Win Borrowers’ Hearts, Tap AI’s Mind: Rocket’s Strategy for 2025

Tugging at potential homebuyers' heartstrings and applying AI to automation to give broker partners a boost are both big factors in Rocket Companies’ plans to grow in 2025. 

During an event that was webcasted on Thursday, leaders of Rocket Pro, Rocket's broker channel, talked strategy for 2025 and beyond, speaking also to Rocket’s broader plans and marketing activities.

There’s been a lot of listening going on at Rocket, according to some of the company's executives, who spent more than six months polling the populace and found 92% of Americans agree: part of the idyllic “American Dream” is to own a home. But even those working for the nation's second largest lender can acknowledge how many people are becoming disheartened by higher inflation and poor market conditions.

But, regardless of the housing market's current state, could the American Dream of homeownership truly be dead or waning?

“It's hard to get people to agree on a lot of things in this country,” noted Regis Hadiaris, VP of partner marketing at Rocket Mortgage. “I don't know if we can get 92% of people to agree on liking ice cream. But 92% of people agree that owning a home is part of the American dream — so for us, our core creative idea is, ‘Own the Dream.’”

That was the big driver behind Rocket’s latest Super Bowl ad, which aired live on television and simultaneously sparked a sing-along in the stadium to “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver. Forget the West Virginia part for a second and make no mistake about the words being sung — the song was quite intentionally chosen for its standout chorus:

“Country roads
Take me home
To the place
I belong”

That Rocket commercial opens with a poignant scene of a pregnant young woman placing a hand on her expectant belly saying, “Let’s get you home,” and features a number of other “stories” meant to depict something like the triumph of homeownership. The point is to conjure emotion and the human connection when potential borrowers think, “Rocket.”

Next, the company is planning to break out those various “stories” from the ad and highlight them to expound upon the campaign and its imagery, Rocket Pro executives said.

“Our ‘why’ is to give everyone a shot at a more prosperous life,” Hadiaris contended during the webcast. “That means clients out there, that means our [broker] partners like all of you. Our ‘why’ is prosperity, and how we show it is as a compassionate trailblazer; to us, compassion means empathy.”

Mike Fawaz, Rocket Pro’s EVP of strategy, growth, and partnerships, drove a bit farther down that same avenue. “When you get to your house every single night, you pull up into the driveway and you walk through those doors, you're not walking into a house, you're walking into a home,” he said.

“A house is just walls and a roof. But a home — a home is where you belong. A home represents that freedom, that sacrifice, that sense of accomplishment,” he continued. “A home is where you walk in the doors and you say to yourself, 'I have what I've been fighting for. I'm able to accomplish that dream.'”

Following up on and supplementing the Super Bowl ad, Rocket also published an “Own the Dream manifesto” in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to reach potential homebuyers. Part of that manifesto gets into Rocket’s various mortgage innovation programs, such as applying part of the last year’s rent toward home loan closing costs and the new all-in-one Rocket.com platform for homebuyers and sellers.

Rocket Pro General Manager, Dan Sogorka, said Rocket is planning to not double, but septuple its investment in the “Own the Dream” campaign, and efforts in that vein.

“When you do a Super Bowl commercial, you guys know how much they cost,” he said, noting that “it's a ton of money.”

”We're going to spend seven times what we spent on the commercial over the next six months to get our message out about caring, empathy, helping everyone home,” Sogorka said. “And we're going to really talk about our partners in a way we've never done before.”

Broker focus

Referencing the company’s mid-January rebranding and spotlighting of its broker partners, Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies and Rocket Mortgage, emphasized that Rocket is “doubling down” on brokers — who he said can count on Rocket for, among other things, “badass technology.”

“For me being in the [CEO] role now 18 months, this is a serious part of Rocket's business and we're doubling down,” Krishna said. “I mean, you see that with the leaders that are on this stage. That's a reflection of our commitment, choice, flexibility, top-tier service, competitive pricing, and badass technology. That is something that you can hold us accountable for.”

Along those lines, Sogorka noted Rocket’s got a goal: use AI to help close every home refinance loan in four days. Dan Ngoyi, SVP of client experience operations at Rocket Pro, expounded on that greater speed/ agility concept, as well as AI and automation.

“What we've been focused on providing is superb client experience — I think about ‘SCE,’ superb client experience. And in that, speed; you think about things like service, you think about things like consistency and certainty, and then most importantly, think about ease and efficiency,” Ngoyi said.

One of the things Rocket is especially targeting, he noted, “is AI in automation. Think about data ingestion, doc extraction, and really allowing our technology to do the things that they [Rocket’s partners] do so that we can get faster.”

“You couple the power of AI with what we do with crews and our relationships,” he continued. “We really want to get to a place where our computers are doing the things that our computers are going to do that are being checked by our humans. But then also, our crews, our crew directors, our underwriters, can really spend time getting to know you [brokers], getting to know your business operationally, and making sure that we move at the rate that we need to move to really support your business.”

Ngoyi gave an example of this machine-driven quickening in that “over 90% of the documents that come in from an asset and income standpoint are automatically taken care of. They're automatically qualified.” Rocket team members double-check everything when necessary, “so it's not work [unchecked by humans], but at the same time, these are things that we're doing to build on that efficiency, to build on that speed, and ultimately create certainty for all of you.”

Sogorka, speaking to Rocket’s broker partners, added: “We're going to bring innovation to market, partner with you, get your feedback on how we can use it, and then deploy it at scale. You're going to see a lot of that in 2025.”