OCEAN CITY, Md. — One of the many lessons Kelley Parks learned in going through the process of rebranding Call Federal Credit Union is that loyalty to your founders is important in rebranding your organization.
Fortunately for Parks, who now runs her own marketing firm gira{ph}, the name Call was generic enough to work with across several demographics, yet it still harkened back to an old ad campaign by Philip Morris, the credit union’s original sponsor.
Parks spoke Wednesday to the annual meeting of the Maryland & D.C. Credit Union Association in Ocean City.
The credit union decided to make the change when Philip Morris moved its headquarters from New York to Richmond, Va. and the now $357 million, 32,000-member credit union, with locations in Richmond and Cabarrus, N.C., transitioned from serving a very blue collar membership to more-sophisticated white collar members.
Parks noted in an interview after the session that change is really emotional and buy-in and incentives are crucial for success. However, the credit union found that internally the change was harder for some than others that turnover hit its highest ever in the first year after the rebrand.
During the session she had audience members roll dice to pick well-branded companies and pretend that company walked into a credit union branch and imposed its values on your credit union.
For example a credit union that rolled for Apple said its branches would be sleek and high-tech. Another group that also rolled Apple said their packaging would be beautiful to make more of an emotional connection with the members, as Apple does with its customers.
