Rocket Companies CMO Jonathan Mildenhall on Why It Chose Mirimar as Creative Agency of Record

Rocket Companies has chosen Mirimar as its creative agency of record as it moves forward with an ambitious new marketing plan under group CMO Jonathan Mildenhall.

“I have a very, very clear ambition, and that is to make Rocket one of America’s most culturally significant brands over the next five years,” Mildenhall told ADWEEK.

Mirimar will be responsible for developing Rocket’s multiyear core creative idea that will pull together all of the Rocket brands. The agency has already been working with Rocket for the past few months, helping craft that long-term creative platform.

“We’re united in our ambition to create one of America’s most culturally significant brands. Mirimar is inspired by and fully invested in this Rocket partnership and making iconic work together for years to come,” co-founder and CCO John McKelvey told ADWEEK.

Mirimar has done lauded Super Bowl work for Klarna, Expensify, Priceline and Gopuff. Details of the Rocket Companies deal were not disclosed, but COMvergence estimates the 2023 measured media spend for Rocket Mortgage at $184 million.

How Mirimar was chosen

Rocket Mortgage, one of the 14 companies under the Rocket Companies umbrella, has had advertising success in the past, its Super Bowl ads topping the USA Today Ad Meter two years in a row with smart and entertaining work by Highdive.

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But Mildenhall, who arrived at Rocket at the top of the year, has had plenty of success as well. Before coming to the company as its first group CMO, he helped launch the “Open Happiness” campaign for Coca-Cola, and the “Never a Stranger” campaign for Airbnb, a company whose $1 billion valuation jumped to $31 billion during his tenure as CMO. In 2018, he co-founded TwentyFirstCenturyBrand, a branding and marketing consultancy, where he came across Varun Krishna, now CEO for Rocket Companies, who eventually brought in Mildenhall for the CMO role.

The partnership with Mirimar came about not through a protracted pitch process, but a relationship Mildenhall had with the agency previously at TwentyFirstCenturyBrand.

“Some of the most responsible CMOs are constantly running pitch processes in their mind as they’re meeting different advertising agencies, creative agencies, influencer agencies,” said Mildenhall, adding that he had come across Mirimar when the agency worked with the TwentyFirstCenturyBrand roster of clients and wanted to work with them when he got to Rocket.

The agency worked with Rocket for a three-month trial period, which turned into Mirimar getting the AOR designation.

“Like Jonathan, we share the same belief of elevating brands to something more ownable, more human, and bigger than their category,” said Mirimar co-founder Luke McKelvey.

A more empathetic tone

Mildenhall acknowledged that the brand has done well with entertaining marketing, but he has said in the past that he wants the brands he works with to take a more empathetic approach to better connect with consumers. That will be how Rocket shows up under his leadership, as a more compassionate company.

“I’m moving the creative agenda from entertaining America to moving America, telling honest stories about the ups and downs of home purchase, home financing, so that the country will see Rocket as a really authentic brand that understands exactly how challenging it is to purchase or refinance a house, and what we’re doing about it to make it easier,” said Mildenhall.

He hopes to elevate the narrative about the cultural significance of home ownership, and how it’s a fundamental building block of the American dream.

“We cannot lose faith and confidence that that dream is no longer relevant to this next generation of homebuyers,” said Mildenhall, adding that Rocket has to work hard to develop products that make it easier for young people to get into properties in the first place and educate them so they feel less intimidated.

Luke McKelvey added that he believes one of the challenges the agency and brand have is to not be tone deaf, to make sure they understand the challenges people who are buying a home are facing and expressing that empathetically.

Mildenhall has a personal connection to home ownership and the confidence it can bring. Growing up in the north of England, he shared a “moldy bedroom” with his younger brothers. As a young Black man, he never thought home ownership would be in his future, but after landing a job at a London ad agency, he was able to purchase a small home at age 24.

“The first time I turned the keys and stepped inside this tiny little two-room house, I felt a sense of pride, dignity, identity, safety, security and achievement that I didn’t realize that people who looked like me, that came from the same communities as I, could feel,” he recalled.

He hopes to bring that pride to the current generation of Black and brown potential homeowners, who, by 2030, will be the majority of new home purchasers.

The new creative, which will be released in Q4, hopes to speak to the female heads of household who will be making the home buying decisions in the future. The work from Mirimar will be part creative and part community building, hosting conversations around what Mildenhall sees as the most proven asset to create generational wealth.

Neither the brand nor the agency would commit to doing a Super Bowl spot next year, but the majority of the work will come out late this year and early next year, which may coincide with the Super Bowl.