​Opendoor confronts home flippers with new campaign

Opendoor, the leading digital platform for residential real estate transactions, have launched The Hardest Part, a national brand campaign that marks the most significant shift in the company's marketing strategy since its founding in 2014.

The campaign is the opening move in a broader brand rebuild driven by a problem Opendoor can no longer market around: despite processing billions of dollars in home transactions, many consumers still associate the company with home flipping rather than the modern, seller-friendly platform it has become. The company believes its core value proposition of speed and cash offers only works on the back of trust. 

"We built our early brand on speed and simplicity, and those things still matter," said Morgan Brown, Chief Growth Officer at Opendoor. "But sellers don't just want a fast transaction. They want certainty, someone who understands that selling a home is one of the most important decisions they'll ever make. You don’t build trust with features and benefits. You close it by showing people you understand what they're going through."

"The Hardest Part" arrives at a moment when major players in real estate tech are investing heavily in brand. The campaign launches amid heightened brand activity across real estate tech. Opendoor’s strategy is deliberately simple: anchor the brand in a single visual idea and a human story about what it feels like to leave a home.

Opendoor's approach is a deliberate departure from all of these. No celebrities. No stunts. No activation gimmicks. Instead, the company is betting on a simple creative device and a cinematic, human-scale story about what it actually feels like to leave a home you've lived in. 

At the centre of the campaign is a 30-second brand film built around a single visual conceit: empty rooms, revealed through held photographs of the life those rooms once contained. Parties. Late-night snacks. Growth chart lines on the doorframe. Quiet moments at the kitchen sink. 

Led by Creative Director Peter Brant, Ways & Means handled creative development, production, and post, working with director Rosanna Peng to bring the film to life. 

What makes the execution distinctive is that the photograph gag was captured entirely as a practical effect. Each room was dressed to match a specific memory, printed the photograph, then stripped the space back to "move-out day" before staging it again for the next shot. Families were aged through decades with hair and makeup. Every transition between the life-that-was and the empty-room-that-is was done in-camera. 

"I wanted to capture the bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye to a home that held so many meaningful memories for these families," said Peng. "Not just the joyful ones, but the heavier moments too, which I'm grateful Opendoor was receptive to. Everyone was on the same page about capturing the film honestly so that viewers can truly connect to this human experience of transition." 

The film closes with an on-screen Opendoor offer and acceptance, underscoring the contrast between the emotional difficulty of leaving and the simplicity of the transaction itself. The brand line: "Because saying goodbye should be the hardest part."