Departing from the tried-and-true advertising model of reverse mortgage spokesmen pitching the product, Generation Mortgage Company this week launched a new TV ad campaign, “Meet the Wilsons,” that features an average family and a lot of throwbacks to an era gone by.
The TV spot, currently being tested in four markets with plans to expand nationally, features The Wilsons: an average American couple with a pretty house and lots of home equity. The music is a nod to 60s era television shows and there isn’t a celebrity to be found.
“There was some discussion about who we thought a great spokesperson would be, but we decided that wasn’t how we wanted to approach it,” Carl Rojas, Generation’s chief financial officer told RMD. “We wanted to do an ad from a narrative standpoint, tell a story, but in a way the customer base is used to seeing it.”
The campaign, developed over three months and scheduled to run on stations including CNN, Fox News, the History Channel and MSCNB among others, is the first for Generation.
“We’ve been on the sidelines, mainly because we didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing,” Rojas says.
Joining the ranks of TV campaigns by AAG with spokesman Fred Thompson, Urban Financial featuring Robert Wagner and One Reverse Mortgage with Henry Winkler, Generation aims to bring a new perspective to reverse mortgage marketing.
“Here’s the classic American TV couple (let’s say Leave it to Beaver) taking out a reverse mortgage,” Rojas says. “This is the experience we’re trying to leave with people. It should leave them feeling good, not like they’ve used their home as a financing vehicle of last resort. This is the American dream, only in reverse, and of course they live happily ever after.”
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
