Quicken Loans just announced that it has entered into an agreement with a new agency to head up its massive marketing and advertising efforts.
According to an article from AdAge by Adrianne Pasquarelli and Megan Graham, IPG MediaBrands’ Universal McCann will now be the agency of record responsible for Quicken Loans’ media planning and buying.
Rock Holdings, Quicken Loans' parent company, has already made considerable investments in the Quicken Loans brand, and it looks like it will continue to do invest in the brand.
Last year, Quicken Loans dropped a whopping $328.9 million on measured media in the U.S., according to stats from Kantar Media.
That’s a pretty penny, and with the recent rebranding of In-House Realty as Rocket Homes, another subsidiary of Rock Holdings, behind the Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage branding, it appears that Rock Holdings has no intentions of scaling back the energy it puts behind the Quicken Loans brand.
According to AdAge, UM is already working to set up a dedicated office in Detroit to service the Quicken Loans account. The firm will begin operations as a 40-employee team in the 1001 Woodward Ave. building, which is under management by a company called Bedrock that is also under Dan Gilbert’s–founder and chairman of Quicken Loans and Rock Ventures–umbrella, according to Crain’s Detroit Business.
Next year, the UM team will move into a permanent office in the 23,000-square-foot Bedrock-owned First National Building and expand to 150 employees.
"We went through a very intentionally long process to make sure we found the perfect partner, not just from a collaboration and media buying and strategy standpoint, but also the right partner from a cultural standpoint," Quicken Loans Chief Marketing Officer Casey Hurbis told AdAge.
Hurbis told Crain’s that one of the big factors in selecting UM in addition to cultural fit was its tech forwardness and that he expects to see fresh ideas and new strategies to apply at Quicken.