Beginning in February, Washington Mutual unveiled its new “Whoo Hoo!” campaign which tries to capture how its customers feel about the company’s brand (Figure 1). The bright magenta and blue ads are becoming a ubiquitous part of web navigation to some of the major portals, and it appears that some of the buzz around the brand is infectious given the double digit uptick in search traffic to WaMu’s checking pages since the campaign was launched (Figure 2).

Figure 1: WaMu Whoo Hoo! Creative

Visitors to the WaMu domain rose 5% from February to March. Following the start of the Whoo Hoo! campaign in February, search traffic surged with a 59% boost in consumers visiting WaMu’s savings pages, with a further increase in March (+55%). Yahoo! search traffic to WaMu’s savings pages grew by 69% from February to March, with Google traffic also climbing an additional 13% since February.

Figure 2: Top 10 Consumer Referral Sources to WaMu Checking Pages

Taking a look at the sheer volume of search terms, the numbers are staggering from the first three months in 2008 compared to all of last year. The term “wamu” appeared in searches between January of 2008 and March of 2008 over 1,000% more times than in all of 2007 combined. Clearly the constant presence of WaMu’s ads have made an impact on consumers, as nearly 100% more search referrals have come in for WaMu throughout the past three months in 2008 with the beginning of the “Whoo Hoo” campaign. It appears that the strategies of placement and even the core messaging behind WaMu’s campaign are speaking to consumers who have been in turn actively seeking out the bank. Compared to the traditional messaging from banks, it seems like making an emotional statement with a cute little bright blue and magenta banner is paying off for WaMu. Oh yeah, and “Whoo Hoo” is pretty catchy too.

With a recession under way or just around the bend (depending on whom you talk to) the Fed stepped up on January 22nd to try to mitigate the effects of the home loans crisis with a 3.5% drop in the current rate. Although there is debate as to the efficacy of the measure, Compete analysis showed a large overall spike in consumer traffic during the week of the first rate cut announcement in January.

During the week of January 20th when the first rate cut was announced, mortgage consumer volume rose 10% over the previous week, and an impressive overall increase of 47% since the week of December 30th. Looking specifically at refinance and purchase consumers, direct lenders Countrywide and Wells Fargo both made the most headway in attracting consumers following the announcements.

Among refinance consumers, Countrywide pulls ahead of all other lenders, receiving a 10% boost in volume over the previous week, and a 109% gain since the week of December 30th. Wells Fargo in turn boosted its purchase consumers since the week of the announcement, with a similar 10% increase since the week prior, and an overall surge of 110% more purchase consumers since the week of December 30th. Clearly the Fed’s rate cuts affected short-term attention from consumers, but how sustainable was the rate drop in counteracting the home loan decline?

So far, not very. Even after the second announcement of the .5% rate reduction, consumers had already started to pull away from investigating lenders’ sites online. Among all lenders, consumer volume plummeted the week following the last rate cut decline of .5%, losing 42% of mortgage consumers for both refinance and purchase. However, the consumer surge since early 2007 could still be considered a boon for lenders – with a 63% increase in refinance consumer volume since the week of December 30th to early January. In any event, we will all wait to see what sort of long-term impact the rate cuts may have, but evidence in the short-term proves that the decision was timely in engaging consumers to investigate their loan options.