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.
“We’re in the final throes of getting this plan approved,” Powers said.
Ditech isn’t up for sale, he said. The company is looking to raise its profile after General Motors Corp. said in August it sold a 51% stake in GMAC for $14 billion to an investor group, led by hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management. The pact could wrap up by the end of the year.
“We are tightly integrated into Residential Capital, so there are no plans to sell the company. But there are big plans to grow,” Powers said. “Cerberus brings us capital. I am confident that the capital will be there to buy something if we decide to do that.”
Along with Powers, Ditech has hired a marketing gun to help promote its name.
Keith Goldberg, a veteran ad agency executive who helped develop Capital One Services Inc.’s successful TV campaign “What’s in your Wallet?” joined Ditech as marketing director starting this week.
His mission: revitalize the Ditech name, boosting the company’s image through a mix of online and TV advertising, and to a lesser extent through newspapers, radio and billboards.
“I look forward to the creative challenge of helping Ditech.com take its brand to the next level,” Goldberg said.
“We already have great brand recognition, but a lot more could be done,” said Powers, who only would say that “many millions” of dollars is spent annually on advertising. “It’s fair to say that the company wants to overplay its growth component.”
Ditech employs about 725 workers at its Costa Mesa headquarters at 3200 Park Center Drive. It lost about 100 of them as it shifted jobs to an Arizona office it opened in 2005, Powers said.
The office in Tempe is Ditech’s first outside OC. About 150 people have been hired there during the past year, with plans for up to 100 more in the coming year, Powers said.
“We are committed to staying here in Orange County,” he said.
He’ll continue to emphasize technology,to make the home loan application process faster,as a way to keep labor costs and other expenses down, he said.
Powers has hired up some talent from struggling mortgage lenders that have laid off local workers.
Last week, Kansas City-based H & R; Block Inc. said it’s considering a sale of its Irvine-based Option One Mortgage Corp. amid a slowdown in the mortgage business.
There are no plans to outsource sales jobs to India or elsewhere, Powers said.
“The business market here in Orange County is very deep,” he said.
And he remains cautiously optimistic of the housing market despite signs of a slowdown.
He points to a recent comment made by Fritz Henderson, chief financial officer of General Motors, on a conference call with Wall Street analysts.
Henderson was quoted on the call as saying GMAC could see growth in expanded auto financing and “continued growth in mortgage market share despite a difficult market.”
“I couldn’t have said it any better, Powers said.
