Will Quicken Loans just rebrand to Rocket Mortgage already?
Quicken Loans launched Rocket Mortgage in November 2015, spent billions since then building the Rocket brand, unseated Wells Fargo last year as America’s top retail mortgage lender, redid the Rocket brand this year, and rolled up all consumer finance divisions of the company into Rocket-named brands.
So it’s no surprise the $185 million remodeling of Cleveland Cavaliers arena—known as Quicken Loans Arena until now—will launch with Rocket branding.
The new name is Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, and this may very well bring Quicken Loan’s branding journey full circle.
Quick history on the Quicken Loans brand:
Dan Gilbert founded the company as Rock Financial in 1985, sold to Intuit in 1999, and adopted Intuit’s Quicken branding to become Quicken Loans. In 2002, Gilbert bought the company back from Intuit but has kept licensing the Quicken Loans brand from Intuit all these years.
Meanwhile they invest about half a billion per year to fuel the Rocket brand, and now we’ve got this week’s Rocket branding move with the Cavs arena, which Gilbert also owns.
It looks like a very logical progression toward Rocket replacing Quicken Loans—maybe sooner than we think.
When they launched Rocket’s new branding January 31, 2019, they refined the Rocket logo to a modern, clean look that can apply to all finance and real estate services, including Rocket Mortgage for home loans, Rocket Homes for home buying/selling services, Rocket Loans for personal loans, and Rocket HQ for credit report and financial advice.
The rocket ship in the logo was replaced by what Quicken Loans CEO Jay Farner called “the magic O,” which is a red open-bottomed O in the word ‘Rocket’ that enables them to be creative with brand promos by placing topical things inside the O.
Here at The Basis Point, we’ve been calling Rocket’s new O the “circle of power” instead of magic O, for two reasons:
(1) We have great respect for Dan Gilbert’s circle of power. In addition to Quicken/Rocket, there are about 100 other family companies in the circle of power that all work together to revitalize cities like Detroit and Cleveland as well as serve millions of consumers with financial advice, sports, and pop culture with companies like song lyric company Genius and sneaker exchange StockX.
(2) The branding versatility and creativity they get by being able to place imagery into the O makes it a circle of power. We’ve been playing around with the circle of power with our creative director Dennis just for fun—because we’re fans and because brand consulting is one of our core businesses, so we can’t help ourselves.
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Here are some we did just messing around back when it was first announced:
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And here’s a couple we did after the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse announcement yesterday. We’re a bit surprised they didn’t give the world a look like this when they announced it, especially since it involves the Cavs, another family company. Surely the Quicken/Rocket brand scientists are cooking up many inventions with the circle of power, but we humbly offer this fan art from our lab in the meantime.
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And we’ve got more to come on the Rocket circle of power, including a hometown tribute from our publishing director Spencer who’s raised in Detroit just like Quicken/Rocket.
Now to bring this story full circle back to the Cavs’ new home, here’s a classic tweet from a smartass sports fan, LOL!
The Cavaliers are right to change the name of their arena to Rocket Mortgage Field House because there is going to be 30-years of very low interest there.
— Nick Coombs (@wisconick99) April 9, 2019
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Reference:
– Quicken Loans Arena In Cleveland Changes Name to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (HousingWire)
– Social Media Reacts to Quicken Loans Arena Changing Name To Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (WYKC)
– Quicken Loans Launches New Rocket Mortgage Logo (Ad Age)