years to elevate the Homes.com brand and compete with Zillow and Realtor.com. And now, just a couple of years later, letters from activist investors have criticized the plan, and CoStar announced its decision to cut Homes.com marketing spend.
Byron asked, “How are we going to be different?”
Bennett’s answer spoke to the goals behind both companies’ marketing spend:
“For us, we have a fundamentally different goal. Our goal is not to make the NAR website as more visited than Homes.com or something like that. Far from it. Our goal is simply to say, if you are a first time home buyer who is looking into buyer agency and who should you work with to go and buy a house that we want that Realtor designation to mean something to you because it does mean something and it represents that professionalism in the industry and that we are doing right by our members if we are able to create that consumer preference.”
Byron then asked a question that goes to the heart of NAR leadership’s accountability for their new marketing approach:
“Walk me through other measurements that you’re going to use to say this is working… How are we going to track this stuff?”
Bennett outlined a major channel shift: no more broadcast TV, radio, or print. If it can’t be tracked, targeted, measured, and optimized, NAR isn’t running it.
“We will measure consumer awareness. We’ll measure consumer preference. We’ll measure placement by placement performance. And we’ll measure leads.”
That’s a departure from brand-heavy campaigns that were difficult to tie directly to action.
Strategy changes like these are critical to NAR’s efforts in rebuilding trust with its members. But for many agents, the bigger question is whether the organization behind the strategy is actually changing.
The Leadership Reset
Another question was whether NAR’s challenges stemmed more from internal dysfunction or external consumer sentiment. Bennett’s answer was direct: both.
“It is really an all-hands-on-deck moment.…80% of [Nykia’s] executive team now is new. We have trimmed headcount by about 14% across the association, but in doing that, we’ve turned over about a third of the talent at the association…”
Tom referenced the 24 initiatives and 75 projects in NAR’s Strategic Plan and asked how each of those items would be prioritized in the short two-year time frame.
Bennett simplified the framework.
“We have two goals. Those commitments, those projects, those initiatives are the ‘how,’ right? Those are the pieces to the puzzle…
“Our goals are to modernize the association… But even more important is our goal of building a better future member experience.”
One priority spans both: building the next generation of Realtors and future NAR leaders. Tom asked what that pathway looks like in practice. Many agents say they’ve tried to get involved locally and received no response.
Bennett pointed to committee participation as the entry point.
“I think the best way to start is to identify your passion area and then apply to join a committee… From an NAR perspective, that’s the opportunity and that exists in finance and in advocacy and in all of these different areas, technology, all of these different areas of NAR’s work.”
What Happens Next
It’s clear NAR leadership is committed to a new member experience, and the work is already underway. The NAR Strategic Plan lays out the priorities and goals. But the people at the helm are the ones responsible for steering the ship.
Tom asked how NAR is improving leadership vetting. Given recent controversies, integrity and standards are front of mind for many members.
“What are you doing to better vet the people that are getting involved in leadership to making sure they’ve got the right integrity to lead the organization?”
Bennett described two efforts underway: strengthening qualifications and application processes for leadership roles, and increasing coordination across volunteer leadership.
Weekly meetings with volunteer leaders are intended to raise accountability and alignment across the organization.
“There’s just a great level of coordination and collaboration and communication there, which naturally creates a really high accountability environment…”
Bennett reiterated NAR’s commitment to having more industry-wide conversations to connect with Realtors across the U.S. Taking the time to join Byron and Tom on the Knowledge Brokers Podcast is a start, and BAM looks forward to more conversations with him and others on the executive leadership team.
One thing Bennett was especially proud of is encapsulated in this one sentence, based on 400 interviews that took place last year:
“The stat that I’m proud of is that we issued zero no comments when we’re asked by anyone about NAR business, and that is not where NAR was in the past.”
For an organization that has faced criticism over communication practices, that statement signals a deliberate shift in posture.
Whether that openness remains consistent, and whether measurable outcomes follow, will shape how members assess the reset.
The above is just a sampling of this memorable podcast. Tune in to enjoy the full conversation.
