{"id":352,"date":"2016-02-09T14:57:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-09T14:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=352"},"modified":"2016-02-24T05:46:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T05:46:02","slug":"what-were-they-thinking-selling-rocket-mortgage-in-a-post-2008-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=352","title":{"rendered":"What Were They Thinking?: Selling Rocket Mortgage in a Post-2008 Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPush button. Get Mortgage.\u201d That\u2019s the tagline of Quicken Loans\u2019 new product, Rocket Mortgage. The company introduced Rocket Mortgage to the massive television audience watching Super Bowl 50 in a one-minute commercial. The ad describes a simple push button app that allows people to get mortgages on their phones, which would lead to a \u201ctidal wave of ownership [that] floods the country with new homeowners who now must own other things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QlRm6Y5iVfw\" width=\"563\" height=\"563\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After it aired, there was an eruption of criticism for the piece, titled \u201cWhat We Were Thinking.\u201d Here is a sampling of the next day\u2019s headlines: <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/money\/4211862\/quicken-loans-rocket-mortgage-super-bowl-ad\/\">Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl Ad Criticized for Encouraging Another Housing Crisis<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/Business\/2016\/0208\/Is-that-Quicken-Loans-Super-Bowl-ad-an-omen-of-another-housing-crash-video\">Is that Quicken Loans Super Bowl Ad an Omen of Another Housing Crash?,<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/fox2now.com\/2016\/02\/08\/quickens-rocket-mortgage-super-bowl-ad-sparks-backlash\/\">Quicken\u2019s Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl Ad Sparks Backlash<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/wonk\/wp\/2016\/02\/08\/everything-thats-wrong-with-the-super-bowls-worst-ad\/\">Everything That\u2019s Wrong With the Super Bowl\u2019s Worst Ad<\/a>. Tweeters, bloggers, journalists, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted the parallels of the promise of quick mortgages to the flurry of irresponsible mortgage-selling activity that caused the 2008 housing and financial crisis. Meanwhile, Quicken defended its product as one that ensures \u201cfull transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-363\" src=\"http:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Quicken-Loans-Twitter.jpg\" alt=\"Quicken Loans Twitter\" width=\"633\" height=\"468\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Quicken-Loans-Twitter.jpg 633w, https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Quicken-Loans-Twitter-300x222.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 633px) 100vw, 633px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The advertisement for Rocket Mortgage is visually compelling and calls upon tried and true cultural tropes. Why then, was it not persuasive? Let&#8217;s take a closer look:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat We Were Thinking\u201d has a strong, consistent cadence throughout. The guitar in the background music is a driving beat. Even when other sounds are laid on top, the underlying sound remains the same \u2013 and it\u2019s one that creates a feeling of both urgency and forward motion.<\/p>\n<p>The ad\u2019s narrator does the same thing with her words. She strings together a chain of questions, each beginning with the word \u201cand.\u201d Each question appears to follow from the previous, and together they build a progress narrative:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And if it could be that easy, wouldn\u2019t more people buy homes? And wouldn\u2019t those buyers need to fill their homes with lamps and blenders and sectional couches with hand-lathed wooden legs? And wouldn\u2019t that mean all sorts of wooden leg making opportunities for wooden leg makers? And wouldn\u2019t those new leg makers own phones from which they could quickly and easily secure mortgages of their own, further stoking demand for necessary household goods as our tidal wave of ownership floods the country with new homeowners who now must own other things. And isn\u2019t that the power of America itself?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s possible for someone to argue with the premises of any of these questions or with the conclusions they imply, but the narrator does not pause between them to allow this. Instead, her cadence paired with the linked questions fosters a sense of inevitability.<\/p>\n<p>It could seem strange to end this series with \u201cAnd isn\u2019t that the power of America itself?,\u201d but the progress narrative is so key to the American mythos, and so reliant on notions of inevitability, that it makes sense here. In response to criticism of the ad, Quicken\u2019s chief marketing officer said, \u201cI think that everyone is realizing it\u2019s time for the housing industry to advance.\u201d Quicken Loans is not just selling houses, it\u2019s selling a very particular understanding of progress, one rooted in consumption, accumulation, ownership. Indeed, the American Dream, our leading progress narrative in the U.S., is often defined first in terms of ownership, via \u201ca house with a white picket fence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All of this is accompanied by a sense of \u201cno big deal.\u201d The ad\u2019s narrator begins with, \u201cHere\u2019s what we were thinking,\u201d and ends with, \u201canyway, that\u2019s what we were thinking.\u201d It feels nonchalant, makes it sound like the narrative is just common sense. The mundanity of the activities depicted in the commercial contribute to this feeling: people at a movie, people doing their jobs, people at an exercise class, a woman carrying her baby in the kitchen. These are everyday activities for everyday folks. They are <em>common<\/em>. In the Quicken ad, progress is common sense. Ownership is common sense.<\/p>\n<p>Given these well worn tropes, one would expect the viewing public to be on board with Rocket Mortgages. But here\u2019s the thing: the message doesn\u2019t match the audience\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n<p>Early in the commercial, as the app promises to \u201cturn an intimidating process into an easy one,\u201d a magician appears on the screen with fireworks and a woman sawed in half. This visual misstep serves as a reminder that what appears to be easy, what is advertised as common sense, is often an illusion. There is not a single scene in which people look at each other during the ad, apart from the one containing the magician, who looks directly at the viewer. It is as though he is trying to hypnotize the audience into buying what Quicken is selling.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-366\" src=\"http:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Magician.jpg\" alt=\"Magician\" width=\"497\" height=\"313\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Magician.jpg 497w, https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Magician-300x189.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 497px) 100vw, 497px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In all of the other scenes, people only look at their phones. The household goods that mark progress throughout the piece spin around in the air, but people do not interact with them. This tells us a lot about how Quicken sees its audience \u2013 as consumers, but not as community.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble for Quicken is that most of the Super Bowl viewers watched their communities crumble over the course of the 2008 housing crisis, and beyond. They watched as banks were bailed out while their friends, family members, or even themselves, were left jobless, houseless. History is wont to repeat itself, but the backlash to \u201cWhat We Were Thinking\u201d shows us our collective memories last at least eight years. It may also suggest that \u201cthe people\u201d and the banking industry may have now very different ideas about what it means to <em>progress<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPush button. Get Mortgage.\u201d That\u2019s the tagline of Quicken Loans\u2019 new product, Rocket Mortgage. The company introduced Rocket Mortgage to the massive television audience watching Super Bowl 50 in a one-minute commercial. The ad describes a simple push button app &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=352\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[39,85,83,82,86,84],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}