Quicken Loans paid a heck of a lot for this one-minute Super Bowl commercial Sunday night, even if it got a break on the roughly $10-million going rate. It hoped to reap only goodness by promoting Rocket Loans, an online mortgage service that simplifies loan applications.
But Jeanine Poggi of Advertising Age, a trade publication, writes that Quicken spent most of Super Bowl 50 on its Twitter page responding to backlash from viewers and trying to quell fears and comparisons to those easy-to-get, problematic sub-prime mortgages that helped collapse the U.S. economy in 2008. Back then, plenty of folks got mortgages who couldn't afford them.
One viewer, Caroline, tweeted:
Just a thought: Maybe we shouldn't make getting a mortgage so easy a child could do it (like in the ad)
Qucken Loans tweeted:
Quicken Loans does not, nor has ever, written subprime loans. All Rocket Mortgage loans conform to gov guidelines.
Rocket Mortgages are fully underwritten loans. As for kids, we'll want to check their credit and proof of income first.
The commercial talks about the ease of applying for a loan:
"You could get a mortgage on your phone, and if it could be that easy, wouldn't more people buy homes? And wouldn't those buyers need to fill their homes with lamps and blenders and sectional couches with hand-lathed wooden legs? And wouldn't that mean all sorts of wooden-leg making opportunities for wooden leg makers? And wouldn't 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't that the power of America itself, now shrunk to fit the hands of a child. Or more helpfully, a home-buying adult. Anyway, that's what we were thinking."
Another viewer, John Thibodeaux tweeted:
Is anyone else terrified by these Rocket Mortgage commercials. Didn't we learn that some people just can't afford to own a home?
Quicken Loans responded:
We want our clients to be able to pay for their homes. We do that by following strict and necessary regulations.
Rana Foroohar, Time magazine's assistant managing editor for economics and business, dismisses concerns of skeptical viewers. Under the headline "No, the Rocket Mortgage Ad Is Not the Sign of Another Financial Apocalypse," she concludes:
Its ad hits an important economic truth: housing is a huge generator of consumer spending, and job growth. If you can fix housing, you can fix the economy.
