[David] That’s a good segue into Allen Pollack with the day’s Tech Update. Allen, good to have you here, friend.
[Allen] Oh, it’s great to be here. I got so many cool things going on. We’ve got obviously a little bit of a recap of the Super Bowl commercials, which we do each year. but I wanted to start with this one.
[David] My favorite one was Martha Stewart. Getting on into those and she’s 82 or 83 years old and she did this airstep thing. Did you guys, did you see that? I had to go, she is amazing. My wife was telling me about it. Just what amazing, how good a shape she is, how she eats healthy and looks amazing at 82 or 83 years old.
[Allen]She does look really good. I’ll go to the Super Bowl commercials in a second. I have to start with the Super Bowl joke because it’s just way too funny. So, it’s a little bit of a story, it’s coming from somebody. They go, I saw a man at the Super Bowl with an empty seat next to him. And by the way, this is for the Super Bowl super fan. So, I saw a man at the Super Bowl with an empty seat next to him. I lean over and ask him why there’s an empty seat. He said that he bought the ticket several months ago for him and his wife, but his wife unfortunately passed away. I gave him my condolences and then I asked why none of his family members took the ticket. He responded that they were all at the funeral.
[David] Oh, Yeah, your Super Bowl super fan.
[Allen] It was this weekend, I was with an NFL Hall of Famer and I had asked him if he was going to be at the game, and he said no, and so I said how many have you been to? He’s never been in the Super Bowl, but he has been to six total Super Bowls, and he said the energy, the entire week building up to it, even after the Super Bowl. It’s just really for those that have ever had a chance to be at a Super Bowl, I’m sure you’re probably nodding your head saying yes, and it is a cool experience. All right, David, let’s go into Super Bowl commercials. So instead of giving my opinion, because I always take down notes during the Super Bowl I made some notes, but then GPT got spot on. So, I said to GPT, hey, tell me what the best ones are, the worst ones, what had mortgage in it, what had AI in it. And here we go. So first the mortgage industry had representation. Rocket Mortgage aired the very first ever, by the way, a notable commercial titled Own the Dream, and it was set to reimagine John Denver’s original Take Me Home Country Roads and the ad emphasized the importance of home ownership and concluded with a live sing along at Caesars Superdome, making it the first in Super Bowl history so that was very cool and then there was an AI themed commercial OpenAI debuted a 60 second commercial highlighting AI’s role in tech evolution, showcasing applications like GPT. It was okay. Google promoted its AI software, Gemini, through ads demonstrating practical applications. Like preparing for a job interview. Now, I saw that one. It was very cool. Gentleman was just doing a lot of things, and Gemini was reading his resume and helping him prepare an interview, and the commercial ends with him sitting down at the interview ready to go. Really, and by the way, AI really does do that. You have to tell it what you want it to do, but it was realistic and then, very cool, the Ray Ban Metaglasses. Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth were in that, and they were walking around an art studio, and they kept talking to their glasses, saying, hey, Meta, and, that’s realistic. Years ago, David, I’ve talked about how I wanted to build an augmented reality app that you could go to a house and it would tell you all about the house, potential mortgage rates as you’re walking through the house and all of that. It’s gonna be here before you know it, with the glasses. Best commercial as far as what GPT and the internet said. was Budweiser’s first delivery. It stood out. It was a young Clydesdale retrieving a fallen beer keg symbolizing determination and the American spirit. Budweiser wrote that.
[David] It appealed to so many people.
[Allen] If I say to you right now, give me the one, the Budweiser, the most historical commercial they ever had and I know you go ahead. I’ll give you one second to guess it. I thought that one was it. I mean that until that one with the frogs, bud. Oh, yeah, the frogs the one with frogs. Yeah, that’s got to be one of the best ones ever Anyways, worst commercial was Mountain Dew, it transformed seal into…
[David] I know that one was like you kidding me?
[Alice] And it was early, so I was like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be it was early.
[Allen] Yeah, it was the worst. And then the weirdest commercial was Pringles the call of the mustaches featuring actor Adrien Brody blowing into an empty Pringles can. Yeah, by the way, the most memorable humor was Hellman’s when Harry met Sally.
[David] Oh, yeah. I love that. I saw that and I’m going, yeah, that was so good.
[Allen] They actually called it when Sally met Hellman’s. So that was pretty cool. Totino’s the Chasmo finally goes home. That was pretty cool. The Dunkin’s, Dunkin Kings 2 movie, the movie, with Ben Affleck expanded his Dunkin saga by forming a coffee themed boy band, the Dunkin’s which is pretty cool. And then finally, this one, I didn’t mind this one. It was Peyton Manning, Post Malone and Shane Gillis liven up a dull neighborhood. it was called the big men on the cul de sac and it was Bud Light’s commercial. Obviously Bud Light’s trying to make their big win back into the market, but they did a pretty good job. It was a funny commercial. So there you go. A little bit of mortgage, a little bit of AI, a little bit of the everything. You know what I didn’t see, David? I didn’t see any crypto, no crypto.
[David] Oh, that’s right. Yeah, that is very true.
[Allen] Yeah. So anyways,
[David] That’s the May have been just a one year hiatus. I think that’s coming back stronger than ever, especially with what Trump is doing.
[Allen] If you want to talk about social media influence each week, I keep mentioning that these people are on YouTube talking, give me your more they’re live. Give me your mortgage scenario. I’ll tell you, what the cards look like for you. I’ll be your fortune teller. Just the power of social media, social selling. There’s this gentleman, he’s 85 years old, he went and rang this girl’s doorbell. It’s called Doug, he’s somewhere in PA or Jersey and he made a handwritten note and said, I would like for you to come to my celebration of winter party and his wife had passed away and he wanted to throw this party, he’s 85. This woman put it on social media, it went viral, they started a GoFundMe and he doesn’t want the money. People from all over the country are driving to his house for his winter party. Companies are donating food. They’re donating things to use in the festivities. People are driving from every state in the country. People have flooded the comments. There’s thousands and thousands of videos of people talking about it. People in their car saying, we’re driving to go see Doug right now. Bakeries are donating cakes. It’s absolutely crazy. So if you haven’t, if you haven’t seen it, just go Google or even just go on your social media app and put in Doug’s winter party and you will see that the craziness of social media.
[David] All right. There you go. Allen, thanks so much. Always so much great information. Appreciate it.
Allen Pollack
, Chief Operating Officer, Tech Consultant
Allen Pollack, a Mortgage & Financial Services Technology Advisor, is a subject matter expert in the mortgage origination process along with software product management and software development.
In today’s financial services push to all things Digital, Allen has been helping lenders and financial services solution providers align their digital transformation and technology strategies by removing the human element of risk, and automating processes that drive efficiencies and margins into profits.
Over the course of his career, Allen has co-created and developed technology business models that have birthed highly successful, innovative solutions and companies.
Allen co-founded and served as CTO of New York Loan Exchange (NYLX), a loan product eligibility and pricing engine (PPE) that made an immediate impact on the industry, scaling the company quickly and forming partnerships with multiple mortgage and financial lending companies. In 2012, Allen was a co-founder of a merger between NYLX and Aklero Risk Analytics that created LoanLogics, A Mortgage Loan Quality and Performance Analytics company. Allen served as CTO where he continued to bring new and innovative product solutions to the market that made a significant impact to mortgage lenders that reduced risk, scaled business channels, and grew profits in a very competitive and highly regulated market.
Allen is also is mortgage and finance technology contributor on a weekly live industry podcast, Lykken on Lending, and is launching a new podcast soon to be released, TechStack Radio, dedicated to technology and innovation in Financial Services.