SEATTLE — Saturation co-op advertising by credit unions gets a big boost late this month or in March when Washington State and Alaska CUs undertake a TV campaign featuring a whopping 40, 30-second advocacy messages a week.
And the Academy Awards show on the local ABC outlet Feb. 25 could be the debut outing for the ad blitz being crafted by a Seattle agency this week in a Los Angeles studio under sponsorship of the 30-member Washington State Co-Op Advertising Committee. On top of the ads, the committee is also forging ahead with an ambitious blogging and branding effort to target young people, particularly women, through iPods, YouTube and various forms of viral and "social media."
In scrapping last year's "Together Better" theme, the committee has now opted for an ad model that emphasizes a clever, storytelling narrative "that captures a feeling but you don't know it's for credit unions until it's all sewn up at the end," explained Kristina Walters-Juma, a member of the committee that has been working for weeks in designing a new branding message that would draw new members.
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In pushing for a big ad "splash" as the panel calls it, Washington/Alaska CUs are hoping its agency, Big Bang Seattle, can get the production work done in time for airing on the Academy broadcast "but we aren't going to rush it," said Walters-Juma, who also is vice president-marketing and business development at Washington State Employees Credit Union of Olympia.
Walters-Juma described the ads as containing "sweet stories that also have a bit of fun in them", but are targeted at young women, 18 to 34, which research shows are the "financial decision makers in the family."
After the Academy show, the committee has purchased media buys for the ads to run on such primetime shows as Heroes, American Idol, Ugly Betty, Oprah and Desperate Housewives, with the pace of ad spots dropping to every other week through April, May and June, said Walters-Juma.
Including research expense, the campaign is expected to cost $750,000, officials said.
The panel operates independent of the Washington Credit Union League, but is closely linked by CU participation across the state and by Alaska USA Federal Credit Union of Anchorage. As for blogging and Internet promotions, the committee was slated to meet late last week with staffers from Trabian Technology Inc., a Plano, Texas consulting firm that has done Web site design for Filene Research and handles blogging sites for CUs across the U.S.
Trabian actually was one of the first national critics to fault the committee's ad campaign a year ago, which debuted on the Super Bowl, but was later attacked by CU members for its "long haired characters and rap videos" that members complained sent the wrong image message.
The campaign was later halted for revamping with new agency personnel hired.
Early last week, Kevin Foster-Keddie, the head of the Washington State Co-Op Advertising Committee and president/CEO of Washington State Employees CU, said the panel had pinned down three spots on the Academy Awards show.
That would include, he said, "the last hour, the Oscar Countdown and Evening at the Academy" adding "we have put together a great media buy including radio that will give us good coverage."
Walters-Juma of WSECU said members of the committee have come to learn the importance of blogging in the target market, which is why Trabian was asked to make a presentation. "The social interaction phase is huge since so much information is spread by word of mouth through blogging Web sites," she said. –[email protected]
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