A new national campaign for real estate brand Realtor.com introduces a spokescharacter named “The House Whisperer” who’s there to help people with all their homebuying needs.

The work, the first for the brand by its new agency Erich & Kallman, kicks off with a four spot TV campaign and continuing online across digital channels. It sees the a cowboy-like character step in, in heroic fashion, whenever and wherever a homebuyer is struggling.

The ads have a light-hearted and slightly ridiculous flavor: for example, in one, we learn the house whisperer’s origin story; like all good superheroes, he was “bitten by a house as a child,” and therefore can now communicate with homes.

In another spot, he observes heroically: “I was raised in houses. I grew up in one,” before advising the homebuyers where they can find all the missing socks in the house.

However, they have a serious message too, communicating information about Realtor.com’s tools such as filters and its Buying Power feature.

“Realtor.com is a trusted and reliable source that you can turn to for impartial guidance, but we needed some help from a standout spokesperson in order to illustrate that in a memorable way,”  said Eric Kallman, co-founder and chief creative officer at Erich and Kallman. “The knowledgeable house whisperer is a straight-talking, sage guru who cements Realtor.com in people’s minds as the transparent guide you can trust to give you the real picture of the real estate process.”

According to Nuno Ferreira, Realtor.com’s SVP Head of Brand and Creative, executive creative director, the decision to go down the spokescharacter route was driven by the fact that “people are craving the strong, silent type just now, in a market full of hot takes and conflicting opinions.”

“One of the things that kept coming up in the research is that human credibility matters,” he added. “We wanted to have our character represent that trusted voice.”

Ferreira added that the production team saw about 50 actors for the role of the house whisperer; at first they wanted someone who could ride a horse, and although they did not end up using the horse, it meant that everybody had a “cowboy nature” to them. The actor they cast had been riding since the age of nine, and had the commanding presence that “the moment we saw him, we knew that was him.”