Gen-Z, Millennial Opps: Meritage Homes's new CEO will start on Jan 1 (Score 51)

Meritage Homes is parting ways with Steven Hilton, its co-founder, chairman and CEO since 1985, who will retire as CEO on January 1, 2021 but will continue to provide guidance and oversight from its board of directors. He will be succeeded by Philippe Lord, who joined Meritage in 2008 and has since utilized his market experience to create a strategic and market research department, providing analysis and recommendations. He most recently served as the company's COO and EVP.

According to execs in its most recent earnings call, Meritage is spending more money on digital to better position itself on the Internet.

Adbeat estimates the company allocated $213k toward digital display from September 2019-2020, less than half of the estimated $549k allocated from September 2018-2019. Most of the past year's spend went toward programmatic ads placed via Google Display Network ($179.7k) onto sites such as weather.com ($49.5k), accuweather.com, reddit.com, ask.com and wunderground.com.

Pathmatics reports Meritage also utilizes Facebook and Instagram ads.

Meritage currently promotes the ways in which it can aid people pursuing virtual homebuying; it allows consumers to find, tour, finance and purchase homes from the safety of their couches. Its target demographic consists of potential homeowners of all age, primarily Gen-Z and millennials, judging by its usage of digital display and paid social. Kantar data reports the company also invests in print, radio and OOH.

Agency & martech readers - New CEOs don't conduct agency reviews as often as new CMOs might, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to keep Meritage on your radar for potential work under its newly promoted exec.