Jonathan Mildenhall left Airbnb to join Rocket as chief marketing officer a year ago and has been busy ever since.
The company has just unveiled a new brand refresh and is gearing up for a Super Bowl ad, whose tagline Mildenhall says will rival Nike’s ‘Just Do It,’ as the brand aims to position itself as the “Apple of home ownership.”
Rocket’s new platform stems from some stagger research: 60% of both Millennial and Gen Z homebuyers report experiencing tears of frustration during the home buying process, per Zillow. Realtor.com found 23% of recent home buyers said the process drove them to schedule extra therapy sessions.
“This process brings people to tears,” says Mildenhall. “It’s stressful and it is complicated and part of the reason is there’s so many different stakeholders. Where do you go to search for a home? Where do you go to put an offer on a home? Where do you go to finance a home? Where do you go to close on a home?”
The Detroit-based fintech platform – which includes mortgage, real estate and personal finance businesses – is unifying the company’s many services under the overarching Rocket brand to help ease this process. They are rebranding in hopes of reaching the shifting audiences in the home buying category.
“Women are outpacing men 2-1 in terms of first-time home buyers. That’s staggering. Women are not sitting back and waiting for the guy to show up. They’re getting jobs and the first thing they do is they’re buying their homes,” explains Mildenhall. “The second massive growth in first-time home buyers is Black and Brown communities driven primarily from the economic advancements in the Hispanic community. Third, the average age of the first-time home buyers has increased by 10 years from 28 to 38 years old.”
The company will unveil its new message aimed at these audiences during the Super Bowl. In the past Rocket’s ads have featured celebrities including Tracy Morgan and Jason Mamoa. While Mildenhall would not reveal the brand’s big game plans, he hinted that the brand might not be working a celebrity this time around. “The American audience deserves bigger ideas from brands than how many celebrities can we stuff into a 90 second commercial,” he quipped.
Brand Innovators caught up with Mildenhall from his office in Los Angeles to talk about the rebrand, the Super Bowl and the company’s focus on optimism. This interview has been edited for length and clairty.
What’s the idea behind bringing all of these different various parts of Rocket into one look and feel?
Under Varun Krishna’s leadership, we decided to build an integrated ecosystem where everything that you need to find, buy, finance and close a home is in one place. It was important that we move from a house of separate brands into the Rocket ecosystem. The brand is now Rocket. And Rocket has a number of services. It’s the first of its kind. This innovation in the category should reduce the different stakeholders that a potential homeowner has to deal with and reduce the friction, because everything will be in one place for them. Honestly, I’m hoping to reduce the tears and reduce the therapy sessions.
So you want to be the one-stop shop for the whole home buying process?
That’s exactly right. Think of the Apple.com platform. Everything I need for Apple, the computer, the iPad, iTunes, Apple Music, Apple Pay. It’s all there. If I have the Apple operating system then there is very little friction across a whole multitude of services that Apple provides. That’s exactly what we’re after. Over time customers across America will see Rocket as the Apple of home ownership anything you need without friction to buy and sell homes.
Can you talk about why you’re using this Super Bowl as a stage to reintroduce the brand to the public?
I feel very privileged that in my 18 years living here in America, I’ve been able to activate 11 Super Bowls. Whether that was at Airbnb or Coca-Cola, the Super Bowl is always so inspiring in terms of how much America engages with creatively-driven brands. The audience size is unparalleled anywhere in the world. The media interest means I can get a huge narrative going. Providing that you use the Super Bowl smartly and innovatively, then the ROI that you can get is not just a short-term hit on the business. It can be a long-term hit on the brand. I’ve seen that ROI increase for brands like Airbnb and Coca-Cola. For the right creative storytelling and activation, the Super Bowl is unparalleled.
The Super Bowl this year happens a couple of weeks after the change of administration. It will be the first time that America has come together as one to celebrate this iconic American moment. Rocket is holding ourselves accountable to two values that you will see in all of our work. We are building the most optimistic brand in America. We place 30 year bets on people who place 30 year bets on themselves and you cannot do that with a pessimistic mindset. You’re going to see the Rocket brand overflow with optimism.
The Super Bowl is our attempt to make Rocket the most inclusive brand in North America. We have to appeal to a Caucasian audience. We have to appeal to a Hispanic audience. We have to appeal to a female audience. We have to appeal to aging first-time home buyers. The Rocket brand needs to be more inclusive than ever before. What you’ll see on Super Bowl is an incredible statement of optimism and an incredible depiction of inclusivity all brought together through storytelling that is epic and intimate and that’s all I’ll say.
You mentioned the importance of the Super Bowl for continuing the brand equity beyond the game. Can you talk about how you will be supporting this campaign beyond just the TV buy?
We are very well resourced at Rocket. Last year we invested just shy of $800 million in the marketplace. This year our budget is roughly the same and we’re really seeing Super Bowl as the ignition point to elevate both the creative platform through the core creative idea but also what we call the fully integrated full funnel approach to marketing.
For the first time in our history, the brand investment and the performance marketing investment will all honor this same idea. The catalyst for this new idea is going to be the Super Bowl stage. But I am very confident because of the way that we’re planning content and media that the elevated expression of the brand, the elevated stories will work will make our hardest working performance marketing ad units work that much harder and be that much more engaging as well.
You’ve been through 12 Super Bowls as an advertiser, are there any particular trends you expect brands to show up in the advertising this year?
Well, I have to say the trend that I hope disappears sooner rather than later is the over reliance on celebrities. There’s so much wasted energy and media dollars because we just get a celebrity in and there’s no idea.
