Opportunities to grab attention can come from the strangest places. I have three kids, 16, 12 and 10, so when the Pokémon Go app went live, I knew within hours. No preteen boy (or teenage girl) could resist it, and mine certainly didn’t. They spent that first weekend wandering the neighborhood, glued to smart phones, chasing down Rattata and Pidgey, and asking to walk 5K so they could earn more Pokeballs. I knew this was big when my 10-year-old son begged me to take them to the mall — a place he loathed as much as math class.

So what does this have to do with real estate? Well, being the intrepid content marketer that I am, I started thinking about how this could translate into an opportunity for Realtors. If a Charmander can appear on my bed and a Caterpie on my hearth, then they can appear in other homes… and during open houses.

Monday morning I got my PR team on it and they began looking for agents who were willing to incorporate the Pokémon Go rage into their open houses. Some were skeptical, or maybe they’d just been living in a hole and hadn’t heard about the game, but others saw the opportunity and jumped right in. Offices started posting pictures of Pokémon in front of their signs on Facebook, agents were Instagramming pictures of Pokémon at their listings, and our Baltimore Fells Point office invited people to “Pokestop on in.”

One of our top agents, who is extremely marketing savvy and a great guy, even got into it. Roger Pettingell, Coldwell Banker’s #1 agent in Florida, promoted a Pokémon-friendly open house and our PR team landed him on the front page of the Sarasota Herald Tribune (in addition to probably showing his two sons that he’s the coolest dad in history). To ensure the little monsters (Pokémon, not his kids) would be there, he dropped Pokémon lures at the house.

We weren’t the only ones who had the idea, and within hours, the news media started running the stories about how local businesses were having fun with the Pokémon Go craze, including Inman (subscription required), Candy’s Dirt and Curbed.

If you’re just now learning about Pokémon Go, here are some quick tips on how you can leverage the craze.

1. Download the app on your smartphone and ask a kid or teenager (or just about anyone) to show you how it works.
2. Visit your listings, look at your For Sale signs and well known places in your community to find Pokémon. Take pictures of where you’re seeing them, and post on social media.
3. If you have a particularly family-friendly listing, look and see if it has any Pokémon. If it doesn’t, you can purchase a lure to attract some. Then promote a kid-friendly Pokémon open house (with your seller’s permission, of course).

Also, if you haven’t heard of the craze by now, then you seriously need to get out more. It’s been all over the news and social media, and you literally can’t go anywhere public without seeing people playing the game. You can easily spot them — smart phone up close, excited look on their face, swirling around in circles viewing the world through their camera. It’s actually pretty fun. Gotta catch ’em all!