Abba came to Habito from a background in media and is now proud to make “batshit crazy mortgage ads” that speak to Habito’s strong purpose of setting people free from the hell of getting a mortgage. Abba explains that everything they do creatively comes from customer insights and admits that they do it “in a ludicrous manner.” There are, for example, TV ads showing animated characters being gruesomely killed by their mortgages, and the admittedly gorgeous print campaign depicting the mortgage kama sutra, and the erotic novel called The Road to Completion that promises “to put the moans back into your mortgage.” 

Abba is a “huge evangelist” of purposeful marketing but admits that telling people about doing the right thing can be really boring. It’s a big challenge to make purpose interesting. If you can get people to engage in your ads so much that they complain about them, she maintains, you’re doing a good job. “Every moment of making a Habito ad is terrifying”. She talks about some huge risks they’ve taken, and some they’ve had to reject. VCs do not want to take massive creative risks, so making incredibly risky advertising was never the obvious choice for a VC-backed start-up like Habito. 

Abba discusses her approach to Habito’s relationship with its creative agency, Uncommon. She is “inherently biased” in favor of creative agencies as that is where she came up, and she trusts the level o creativity that comes out of agencies. Her advice for working with a creative agency is to constantly share the work as it is being produced - even in the roughest state - so there are no surprises or disappointments.

Abba finishes up by talking about how they test their ads once they’re ready to make sure they’re doing exactly what they want to do and then they tweak them based on people’s reactions.  One thing is for sure: whatever they're doing, it's working.

See Habito’s “batshit crazy” advertising here, look at their mortgage kama sutra here, and read The Road to Completion here. 

• Follow @habitomortgages on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/habitomortgages/?hl=en
• Follow Abba @Peckham79 on Twitter  https://twitter.com/peckham79?lang=en
• Or find Abba on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/abba-newbery-8216905

Scratch is made in partnership with Attest, a consumer research platform with access to over 110 million consumers across 50 markets. Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing innovation consultancy that develops strategies and capabilities that help businesses grow faster. Today's episode was produced by Leanne Kilroy and hosted by Eric Fulwiler. 

Find Rival online at www.wearerival.com, LinkedIn, Twitter. 

Find Eric on LinkedIn and tweet him @efulwiler.

Say hi at [email protected], we’d love to hear from you. 

Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing innovation consultancy that develops strategies and capabilities that help businesses grow faster. Past guests include CMOs from Mastercard, GE, Shell, Hyperloop, Adobe, PepsiCo, and Papa Johns.

If you’re interested in learning more about marketing from successful CMOs, we compiled a list of the top 5 CMO podcasts to listen to in 2024; check it out here 🔗  https://www.wearerival.com/content-hub-articles/cmo-podcasts-you-cannot-afford-to-miss-in-2024