In October 2021, Casey Hurbis, the Chief Marketing Officer at Rocket Mortgage kicked off our Level Up professional development series by sitting down with Merri Jo Bales to talk about brand evolution and his lessons learned throughout his professional career.
Hurbis is a Spartan Alumni and currently the Chief Marketing Officer for Rock Central (Rocket Companies Centralized Company). He oversees both online and traditional marketing initiatives, while driving new, innovative strategies to captivate the audience of the nation’s largest and most trusted mortgage lender. To achieve these goals, Hurbis leads a marketing team of over 300 team members, known as Detroit’s premier in-house agency. The in-house agency was recently named one of Ad Age’s Best Places to Work 2021.
Under Hurbis’ leadership Rocket Mortgage launched the two highest rated Super Bowl commercials in 2021, starring actor/comedian Tracy Morgan showing how certain is better when it comes to home financing. This is the second year in a row that Rocket Mortgage received some of the highest ratings for Super Bowl commercials. In 2020, Rocket Mortgage launched a commercial starring Hollywood A-lister, Jason Momoa. Hurbis’ team also signed an exclusive multi-year partnership with the NFL, making Rocket Mortgage the first official mortgage sponsor of the NFL in over a decade. In addition, 2021 marked the second year of the Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl Squares Sweepstakes, giving fans the chance to win millions of dollars in prizes.
Along with Rocket Mortgage, Hurbis oversees the marketing efforts for 12 successful brands in the Rock Family of Companies, including Rocket Pro TPO, Rocket Homes, Rocket Loans, and Rocket Auto, helping to elevate these brands in their respective industries.
Hurbis joined the Rocket family in 2017 after 24 years in automotive marketing – most recently leading advertising and communications for FIAT, where he helped successfully reintroduce the FIAT brand to American car buyers thru cheeky and culturally relevant advertising and promotion.
The Three Key Principles
- You’ll see it when you believe it. Taking the opposite approach to “I’ll believe it when I see it”, because nothing significant has ever happened without someone believing in it first. We know that when we believe in our ability to impact the outcome, we dramatically increase our odds of success.
- The packaging is just as important as the contents. Before we can even get an audience in today’s world, we need to interest them enough to take the time and effort to open the packing to see the full content we’re communicating.
- Leadership should enable and empower. Empathy, listening and seeking out younger team members ideas and ways of thinking are what cultivates a strong team and a strong company culture.