Better Mortgage feels your pain in comic campaign by ButterCo

Your life is hell already. Brands shouldn’t add to the stress.

That’s essentially the message from Better Mortgage in three new commercials from agency ButterCo that are bleak yet hilarious, with strong writing and amusing acting performances. The ads feature an air traffic controller, a detective and a bomb disposal specialist—three classic high-anxiety professions—who are wearily going about their work and don’t have the time or emotional energy for a complication home-loan process.

Luckily, Better Mortgage makes it easy.

The spots are simply shot, which puts the focus on character building, particularly through the dialogue, which is appealingly fun and peculiar—and sometimes downright hilarious. (The disbelief and disgust with which the detective blurts out “fissure” is a highlight.)

Matt Muir at Revelator was the director.

“Better is still a relatively unknown brand. We wanted to take a swing at presenting the product and the brand in a fun and unexpected way,” said Michael Rosenau, head of design and creative at Better. “Home loans are not cool, exciting or fun. But what customers get from one can change their lives. We were looking for a surprising way to communicate that.”

He added: “Americans are drinking from the fire hose in their day-to-day life, so we wanted to acknowledge that with an angle you wouldn't expect from a mortgage company.”

“This is the first of three campaigns we’re doing with Better, and we were given a lot of rope. We knew there were core messages to get across, but how we went about getting to those is where all the fun lies,” said Jeffrey Butterworth, founder of ButterCo. 

“We’re never afraid of the absurd, random and even potty jokes, but they have to be in service of the message and this campaign is right in line with what that blend of quasi-dumb humor offset by a super practical product offering can look like when it hits right.”

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