A scent of Change Is In The Air: explanation

It has been a while now that I have been working on a new marketing campaign called the scent of change. Now that it is totally released, I would like to introduce you to my marketing campaign.

The Company
I am working for the RPM office of Mountain View, a mortgage banker. The particularity of this office is that it is implementing the mortgage planning concepts, which is not consider mortgage as a debt, but as a large cash in transaction. You can use this money to secure your finance and invest it, or to use it for your retirement plan, among others. For more details, you can log on Jerome's Sierra blog or on this webpage.

The market
The mortgage market is focused on rates. Indeed, both clients and most of the mortgage agents emphasize the importance of having a low rate. But actually, this is a misconception most of people have.

The problematic
If we look more closely, rate is not the most important factor of a good mortage transaction. If we refer to the mortgage planning doctrine, as Steven Marshal or Doug Andrew explain it, rate is not that important. We should not forget that in the US, interests of the home mortgage are tax deductible. Therefore, the money of the interest will get back to you in the end. What people should more focus about, it is about having a mortgage payments adapted to your situation, in order to be able to pay it, and moreover to secure your finances.

That has been the cause of the mortgage market crisis. Most of the people that got a subprime mortgage could not pay their mortgage on time. These people have not been adviced properly, and did not have secure their finance.

To come back on a marketing point of view, our vision of the mortgage products is that rates are not that important, what is crucial, is the mortgage planning, getting the right mortgage to achieve both your short term and long term financial goals.
To stand out of the competition, and to affirm ourselves as early adopters, we aimed to develop a new vision, the scent of change.

Therefore, our problematic would be, how can we stand out of the competition, and to affirm our differences as mortgage planners?




The concept
We thus decided to break the mortgage industry communications standards:

• Use of an olfactory marketing campaign
• Not to talk about rates, but about financial security and building wealth

Therefore, we came up with the scent of change: "a scent of change is in the air". The scent of change refers to the olfactory marketing campaign and the floral theme, with the lavender, but also about how mortgage planning will change the vision of the mortgage investment.

The campaign
We have a multi channel campaign, including emailing, website (www.scentofchange.com), mailing, seminar and brochures.

Our goals are first to bring people to our seminar, and then to get the awareness of our clients to educate them about mortgage planning.


I will probably talk more in details of the operation later on. What do you think about it?