Mortgage Bankers Association

Mortgage Bankers Association: Media Training and Public Relations:

As part of its efforts to promote “National Homeownership Month” in June 2006 for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), Qorvis’ research indicated that the demographics of the key target audience — first-time home buyers — were very similar to those who attended minor league baseball games. As a result, Qorvis recommended that MBA work cooperatively with a number of teams in key markets across the country.

The sponsorships included specially designated “Homeownership Night” games for each team, complete with scoreboard messages on how to buy a home, giveaways between innings at the games and even an apple pie giveaway to remind fans that owning a home was as American as baseball and apple pie. Qorvis extended the value of the sponsorship with each team by pitching a story to local media about the special night game and MBA’s Home Loan Learning Center website. This allowed MBA to meet its main goal of dramatically increasing the traffic to this website. In fact, average hits per day more than tripled during the campaign.