Costa Mesa-based Ditech.com, known for its TV commercials and billboards, is looking to boost its name another way.
The online mortgage lender plans to cut back on billboards along freeways and increase its presence via big search sites such as Google and Yahoo.
“We will see the mix change in 2007,” said Richard Powers Jr., a self-professed branding expert in the lending industry who recently took over as general manager at Ditech’s home near South Coast Plaza.
This summer, Powers replaced Mike McCarthy, who quietly bolted to a rival mortgage lender. McCarthy left after negotiations collapsed over “other career opportunities” within the consumer businesses of Ditech’s parent company, Residential Capital Corp.
Residential Capital, known as ResCap, is part of GMAC Financial Services LLC.
Powers joined Ditech in mid-August from Metrocities Mortgage LLC, where he headed the Western division of the privately held lender in Sherman Oaks. Metrocities closed on $10 billion in loans in 2005.
GMAC is undergoing rapid change,something that 50-year-old Powers is set to play a key role in helping to shape.
He jets back and forth across the country from OC to Horsham, Pa., and Bloomington, Minn., where far flung pieces of the GMAC home mortgage operations are.
Powers is helping to pen a strategic plan through 2012 to revitalize ResCap, with part of that including Ditech.
For more on this story, see the Nov. 13 edition of the Business Journal.
