You’re definitely going to watch Rocket’s Super Bowl ad. The company made sure of it
Prices for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl on NBC this year averaged $8 million. For the privilege of paying that, advertisers are required to spend an additional $8 million to buy ad time on other NBC sports broadcasts and the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
With that much money invested (all before any is spent on actually creating a Super Bowl campaign) brands need to ensure they get your attention. This year, Rocket Mortgage and Redfin are aiming to do that by combining three things that will produce a large Venn diagram of interest: Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogers’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”; a heartwarming commercial airing during the game; and, most crucially, giving viewers the chance to win a million-dollar house.
Rocket Cos. CMO Jonathan Mildenhall says any successful Super Bowl campaign needs to have three different stages.
“The only way to win at the Super Bowl is to win a disproportionate share of conversation pregame, as well as during game, and, increasingly, the progressive brands are talking about postgame conversation,” Mildenhall says. “For us the pregame was Lady Gaga behind the scenes, then during the game there is the spot, and we’re announcing the Great American home search for people to participate in over the days after the game.”
So Mildenhall is playing Super Bowl chess, not checkers.
Great American Home Search
On February 4, Redfin (acquired by Rocket last year) announced the contest, calling it a “never-been-done-before scavenger hunt” and inviting people to download or update the Redfin app to participate.
The search begins February 8 at 8 p.m. ET, immediately after Rocket and Redfin’s Super Bowl spot airs. Redfin will then release six app-exclusive clues over the next 48 hours for players to use Redfin’s search tools and filters to find the million-dollar home, which actually appears directly in the commercial. The first eligible player to solve all six clues and identify the home wins the house.
It’s a double-play attempt both to get people’s attention and immediately boost Redfin’s competitive muscle amid category leaders Zillow and Realtor.com.
“Turning up and just speaking to America using celebrities, bad jokes, and flashing a logo quickly becomes invisible, so we have to do a massive activation,” Mildenhall says. “Calling this activation the Great American Home Search is a deliberate attempt to create a strategic lockout from the biggest competitors because I want people to spontaneously associate Redfin and home search.”
Neighborhood watch
The audience-participation aspect of Rocket’s strategy is just one lever the company is pulling for the Super Bowl. The spot itself is another.
Mildenhall says the creative behind the ad was inspired by the stark reality of how disconnected most of us are from the people we live next door to. According to a March 2025 Pew Research Study, only about 26% of Americans know most of their neighbors. And the percentage of people who know and trust their neighbors has decreased 8% since 2015.
This is part of the reason why Rocket enlisted Lady Gaga to reinterpret the Fred Rogers classic “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” After teasing fans with a behind-the-scenes video of Gaga’s recording session a week before the game, the actual Super Bowl ad shows the emotional roller coaster of moving and the evolving dynamics of neighborhoods through the eyes of two teenage girls.
Mildenhall says the goal is to spark a more culturally significant conversation with America about being better neighbors and being a better neighbor as a civic responsibility.
“Americans ache for something and we see it in the stats. People are lonelier than ever before and need excuses and reasons to connect,” Mildenhall says. “People are struggling to find inspiration to connect with their neighbors. And we are going to be culturally significant brands because we’re going to tap into the cultural tension that can help lift up more Americans than any other tension. And this story is pressing into the loneliness that people feel in their own neighborhoods.”
For most brands, having the Great American Home Search would be enough. But Rocket and Redfin have added the layer of a tearjerker spot scored by Lady Gaga. The combination of classic Super Bowl ad storytelling with audience participation to drive app downloads puts this on the short list for best all-around big game spot.
Setting the tone
Last year, Rocket’s Super Bowl ad revolved around the dream of home ownership. According to a variety of recent studies, anywhere between 85% and 94% of Americans believe owning a home is good for the country and a fundamental stepping stone to the American dream.
The ad “Own the Dream” was set to John Denver’s classic “Country Roads.” The twist was that coming out of the commercial break, the brand had arranged for the song to be played in the stadium, so as the ad ended, viewers came back to the game with the crowd singing the same song in real time. It was viewed nearly 250 million times on social media, and brand awareness has gone from 23% to 37%, according to the company.
Mildenhall says when he met with Lady Gaga for this year’s ad, she was very respectful of the original song but he wanted it to be something different. His message was, “This cannot be a lullaby to America, it has to be a rallying cry to America.” He adds that “she was up to that, went into the studio, and it’s amazing.”
For years, Rocket went for comedy in its Super Bowl spots, with big laughs from the likes of Jason Momoa (2020), Tracy Morgan (2021), and Anna Kendrick (2022). But Mildenhall says that while both the Morgan and Kendrick ads won the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter, it wasn’t the right fit for the brand.
“Every time that somebody gets their mortgage, refinances their home, or gets out of bad credit card debt, we’re helping people get into college, or buy the house, and facilitating the American dream,” he says. “But our past approach would kind of cheapen that because we were getting celebrities doing jokes, and there’s nothing really funny about what we do.”
The short long game
Most Super Bowl ads are what marketers call top-of-funnel work, basically vibes-based brand building for the longer term. But Mildenhall says marketers are under incredible scrutiny from their board and shareholders about every dollar, and it’s tough to show short-term value in longer-term brand marketing.
A creatively executed contest is a shortcut to short-term results, even in the Super Bowl. DoorDash pioneered this concept with “DoorDash All the Ads” in 2024, getting more than 8 million contest submissions and 11 billion impressions. And its in-game ad was just a promo code.
Rocket is combining that with Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogers over a heartwarming story about an emotional part of the American dream. The spot itself is a great piece of brand marketing, but it’s also got a clue for the contest embedded in it, which will encourage contestants to watch it over and over. Meanwhile, the contest is driving downloads of the Redfin app, which will undoubtedly satisfy short-term justification of the big game investment.
“We’re going to ensure that we’ve got eyeballs on the spot looking for the home, but it’s only after it airs that the first of six clues are given, and the remaining six clues are given over a 48-hour period to ensure that Rocket and Redfin are in the postgame conversation,” Mildenhall says. “So the new strategy that I would implore all marketers to be thinking about is you’ve got three stages of Super Bowl investment and one of those stages has to be dominated by your audience participation.”
If you win that house, though, just remember to learn your neighbors’ names.