Mortgage bank breaks company news via YouTube

When pulling up the video “Gangam Style” by Korean pop star Psy on YouTube, it’s shocking to find that this seemingly one-hit wonder has obtained 1,116,593,319 as of today.

According to Wikipedia, it is the first video in the history of the Internet to reach and surpass one billion views, but it’s also yet another indicator that everything is becoming more electronic — and YouTube is at the front and center of that.

So it makes sense that making major announcements like a change to your company’s name would be seen more via YouTube than a typical press release that may end up in someone’s spam folder.

That’s exactly what New American Mortgage CEO Casey Crawford thought when announcing the company’s name change on Jan. 1. It doesn't become NEWS until next month, Crawford states in the video, so YouTube viewers get to hear and see about it first.

“We are a company constantly on the move.  Always evolving, always looking for ways to bring more excellence to what we do, so we bring more value to the marketplace,” Crawford said in the announcement.

After being known as New American Mortgage for four years, Crawford explained that his company is evolving its brand and looking to differentiate itself from the competition. With that, the mortgage company will change its name to Movement Mortgage as of Feb. 1.

The announcement, posted to YouTube on Jan. 1, is somewhat short on viewers compared to Gangnam style, with fewer than a billion views. Nonetheless, for a niche mortgage market video, more than a thousand in two days could be considered nearly viral (at least that's the criteria at some other trade publications).

Many companies use YouTube for various marketing ploys. For example, a number of companies record regular video content to share with their followers. But it wasn’t until recently that companies started using YouTube as a vehicle to make announcements.

With hundreds of millions of users from around the world, YouTube is becoming an increasingly popular way for companies to push their latest information to users who may not have seen the news otherwise.

Who knows, maybe Movement Mortgage is starting its own trend.

mhopkins@housingwire.com