How Rocket Mortgage Won Over NFL Fans: Brand Activation Example
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A successful brand activation at a major event often comes down to one thing: creating memorable onsite connections that translate into valuable data. Leap’s fan engagement technology powers tens of thousands of events worldwide, helping brands captivate audiences while capturing actionable insights. Some brands take this even further, and Rocket Mortgage’s Super Bowl Experience activation is a standout example. They demonstrate how a brand shouldn’t be satisfied by simply engaging onsite attendees and capturing data, but by creating authentic connections and memorable experiences with their audiences.
At the NFL’s Fan Experience in downtown San Francisco’s Moscone Center during Super Bowl week, Rocket Mortgage delivered an event activation that exemplified how storytelling, technology, and data strategy can work together to drive remarkable results. Let’s dive into what made the elements of their onsite activation so effective.
The Messaging: Building a Brand Activation that Connects with Authenticity
Rocket Mortgage’s Super Bowl LX campaign set out to be a rallying cry for the American neighborhood. To bring this concept to life, the brand transformed its activation area into an immersive neighborhood, inspired by Bay Area front porches, bus stops, and famous architecture like the painted ladies. Every detail of Rocket Mortgage’s footprint reinforced how connection doesn’t happen by accident, it happens when people show up for their community and each other.
This message aligned perfectly with the themes of the NFL’s biggest fan event and resonated with thousands of sports fans. Just as football brings communities together, Rocket Mortgage showcased itself as a brand that supports those same relationships in everyday life. Their campaign inspired deep connections with fans for a few key reasons:
- It tapped into universal human truths of belonging, community, and home.
- It created emotional relevance beyond their product.
- It made the brand feel authentic, not transactional.
For event organizers, this underscores how technology can amplify a brand’s impact, but especially when the story is strong enough to carry it.
The Technology: Powering Seamless Fan Engagement with Leap
Behind the scenes, this activation was fueled by a seamless integration between Leap’s engagement platform and the NFL’s OnePass mobile app. Powered by Leap, the NFL OnePass app provided fans with a central hub for event information and the key to unlocking personalized experiences. This event mobile app is also how brands collect authenticated fan data in real time.
As fans entered onsite brand activations like Rocket Mortgage’s, they scanned their OnePass QR codes to instantly register their participation and tailor their experience. Fans were greeted by name, reinforcing the sense that they were stepping into a community designed specifically for them.
Throughout the space, connected digital touchpoints worked together to capture engagement data without interrupting the flow of the activation. This approach ensured that the technology remained invisible to the user while still delivering powerful results and deep data insights for the brand.
The Experience: Brand Activations That Drive Engagement
Rocket Mortgage designed its activation as a series of unique experiential journeys to engage fans. Attendees moved naturally from one interaction to the next, while the brand captured valuable attendee data at every step.
Dream Home Finder
At the center of the booth, the Dream Home Finder offered a gamified experience. Attendees could connect neighborhoods to NFL players and teams, and also identify potential dream home locations across the country using a geo-guessing game. As participants played, the system captured gameplay metrics, preferences, and selected destinations. This information was then paired with each fan’s profile, offering insight into where they live and where they aspire to move. For a company in the mortgage and home-buying industry, imagine the value of capturing these insights from prospective customers. They are goldmines for lead generation and customer acquisition!
Photo & Video Booth
Nearby, the neighborhood-style photo and video booth introduced a more personal layer to the experience. Once inside, guests were prompted to answer the question: “What does it mean to be a great neighbor?” Their responses were recorded as short video testimonials, and each fan received a branded photo strip to take with them as well. Each interaction was automatically tied to their engagement profile through OnePass, allowing Rocket Mortgage to collect user-generated content alongside structured data that serves as valuable material for their future marketing efforts.
This stop in the experience was brilliant marketing – it empowered fans to share personal perspective into what creates that intimate feel of neighborhood and community. The content provides Rocket Mortgage with organic marketing assets that not only align with, but amplify their brand messaging out in the market.
Mail Your Postcard
Attendees were encouraged to share their moments with others, extending Rocket Mortgage’s reach far outside the Super Bowl Experience. After snapping a picture in the photo booth, fans received two photo strips: one to keep as a souvenir and another to add to Rocket Mortgage’s neighborhood bus stop. They could also choose from a series of original postcards co-branded with Rocket Mortgage and Super Bowl. Fans could simply fill their postcard out to send to a friend and drop it into the booth’s mailbox. These were then mailed free of charge after the event. This simple addition helped reinforce the campaign’s theme of connection while creating additional brand touchpoints outside the venue.
NFL Player and Celebrity Meet & Greets
Throughout the week, meet-and-greet appearances of famous NFL players and celebrities drew consistent crowds to the space. Fans had the opportunity to take photos, interact with these public figures, and watch them participate in themed challenges tied to the idea of being a good neighbor. Some of these challenges included bench-pressing grocery bags or pushing trash cans as fast as they could. The chance to see and interact with NFL stars helped drive large crowds throughout the week, and Rocket Mortgage used best-in-class experiential concepts to make each moment exciting for fans.
The Data: Reaching Beyond the Event with First Party Data
As Rocket Mortgage’s broader campaign (including a Super Bowl commercial) generated awareness on a national scale, the activation functioned as a powerful engine for capturing high-quality, first-party data.
Every interaction within Rocket Mortgage’s booth contributed to a growing dataset that blended insights on demographics and consumer behavior. Over the five days of the Super Bowl Experience, Rocket Mortgage built a robust dataset that included:
- Travel origins of attendees
- Dream home preferences and locations
- Distance between current and desired place to live
- Favorite NFL teams
- Booth interactions, including who visited multiple times
This data flowed directly from Leap’s mobile app and activations into Rocket Mortgage’s marketing systems, enabling seamlessly targeted communications after the event. The data collected onsite informed their email outreach and other marketing efforts, allowing the brand to continue building relationships with attendees after they left the venue.
A Blueprint to Skyrocket Event Engagement
Rocket Mortgage’s presence at the Super Bowl Experience offers a clear example of what makes a successful brand activation – one built on connection, powered by technology, and sustained through data. By anchoring the experience in a meaningful narrative and leveraging seamless technology to execute it, this company created an activation that delivered both deep fan connection and measurable results.
Looking to fuel more authentic connections between brands and fans at your event, while capturing valuable data in the process? Contact our team to learn how Leap’s technology can make that possible with our attendee engagement solution.
