Fallon’s Quicken Loans ad: Sign a 30-year mortgage or be an un-American pussy, brah

 

For one fleeting moment, I thought Quicken Loans’s “Buy In” (or “#BuyIn”) TV commercial, the work of Minneapolis, Minn.-based agency Fallon, was a magnificent, self-aware satire of unscrupulous lending, the devaluation of patriotism and courage, and terrible advertising in general when the voiceover actor informed us that:

None of this makes rational sense. It only makes American sense.

It turns out that it was none of those things. The commercial is as sincere as it is boneheaded, which I suppose is its own sort of magnificence. They’re right, though—no part of this ad makes rational sense.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start with the text of the voiceover, delivered with the sort of cocky, vaguely bullying cadence you’d expect from, say, a creepy dudebro in his late twenties super-seriously pressuring his buddies to stop being pussies and just hook up with that drunk girl at a high school kegger:

The American Dream is terrifying. American history is the history of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do: cross that ocean, walk on that moon, fly. None of this makes rational sense. It only makes American sense. 

Here, the hard things show us who we are. Leaving your job to start your own thing. Having a kid when you still feel like a kid. Signing a 30-year mortgage on a home. Scary? Sure. But no match for our colossal self-belief. We’re supposed to do scary. Without scary, we don’t get to be brave. Buy in.

No, seriously.

* * *

Art Steiber, the vice president of marketing and sponsorships at Quicken Loans, told Ad Age that the campaign is specifically intended to assuage the fears of would-be homebuyers after the housing and financial crises of the last decade. And I get it; the economy’s improving, and there are undoubtedly people for whom homeownership is feasible but are understandably apprehensive about pulling the trigger.

But let’s remember that the subprime mortgage crisis was precipitated by predatory lenders hoodwinking consumers into taking out loans that they couldn’t afford and should have never been offered. The apprehension felt by consumers that reverberates years after the recession isn’t merely a marketing challenge for Quicken Loans to solve; it’s the hard-won wisdom that many people had their lives ruined for us to learn. Indeed, that fear is a good thing; it’s the final line of defense before you get pressured into making a bad decision.

It’s unseemly for Quicken Loans to dismiss that fear so cavalierly—and, worse still, make ignoring that fear some sort of virtuous deed. Buying a house shouldn’t be some brave, capricious decision that doesn’t make rational sense; it should be the result of a sober, dispassionate, realistic analysis of your financial situation and your personal goals.

This commercial, in fact, reminds me of an infamous ad from Century 21 in 2006, just before the housing meltdown. That spot—called “The Debate”—features a wife who’s bullying her husband into buying a house while their real estate agent joins in on the bullying via speakerphone. The tag-team pressure tactics work, the husband agrees to buy the house, and it’s supposed to be a happy moment—until, presumably, they defaulted on their loan a couple of years later and had to move into his in-laws’ basement. It’s pretty heinous:

Fuckin’ Suzanne and her research.

What Quicken Loans is trying to do is tell consumers not to trust their instincts. They’re dressing it up in patriotic imagery and the themes of courage, but the message remains the same: ignore the part of you that’s telling you to think this through and do it. Advertising does this all the time, of course, and it’s easy to laugh it off when we’re told to Call Today, Don’t Delay for infomercial ephemera. But when the same technique is applied to buying a house instead of a Slap Chop, just a few years after the destruction of so many people’s personal wealth stemming in part from imprudent house-buying, it’s some kind of appalling.

* * *

Let’s take a moment to recognize how wonderfully misguided this passage from the voiceover is:

American history is the history of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do: cross that ocean, walk on that moon, fly. None of this makes rational sense. It only makes American sense.

Let’s ignore that they’ve glossed over a lot of American history with “ocean, moon, fly.” (And we’ll ignore the fact that the chronology is off; I’m pretty sure we were flying before moonwalking, both literally and otherwise.) I love that their misguided appeal to American exceptionalism included the implication that “rational” and “American” are antonyms.

More seriously, though, that passage is factually inaccurate: all those things did make rational sense. Finding efficient trade routes, beating the Soviet Union in the Space Race during the Cold War, and traveling quickly between faraway places—what parts of any of those things are irrational? Quicken Loans gives away the game inadvertently here; they know that, for many people, buying a home is an irrational decision—based more on ego and appearances than what’s best for them financially—but they try to downplay that irrationality by falsely claiming other things were irrational, too.

I don’t blame them, of course; more honest copy would read:

American history is the history of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do: Plessy v. Ferguson, the Vietnam War, KFC Double Downs. None of this makes rational sense. It only makes American sense.

But it doesn’t quite have the same effect.

* * *

Not to belabor the point, but not everybody needs to own a home. And more importantly, not everybody needs to aspire to own a home.

One of the creepier things about the commercial is the way it presents homeownership as a necessary component of living the American Dream and, by extension, being a true American. Reinforcing the idea that there’s one single ideal life to which we should all aspire is pretty pernicious; it leads to disappointment, crippling debt, and a perpetual cycle of acquiring things to fill an ever-expanding hole in your soul.

A lot of advertising is predicated on making products seem like universal desires; it’s easier to convince somebody to want a product if they’ve already been conditioned to accept that product as something they’re supposed to want. But forced conformity is bad for us all. Don’t get me wrong; if someone chooses to want their little box made of ticky-tacky, then that’s fine, and I’m not judging—as long as it is indeed their choice and not the choice of societal pressures and terrible TV commercials.

(The commercial also presents “having a kid when you still feel like a kid” as a noble thing to do, which is also pretty messed up—being a parent isn’t for everybody and arguably isn’t for most people, and those who choose to become parents should probably at least feel like young adults before popping the little ones out—but that’s a rant for another day.)

* * *

But here’s the part of the ad that annoys me the most: they’re commodifying courage. Or, more bluntly, they’re trying to convince us that buying shit is an act of courage.

Advertising has long tried to convince us that buying shit is a legitimate form of self-expression. In lieu of developing a personality, the clothes and the cars we buy can convey that for us. In lieu of making actual choices in our lives, we can sate our need for freedom by choosing from different, mostly identical brands of cola with varying caloric content. I know, that’s nothing new or revelatory.

But there’s something grotesque about an ad like this one that tells us that, in lieu of actually doing something courageous, we can just buy something really expensive. I’ve seen a lot of ads attempt to commodify all sorts of things—love, charity, hope, security, etc.—but I’m straining to think of an ad that explicitly said, “Be brave, buy this thing.”

Sen. John McCain has talked a lot about “defining courage down”—that is, devaluing courage by using it to describe all manner of acts that aren’t genuinely courageous. While McCain’s courage credentials are impeccable¹, I disagree with some of what he says; I think he defines courage too narrowly, which unfairly cheapens some of the acts of everyday, mundane bravery that are rarely applauded. Where I think he and I would have no quarrel, though, is saying that buying shit is not courageous, and the idea that it is will simultaneously make people less able to recognize actual courage and less inclined to do actually courageous things.

People have to do genuinely courageous things all the time, and not necessarily in the big, taking-bullets, rescuing-people-from-a-fire sort of way; they move to new cities, they start and end relationships, they follow their dreams and help others do the same. It’s gross to see courage so nonchalantly trivialized. Fuck off, Quicken Loans.

* * *

It’s perhaps unfair to talk smack about an ad campaign without saying what I would’ve done differently. So just spitballin’ here, but maybe something like this?

We know buying a home can be scary. We remember what it was like seven years ago. 

Buying a home might not be right for everybody, and it might not be right for everybody right now. But we’ve come a long way since 2008, and if homeownership is something you’ve been thinking about, it may be worth taking another look into it. 

Talk to your financial advisor. Talk to your family. Figure out what your goals and resources are. And if you decide that buying a home is right for you, we want to help. Call us when you’re ready. Quicken Loans. USA, all the way, numba one.

Okay, it’s not my finest bit of copywriting, but better, right?

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¹All right, fine, but can we at least agree that his courage credentials were impeccable pre-Palin?