GMAC Home Services

GMAC Home Services had grown through the acquisition of regional real estate groups, brought together as a new national company focused on the premium and luxury markets. The company was branded as part of GMAC, along with the GMAC look and feel which had been developed decades earlier for the mass-market automotive finance industry. This created dissonance for its two primary audiences—real estate agents and home buyers/sellers—between the brand promise and the brand experience. The company’s agent population quickly shrank, as did its sales.

We helped develop a new brand strategy, which inspired a complete renovation of the brand. Our primary objective was to realign the company’s promise with its messaging, visual presentation, and overall experience.

Several key decisions were made as part of our collaboration with the CMO and marketing team. A pivotal determination was bringing back the original names of the regional groups which had been left behind in the acquisition rollup process. This recaptured a great deal of the equity that had been lost in the brand transition. We designed a fresh identity system to honor the distinct group naming while aligning them with a common design approach.

The foundation of the brand positioning and messaging was a new tagline, “Live the Way You Dream.” The line fostered a sense of purpose and aspiration for both of the company’s primary audiences. It informed everything about the new brand, from how it spoke to how it looked to how it lived up to its promise. It also focused the brand on the customer experience, and on recognizing and celebrating home as the place where dreams are fostered and realized.

New brand storytelling emphasized how the concept of home connects all of us as part the larger community. A wide-ranging set of materials was produced that featured custom photography and iconography. We created a new company website, establishing a common platform across all regional markets. And the company’s environmental graphics program was redesigned, including its vital yard signs.

Following the rebrand, GMAC Home Services recovered from serious sales losses, rebuilt its agent population, and recaptured its market share.