Former journalist Tracey Atkins knows how to tell a story, and this unique narrative approach to property marketing has seen Atkins’ company Goldeneye Media stand out in the global real estate market place.

Atkins is the managing director of Goldeneye, an international media and design house with a focus on luxury property that she started in 2010. Based out of an office in Melbourne’s South Yarra, Atkins and her business partner, director Janette Kendall, and director of content, Michael Mouritz, make promotional films that run into six figures for some of the world’s most luxurious estates. Goldeneye’s clients include Christie’s International Realty and Abercomby’s Real Estate in Melbourne.

Atkins initially made videos for the Australian market, but says everything changed after making the promotional film for the Fairfax estate in Sydney that was sold by Christie’s. Off the back of that video, she was invited to present at Christie’s global conference, which she described as “a wonderful gateway into an incredible marketplace.”

The Goldeneye team has just spent the past three months in the U.S. shooting property films, many of which, says Atkins, are not able to be shared because they’re put into prive marketing to specially selected individuals around the world. “In every case, we were getting brought in because they said they love the approach, the gentle approach that you’re taking because we’re approaching things journalistically,” says Atkins. “We’re reticent to bring the Australian-isms but in every case, clients say ‘We want you to be in it and we want you to voice it, please.’ You find that in the global space when you’re presenting these houses to an international market, the Australian approach and the Australian accent incredibly palatable to the world market. Often the consensus is that if you have an international accent on [the video], it can add to the sense that it’s an international property.”

Atkins met with the leadership of Christie’s while in New York, and was told that for great real estate, the firm believes “a campaign isn’t complete anymore without a play button on it.” Christie’s told her they’d searched America and hadn’t been able to find anyone that was making property marketing videos the way Goldeneye do.

“In Australia we understand that if you have great real estate, you’ve got to market it internationally,” she says. “We’ve always got that big picture approach and we market property that way. And we come in with no preconceived ideas of these markets, there’s no east coast west coast thinking that comes along with it.”

“Journalists hate selling things, so I don’t want to talk about fixtures and fittings,” she says of their approach. “You can go to the brochure and see all the details about the fixtures and fittings, but I’m going to tell you how it feels to be there and why it looks the way it does and what inspired it,” says Atkins. “You need a video that’s more than pictures and music. We try to do editorial-style narratives all the time.”

Goldeneye has now made about 30 international videos since 2012. Atkins says Kendall’s background in China, having run marketing for the Galaxy Casino Group in Macau, means the firm offers understanding of and access into China that she describes as “such an important but challenging market for luxury western real estate.” Atkins says so much of what is being done is lost in translation, and Kendall’s insights and connections help the firm to cut through those problems, allowing them to punch above their weight in terms of accessing China’s deeply desired ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

The firm also makes off-the-plan project videos, and has just worked for Katie Page, wife of Harvey Norman founder Gerry Harvey, who is building a development at Main Beach on the Gold Coast designed by architect Virginia Kerridge. “Katie and Gerry have spent a lot of time there and they really get the lifestyle there and what it means to wake up there,” Atkins says. “We really got inside her head, and we also interviewed Virginia, and then we went to the location to give people a sense of what it would be like to wake up there, to create something that says, ‘I want to know more because that whets my appetite to that life.’

“It’s not just showing animated pictures of renders,” she says. “We love putting all the pieces together for everybody and beginning to tell a story.”