The importance of staying true to one’s brand, was recently madepainfully clear with the fallout from U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union’s targeted loan ad featuring abuxom blonde’s cleavage.

The direct mailing piece represented a small sliver of the $563million credit union’s yearlong targeted “Got Big Plans?” campaignto build awareness of the variety of loans available and that theAlexandria, Va., credit union–which has offices in the Senate HartOffice Building and the Government Accountability Office–standsready to “help with all that life dishes out.”

Within two days, it generated some negative national mediaattention, a petition and resulted in a formal apology sent toRollCall that was posted on the credit union’s website and emailedto those members who received the ad.

According to marketing and public relations experts, beyond thechoice of the image used, the silence and waiting was amistake.

“PR crisis management needs to happen in a matter of minutes notdays,” said Sue Woodard, president of Credit Union Toolbox. “WhileI believe credit unions should think out of the box, and trydifferent types of ads, this was a risky ad, and they should havepre-empted the reaction they got. If they really did it for mediaattention, and knew how people would feel about it, an apologyletter should have been typed, approved and ready to go before thefirst ad ever went to print or broadcast. That’s the first step toany campaign that might provoke such a negative reaction.”

Matt Hodson, marketing director for HealthCare Credit Union inSalt Lake City, added that in such situations, it is beneficial tohave a strong monitoring program in place.

“When The Huffington Post piece came out, they really could havestarted there. Seeing the backlash from a major publication likethat can be very detrimental to the credit union as evidenced bythe petition,” said Hodson. “With a simple Google Alert in place,they could have caught this quickly. Possibly even quicker with asearch of Twitter. In a PR crisis such as this, they needed to actfast. With the online and social media world, they need to showtransparency. In your social media strategy, you need to have aplan of action in case anything like this happens as it candevastate your goodwill.

"More than anything, they need to know how to respond to sucharticles. There’s a great graphic that the Air Force has put out ontheir process of responding to online articles that I share withcredit unions. This is a great place to start and is a steppingstone for those that have issues such as this.”

He said the next step credit unions need to take should besetting up a social media/online monitoring system tofind such issues before they get larger.

“Hopefully, more credit unions will see the need to monitortheir mentions online and work through issues like this, shouldthey arise,” said Hodson.

Woodard suggested testing the ad prior to release might havealso prevented the issue entirely.

“Was a focus group organized? Even showing the potential ad toevery few members that walk in to a branch could have given thecredit union some vital feedback,” said Woodard.

Bryce Roth, chief chatter yak at marketing CUSO Chatter Yakagreed that additional research would have been helpful.

“I am all about pushing the envelope. For the most part, I feelcredit unions are too often satisfied with the space we alreadyoccupy. We need to get the message out to the common civilian, butperhaps we should practice more caution or partake in more researchbefore we foray into the realm of sex sells,” said Roth. “I in noway mean to discourage other credit unions from being progressive.While I feel this campaign was essentially effective in gettingmassive public exposure, do the benefits outweigh the costs in andefforts when it boils down to time and money spent on PRactions?”

For those credit unions still afraid of members saying negativethings on Twitter or Facebook, she added they may already be doingit whether the credit union has a Facebook or Twitter account ornot.

“It’s becoming more and more important to not only to respondquickly but to be out there saying the right things,” said Woodard.“I’d like to see marketers step out of the box a little more andask themselves how they could keep communications with membersinteresting.... Credit unions need to ask themselves, where are mymembers? How can I be reaching them? What can I say to them to geta conversation going?

"We need to be proactive about engaging our members. If yourbrand is relevant, if you’re communicating with members on aregular basis, you’ll build awareness simply by communicating oftenenough. The thing marketers need to ask themselves is, what are mymembers concerned about? What’s on their mind? It may not even befinancial, but if members are thinking about it and you can providethe information they want, you’ll be engaging members whilebuilding awareness.”