Let's Make Home the Goal

When the housing market started saying “no,” the Let’s Make Home the Goal campaign gave people the tools to say, “yes, we can.” Faced with Millennials and Gen Z who saw homeownership as an impossibility, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Housing Counseling (HUD OHC) set out to reframe the narrative with a housing counseling program that provides accessible financial education and long-term planning. The challenge? Break through the noise and show audiences the real possibilities by pairing hard truths about high costs with empowering, tangible solutions, delivered through channels and voices audiences already trusted.
Let’s Make Home the Goal made homeownership feel accessible by meeting people where they were: online, in their neighborhoods, and in the cultural spaces that shape their thinking. We embedded ourselves in relatable conversations like podcast segments with Draymond Green and Questlove, out-of-home placements in barbershops and salons where community dialogue thrives, and a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” with housing counselors and HUD leadership, creating real-time, unfiltered Q&A moments. We partnered with Zillow to amplify our reach to millions actively considering homeownership and staged an interactive “Hack Your Homebuying” webinar, where experts shared their best insider tips to make the process feel achievable.
The creative thread running through every touchpoint was a simple, provocative question: “When interest rates come down, will you be ready to step up?” This reframed housing counseling as a long-term readiness strategy, not a quick fix. Our integrated execution blended paid and organic social, grassroots outreach, influencer content, and strategic media buys into one empathetic, actionable, and relentlessly relatable voice.
In just 12 weeks, we generated over 45 million paid ad impressions, 120,000 organic impressions, and 300,000 ad clicks. Our #AskOHC educational video series earned more than one million views, and post-campaign surveys revealed nine out of ten respondents not only learned about HUD-certified housing counseling but were more likely to use it.
By fusing creativity with cultural relevance, Let’s Make Home the Goal turned awareness into readiness, transforming an unknown government program into a movement people could see themselves in and act on.