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Most vendors never find out why they lost the deal. This episode tells them.

Anne Baum and Chris Johnson sit down with Kim Boland, a multifamily marketer with more than 18 years in the industry, for a candid look at what operators wish vendors knew and what vendors rarely hear when they lose a deal.

Kim has spent her career building vendor relationships that have followed her from company to company. Lately, her “Operator Confessions” posts on LinkedIn have been saying what operators usually keep to themselves, and suppliers keep asking for more. She explains why she looks for partners who will push back and fight to get things fixed instead of saying yes to everything, and why both sides are better off when operators give honest feedback rather than ghosting.

The conversation is practical. It covers how budget decisions really get made, how marketing teams can open doors across an organization, why no rollout is as painless as the pitch suggests, and why handing a 300-property operator a spreadsheet to fill out by hand is no longer acceptable.

In this episode:

• Why a 30-minute call with a demo and a real price beats three calls of corporate scripts
• How rigid bundles cost vendors deals they would otherwise win
• Where operator budgets actually come from, and why most new tech has to replace something already on the books
• How AI tools moving into IT budgets could free up marketing dollars
• Why marketing is often the best champion and gateway into an organization, and how vendors can make the most of that champion
• What operators want vendors to admit about rollouts, risk, and the impact on on-site teams
• How AI is changing the prospect experience, and why reviews, website data, and FAQs now carry more weight than ever

The best vendor-operator partnerships aren’t built in the pitch. They’re built on honesty, transparency, and showing up for each other long after the contract is signed.

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The renter journey is changing, but multifamily marketing does not need to throw everything out and start over.

In this episode of The Apartment Department, Anne Baum and Chris Johnson sit down with Reid Wicoff, founding partner and CEO of Digible, to explore how renter behavior is evolving as AI becomes part of the search and decision-making process.

The conversation goes beyond the usual predictions about AI. Reid shares what Digible is seeing in the data, why traditional search and ILSs still play an important role, and what happens when renters move from simple searches into increasingly detailed conversations with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

The discussion also explores where marketing budgets are moving, why marketers need to establish a strong baseline before changing their strategy, and how AI could help bring together an increasingly fragmented media mix.

In this episode:

• What the emerging AI-driven renter journey actually looks like
• Why LLMs may become increasingly important later in the renter decision process
• What Project Polaris is revealing about how AI surfaces multifamily properties and content
• Why continuous research and experimentation matter more as the pace of change accelerates
• How marketers can think about media mix and budget allocation without chasing every new channel
• The move toward AI-optimized marketing with human strategists still in the loop
• Why breaking down channel silos could change how multifamily marketing performance is measured
• What AI could ultimately mean for the renter experience

The future of multifamily marketing may be less about finding the next channel and more about understanding how renters actually move through the journey.

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Streaming TV has changed significantly in the past year, and the opportunity for multifamily marketers has changed with it.

In this episode of The Apartment Department, hosts Anne Baum and Chris Johnson welcome Kristi Fickert, SVP of Growth and Marketing at Kurie, back to the podcast for a conversation about what’s new, what’s working, and how marketers can think differently about streaming advertising today.

The conversation goes beyond putting an apartment ad on a television screen. Kristi, Anne, and Chris explore how streaming can build brand awareness, reach renters earlier in their journey, support sequential storytelling, and create more opportunities to connect with specific audiences. They also dig into the challenge of measuring marketing that is designed to make a brand memorable, especially when traditional reporting tends to focus on a single source, lead, and lease.

The episode also gets into:

• Why 15-second ads are changing how marketers approach storytelling
• How fresh creative can help combat ad fatigue
• Why top-of-funnel marketing should not always be expected to produce an immediate lease
• How brand searches, direct traffic, organic traffic, and overall traffic can help indicate whether awareness efforts are working
• Why video does not always need to be highly produced to be effective
• How streaming advertising can be used for more than renter acquisition
• Why experimentation and speed can matter as much as production quality
• How AI could create more sameness, or help marketers come up with ideas others are not thinking about
• Why the experiences happening inside a community can be more differentiating than the amenities themselves

A year after Kristi’s first appearance on the podcast, the technology has moved quickly. This conversation looks at where streaming TV is now and what multifamily marketers can do with the opportunities that are emerging.

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