Blanco resident and real estate broker Stan Barron’s marketing has garnered some recent national attention. His advertisement for a unique property on the East Coast won the “Best Ad of the Year for an Unusual Home” award from the Institute For Luxury Home Marketing.

A New York heiress hired Barron to create an ad for her property in Ocean City, Maryland. “She was used to working with ad agencies on her other businesses,” said Barron, “which made her an ideal client because she hired and left me alone to write the ad I wanted. She didn’t change a word.

“Fortunately, I had been to New York before or I would have missed a key ingredient: wealthy people in Texas don’t generally brag about their financial position, but in New York it is acceptable to be visible on such matters as a way of social ranking.”

The heiress liked the ad and, most importantly, it sold the property in a market saturated by luxury condos.

Barron’s mentor from Madison Avenue was David Ogilvy, who wrote ads for Mercedes-Benz, Coke, IBM, and other corporations.

“He taught me how to ‘sell’ by writing an interesting story about the product,” Barron said. “Apparently, I am the first agent to apply the process to selling real estate.”