Project Overview
After 18 years in the Home Lending industry with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage as a Senior Vice President, Yatin Karnik realized that home buyers — as well as those looking to refinance existing mortgages — needed a solution to democratize mortgages and simply get a better deal. As a staunch advocate for residential home borrowers, Yatin is on a mission to educate borrowers about how big banks and lending institutions are repeatedly taking advantage of consumers throughout the lending process.
In furtherance of this aim, Yatin founded Confer, Inc. Through this company, he developed a revolutionary, disruptive application that allows consumers to compare loan estimates, negotiate loans, identify “junk fees,” and expose the manner in which large lending institutions have been cheating borrowers for decades due to the lack of conformity between regulations, lending institutions, and other participants.
Confer Inc. operates Meta Mortgage, an innovative mortgage platform relying on real-time analytics, powered by artificial intelligence and continuous machine learning to customize a mortgage that is financially beneficial to the borrower.
Confer’s app is a free and simple one-stop app that provides borrowers with the ability to shop, compare, and customize mortgage products to suit their needs and potentially save the consumer thousands on their mortgage, whether purchase or refinance. By simply uploading a picture of their loan estimate, the app identifies more affordable options and compares mortgage offers with different interest rates and monthly payments, while considering points, origination charges, and fees to find the most beneficial mortgage offering.
The Problem
The official launch date of the Confer app on iOS and Android was April 1st, 2022, and continues to disrupt the mortgage industry as we know it. However, Yatin knew that his company and its app would need a comprehensive media strategy and PR initiatives to reach a larger market of consumers in order to meet its 2022 goals.
The Strategy
Our team began working with Yatin at the end of February 2022 and was up against a tight deadline of April 1 for Confer Inc.’s mobile app launch. To garner Yatin and Confer the interest and media coverage he desired, we embarked on a blitzkrieg of sequentially planned article topics talking about mortgages, origination fees, junk fees, and other loan estimate challenges to position Yatin as the expert in all things residential mortgages.
Business Impact (results)
Our strategy allowed us to secure approximately 18 media placements within the first 45 days of Yatin’s campaign, roughly 10 of which were live and/or published by his April 1st deadline. By evidencing his industry expertise and knowledge, Confer Inc. was positioned to successfully launch its residential homebuyer mortgage solution. In addition to those articles, we also successfully secured a feature story in Forbes, as well as an interview with Bloomberg TV’s “Savvy Ventures Show” hosted by Merilee Kern. The Forbes story came out a few days prior to Confer Inc.’s app launch, and the Bloomberg TV interview aired afterward.
Confer’s revolutionary app and Yatin’s expertise provided us the leverage we needed to then capitalize on what became a trending news story of “affordability” for homebuyers. Initially, the angle was how buyers could use the app to compete with cash offers and rapidly rising home prices. As interest rates began to rise and inflation ruled the business media airwaves, the angle transitioned to using the app to help buyers find affordable mortgages during turbulent economic times.
This approach allowed us to secure over 15 top-tier and industry-specific media placements within a 30-day time period between mid-May and mid-June. Confer Inc. is now leveraging its media success and awareness to focus on raising investment dollars and growing its user base.