With an eye to growing its business by targeting Hispanic, female, veteran and first-time homebuyer audiences, Rocket Companies rolled out a “brand restage” Tuesday that lays the groundwork for a Super Bowl advertising blitz.
The brand revamp, led by Rocket Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Mildenhall, includes subtle tweaks to the company’s logo and other details including the typefaces and color palette used in marketing materials.
But the broader goal is to expand Rocket’s customer base and position the company not only as a mortgage lender, but a fintech platform supporting an “end-to-end homeownership experience.”
Although home loans originated by Rocket Mortgage are the company’s biggest money maker, its stable of personal finance and consumer technology brands includes real estate search and referral platform Rocket Homes, personal finance app Rocket Money, credit card provider Rocket Card, and personal loan provider Rocket Loans.
Varun Krishna
As Rocket CEO Varun Krishna told Inman in December, the company recently acquired the Rocket.com domain “to be the centerpiece where we’ll combine the home search and the financing experiences that Rocket Homes and Rocket Mortgage provide into a fully integrated, holistic experience.”
“The beauty of Rocket is that we are not a ‘house of brands,’ we are a ‘branded house,'” Krishna said.
Krishna, who will be a featured speaker at Inman Connect New York in January, also shed light on Rocket’s investment in AI, which he said allows the company to anticipate customers’ needs and rapidly scale its business according to demand.
As part of the brand restage, Rocket said it also plans to rebrand Amrock — its title, settlement and valuations services provider — as Rocket Close.
Rocket’s wholesale lending division, Rocket Pro TPO, is now known simply as Rocket Pro — dispensing with “TPO,” which stood for third-party origination (a nod to the mortgage brokers and correspondent lenders who do business with Rocket).
Rocket was overtaken as the nation’s biggest mortgage lender in 2022 by rival United Wholesale Mortgage, which says its ties to mortgage brokers give it an advantage in winning business from homebuyers. While Rocket Mortgage did booming business directly with homeowners seeking to refinance during the pandemic, the company is counting on its wholesale channel to help grow its share of the purchase loan business.
Rocket hired former Sagent CEO Dan Sogorka last fall to be Rocket Pro’s general manager, and “also strengthened the size of the team across the board, from marketing to technology to strategy,” Krishna told Inman last month.
“We have very ambitious goals around growing our purchase mortgage business, and the real estate agent and the [mortgage] broker are part of the bedrock of that experience,” Krishna said.
Former Venmo and PayPal executive Papanii Okai was hired in October as executive vice president of product engineering. Mildenhall, whose more than 30 years of experience in the marketing business includes 4 years as head of marketing at Airbnb, come on board a little over a year ago as the company’s first group CMO.
In revamping the Rocket brand in collaboration with design agency Otherway, the company kept in mind a recent study that found 92 percent of consumers aspire to purchase a home.
Jonathan Mildenhall
“Owning a home creates identity, security, safety and purpose, not to mention the most proven asset class in terms of building generational wealth,” Mildenhall said in a statement. “This design evolution underscores our belief in the transformative power of homeownership and introduces Rocket as a timeless and iconic brand that empowers people to achieve their dreams.”
The new Rocket Companies logo (right) dispenses with block capitals for title case, creating “a friendlier, more approachable tone,” the company says.
The company logo now features a “halo” — a “circular form [that] creates a protective arc, representing the journey to homeownership and the building of prosperity and generational wealth,” while “refreshed visual storytelling features real clients in its photography, celebrating the diverse faces of modern America.”
Two “bespoke typefaces” honoring Nick Gilbert, the late son of Rocket founder Dan Gilbert, were created to “ensure a cohesive visual language across all touchpoints, from digital products to printed materials,” the company said.
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