Carrington finds marketing opportunity in home design show

Carrington was recently able to promote its strategy of serving underserved borrowers -- those with FICO scores below 640 -- in a segment on the television show 'Designing Spaces'

Carrington Mortgage Services has been heavily promoting its strategy of serving underserved borrowers of late. Now the company has a new way to get its message to potential customers – television.

Carrington will be featured on an episode of Lifetime’s hit home improvement show Designing Spaces, airing today. Raymond Brousseau, Carrington’s executive vice president of mortgage lending, said being featured on the show was a great way to promote Carrington’s focus on borrowers with sub-640 FICO scores.

“We continue to believe strongly in that strategy,” Brousseau said. “We continue to position the firm and our marketing efforts around developing that strategy further – getting to that one third of the population that falls into that category. When the marketing started to go out in March and April, it caught the attention of the director of Designing Spaces, who picked up the phone and called us.

“He educated us a little about the program. The show focuses on helping homeowners improve their homes or go out and find a home and remodel it,” Brousseau added. “In the show, they feature segments that are related – maybe not directly, but indirectly. They were looking to do a story on helping first-time home buyers. When they saw our press release about serving the underserved, they felt that the fit would be a really good one.”

It quickly became apparent that the show was a great marketing opportunity, Brousseau said.

“They helped us understand their audience, and we thought it was a good fit with the demographic we’re going after,” he said. “We thought the idea of sharing our strategy with viewers of that program had merit. We felt a good number of folks watching that program were either homeowners or had aspirations of buying a home. We felt that sharing our strategy around helping that segment of borrower would be worthwhile.”

In the segment, Carrington worked with a newly married couple to overcome obstacles in their home buying experience.

“They came out and visited one of our branches, they met with some clients and talked about the value of doing business with Carrington,” Brousseau said. “In the end I thought it was a really well-done piece. I thought it did a good job establishing the value of serving the underserved, and there was enough meaningful information in the segment to help borrowers who might be underserved to feel a little more optimistic about the future.”