For many people, mortgages, home buying and personal finances are topics that can often seem intimidating or too dense to fully understand. This creates a very real barrier for those looking to improve their financial standing or to buy a home. To address these pain points, Rocket Mortgage and the greater Rocket Companies strive to be the go-to source for those seeking reliable financial education in a way that is easy to consume. Along with our Learning Center, which shares out over 260 relevant articles a month, The Red Desk Season 3 YouTube series was developed to provide approachable and informative video content around people’s most pressing financial questions. The overall desired result was to build positive brand awareness for Rocket Mortgage and the Rocket Companies across YouTube, where tutorials and explainer content is commonly searched for.
For Season 3 of The Red Desk, we decided to broaden our focus by branching outside of the basic mortgage topics to also include broader, but still relevant, financial themes. To find these topics, the team examined the articles with the highest SEO rankings for each business within the Rocket Companies (Rocket Loans, Rocket Money, Rocket Homes, Rocket Mortgage). The goal was to prioritize the topics that were relevant to the greater client goal of eventually buying a home, while also being searched enough to be “in-demand” information among the general population. SEO queries that were already dominated by very popular video results were weeded from consideration, unless they were especially relevant.
The visuals of the work incorporated key brand elements such as our illustration style, the prominent Rocket Red and the Rocket “O” throughout the videos. These fundamentals were woven through the design elements that popped up on screen and directly into the set and show title. This allowed the videos to feel uniquely “Rocket” without requiring each moment to be explicitly branded, potentially dissuading viewership.
Graphs, title cards and relevant illustrations played a large role in making the content more consumable. Topics were divided into distinct sections that became more in-depth as the videos progressed, ensuring all viewers had the required basic details before bigger, related questions were delved into. Creative metaphors and moments of levity were introduced to provide further clarity and to avoid the trap of becoming too serious or dry. These metaphors were further brought to life through animations built from our illustration guidelines.
Finally, to build more interest in the series and cultivate greater credibility in the YouTube space, the team partnered with established content creators who had a shared intended audience such as the Anazala Family and ZHC Crafts. Within one of their typical content drops, each creator provided a quick overview of the series and laid out the real educational benefits in a way designed to fit their specific channel.
In 2023, the team released 30 Red Desk episodes, each more than 3 minutes long, garnering over 11.6M views at a consistent $.02 cost per view. These views also saw consistently high watch times, with the average percentage viewed being 59.9% for the season. Finally, the season brought 2,230 new subscribers for the Rocket Learn channel, a win overall considering the content type is typically only consumed on an as-needed basis, like when someone has a specific question.
Additional links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1oz7jN54PU&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LCjsvltDx4&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80TxDBdKm48&feature=youtu.be
