The Chris List™

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Now, let's get into The Chris List...

📝 [C]ontent: An AI is quietly judging your zip code

🛠 [H]ow-To: The dead marketing channel that still prints

🔬 [R]esearch: The one word that's losing you repeat clients

🎨 [I]nspiration: How IKEA won the World Cup for $0

📈 [S]tats: 2 messages you can send right now

📝 [C]ONTENT

ChatGPT thinks your state is dumb, ugly, and smelly 🤖

A new study just asked ChatGPT to rank all 50 states by how stupid, smelly, and ugly the people are. And it answered.

Researchers from Oxford and the University of Kentucky ran over 20 million questions through ChatGPT.

Ask it straight up "are people in this state dumb?" and it politely declines.

So they backed it into a corner and forced it to pick between two states at a time. Once cornered, it had opinions.

The results:

Massachusetts got crowned smartest.

Louisiana was ranked smelliest.

Ohio, the ugliest.

North Dakota apparently has the least sexy people.

And the "stupidest" trophy went to Kentucky, West Virginia, and Mississippi.

Funny until you read the next part.

The bias wasn't random. The model consistently ranked whiter, richer, lower-immigrant areas as smarter, prettier, and less smelly.

Mississippi, a state with a large Black population, got tagged most "ignorant." Researchers say the AI is just parroting decades of racism and classism baked into its training data.

Here's where it stops being a fun headline.

One researcher asked ChatGPT to write a career story about a man from Kentucky. It gave him a technical college and a factory job.

Same prompt, man from Hawaii? Four-year college and an environmental engineer.

The bias isn't just labels. It quietly writes different futures for different zip codes.

Why this matters for agents:

You are about to run your entire business through these tools. Listing descriptions, neighborhood blurbs, market summaries, buyer emails.

And the model has silent, ugly opinions about places baked right in.

Ask AI to "describe the best neighborhoods in town" and it may quietly favor the wealthier, whiter ones, while writing off areas it has decided are less desirable.

That's not just bad marketing. In real estate, steering language near protected classes is a fair housing landmine.

The fix isn't to stop using AI. It's to stop trusting it blind.

Never let a model be the final voice on a neighborhood, a community, or a person.

You know your market. The AI knows averages and old prejudice.

Use it for the first draft, then strip out anything that ranks, judges, or steers.

The local expert in the room is still you. Keep it that way.
​
You can see your state's results at inequalities.ai​

🛠 [H]OW-TO

Get your marketing to stop traffic with one brutal line 🪧⏱️

The Jill Biggs Group ran a billboard that did numbers most agents would kill for. 217,000+ views in the first month.

Thousands of social engagements across Instagram and TikTok.

And multiple listing appointments they traced directly back to people who drove past it.

They actually tracked the ROI, which almost nobody does with traditional marketing. That's the part to copy as much as the creative.

The creative, though, is the hook. The line:

"Last year we sold 526 homes. Your cousin sold 2."

No #1 agent. No "your local expert since 2004." One sentence that's funny, a little savage, and impossible to scroll past, because it lives in the real world where there's nothing to scroll.

They ran a second board with an even sharper jab:

"Your agent drove 2 hours to get here. Not a great sign. List responsibly."

Same playbook. A tiny, true, slightly mean truth that makes every local seller screenshot it.

Here's why this matters: most agents quit on print because they did the boring version. A face, a logo, a slogan. It flopped, so they blamed the medium.

The medium isn't dead. The execution was.

Four rules to do it right, on a billboard or a $0.50 mailer:

1. Lead with the line, not your face. Nobody shares a headshot. Write the sentence first. Everything else is decoration.

2. Say what other agents won't. A little edge is what gets tagged and shared. Bold isn't a budget, it's a decision.

3. Make it about them. "We're #1" is about you. "Your agent drove 2 hours to get here" is about the reader's choice. Same flex, lands as advice.

4. Track it. Vanity number, custom URL, QR code, or just "where'd you hear about us" on every call. If Jill Biggs can tie boards to actual appointments, you can tie a mailer to actual calls.

Now steal it for print. Your "Just Sold! Call me!" postcard is dead on arrival.

Flip it: "Your neighbor's house sold in 11 days. Want to know what it went for?"

Curiosity beats a sold sign every time. Same move works on a door hanger, flyer, or yard sign rider.

Do this today: Take your next mailer and delete everything except the single most interesting sentence. Then add one way to track the response.

If you can't find an interesting sentence, that's the real problem, and now you know to fix it before you spend a dime printing.

The medium still works. You just have to give people something worth looking up for, then count who looked.

🔬 [R]ESEARCH

Saying "I'm sorry" might be costing you the client 🤐

Here's one that flips everything you've been taught about customer service.

​Researchers ran a real field experiment with a food delivery service (think DoorDash or Uber Eats).

They tracked 3,083 customers whose orders showed up late, up to 15 minutes behind the quoted time.

Half got a proactive apology. Half got nothing.

You'd assume the apology group felt better, right?

Dead wrong.

The customers who got an apology were less likely to order again (74.8% vs 78.8%), waited longer to come back, placed fewer repeat orders (6.28 vs 8.48), and spent less money over the next 90 days ($175.88 vs $237.83).

For the company, that one well-meaning apology added up to $65,171 in lost revenue.

They even tried softening it with a $5 discount. Didn't move the needle.

So why does saying sorry backfire?

Because the apology creates the problem.

A 12-minute-late dinner is something most people barely notice. But the second you apologize for it, you've told them it was a failure. You hand them a reason to be annoyed they didn't have on their own.

Why this matters for agents:

You apologize way more than you need to. "Sorry this is taking so long." "Sorry for the delay on the photos." "Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner."

Half the time, the client wasn't even keeping score. Until you handed them the scorecard.

Here's the rule: save your apologies for the failures clients have actually noticed and feel. The appraisal that came in low. The inspection that blew up. The closing date that slipped.

For everything else, drop the reflexive "so sorry" and just deliver. "Photos go live Thursday." Not "sorry the photos took a few extra days, here they are."

One sounds like a pro running the show. The other plants a seed of doubt you'll spend the rest of the deal pulling back out.

🎨 [I]NSPIRATION

FIFA tried to censor two brands. Both won anyway. 👖🪒

While every brand was throwing money at the World Cup, IKEA Canada won with a candle and a green rug.

The campaign is called Bring the World to Life, and the idea is stupidly simple: arrange everyday IKEA products by shape and color until they form the flags of 18 different teams in the tournament.

Brazil? A yellow outdoor table on a green rug, with a candle laid across a blue bowl. Japan? A single red stool on white carpet. Scotland? Four folded blankets.

That's it.

A few got playful. Argentina's golden sun became an octopus plush doll. Canada's maple leaf was a red towel folded just right.

No celebrities. No 5-minute film. No de-aged legends. Just stuff already sitting on the shelf, arranged by someone who saw it differently.

Their marketing manager put it well: they wanted customers to express pride for home, whatever home means to them.

For a furniture company, that's the whole brand in one sentence.

The Realtor takeaway:

You don't need a budget. You need an eye.

Every agent thinks great content requires a videographer, a drone, and a 3-day shoot. IKEA just proved the opposite. The most shareable thing in the room might be the room itself, arranged with a little imagination.

Steal the format:

Stage a vignette in your listing that tells a story, not just "here's the dining room." Morning coffee set for two. A book open on the chair by the window.

Make people feel the life that happens there.

Tie it to what's happening now. The World Cup is in your backyard all summer. A "watch party-ready living room" virtual staging post hits harder than another price-drop graphic.

Use what you already have. Your phone, your listings, a little creativity. That's the entire toolkit.

The brands winning right now aren't the ones spending the most. They're the ones seeing ordinary things differently, then giving people a reason to share it.

Your next great post is probably already in the house. You just have to arrange it.

📈 [S]TATS/SWIPES

The same headline, two totally different humans 📰 (send these swipes today)

Redfin just dropped its latest tracker and the number to circle is this: the median U.S. home sale price hit $408,814, a record high, up 2.5% year over year.

National prices are now up more than 36% since the start of the pandemic, when the median was just $258,500.

Here's the thing nobody points out. That exact same headline lands completely differently depending on who's reading it.

A seller reads "record high prices" and thinks: I'm sitting on a pile of equity.

A buyer reads "record high prices" and thinks: I'm priced out forever, why bother.

Two opposite emotions. One headline. And you're the only person in their inbox who can speak to both. So here are the swipes.

SWIPE 1: Seller email (the equity check)

Subject: 🏡 You have more equity than you think

Hey [First Name],

Quick one. Redfin just reported the median U.S. home price hit a new record high of $408,814.

Prices are up more than 36% since early 2020.

Translation: if you've owned your home for a few years, you're likely sitting on the most equity you've ever had.

Most people have no idea what that number actually is right now. They're guessing based on what they paid or what their Zestimate says, not what it's actually worth today.

I put together a quick, no-pressure equity check for homes in [neighborhood]. Takes me about 20 minutes and there's zero obligation to do anything with it.

Want me to run yours? Just reply "yes" and I'll send it over this week.

[Your name]

SWIPE 2: Seller text (shorter, warmer)

Hey [First Name], saw the housing report this morning. Median home prices just hit a record high and homeowners in [neighborhood] are sitting on serious equity right now. Curious what yours looks like? I can run a quick number for you, no strings. Want me to?

SWIPE 3: Buyer message (the empathy flip)

Hey [First Name], you've probably seen the "record high prices" headlines and felt like the door just slammed. I want to give you the part those headlines leave out.

Prices are up, yes. But we're actually in a buyer's market right now. There's more inventory than last year, homes are sitting 39 days on average, and sellers are negotiating in a way they weren't 18 months ago.

"Record high price" and "good time to buy" can both be true at the same time. The headline is built to scare you. The actual market is built to work with you.

Want to grab 15 minutes this week so I can show you what's really out there in your range? No pressure, just clarity.

Why this works:

Same data, two messages, opposite emotional starting points.

The seller swipe creates urgency without pressure (an equity check is a gift, not a pitch).

The buyer swipe does the thing almost no agent does: it acknowledges the fear out loud, then dismantles it with the part of the story the headline skips.

Send the seller version to your past-client list and the buyer version to anyone who's gone quiet because they think they're priced out.

One report. Two warm conversations.