A three-month marketing campaign at City-County Federal CreditUnion landed the credit union new members in the highlysought-after 18-34 age group.
The “Drop the Bank” campaign, launched in partnership with PSCUFinancial Services, rewarded City-County with a 44% increase inAdvantage Checking accounts opened by 18-34-year-olds. Half of theaccounts were opened by new members and the rest were opened byexisting members who moved to the Advantage Checking product.
The Advantage Checking account is a high-rate account requiring aspecific number of debit transactions a month ande-statements.
The campaign stemmed from PSCU's Project New Age, a Gen Yinitiative the company launched two years ago. As part of ProjectNew Age, PSCU wanted to select a credit union to partner with tocreate a Gen Y marketing campaign.
PSCU selected City-County and approached the credit union to splitthe cost of the campaign 50/50 each.
“We've had some success in increasing our younger members andthought this would be a good way to reach out to more young people.We have a pretty extensive financial literacy program, and wethought 'Drop the Bank' would be a good complement to that,” saidJerry Deyo, vice president of marketing at City-County.
Together, City-County and PSCU set a budget and put together amarketing strategy that included advertising tactics the creditunion had not tried before, such as assembling a street team anddeveloping a Facebook page.
For the street team, they went through a small, local agency tohire young adults right out of college themselves to work the areasaround the colleges in the region. The teams would go on campus orto nearby popular restaurants and pass out air fresheners with theimage of a “bad banker” that said, “Do not go todropthebank.com.”
PSCU and City-County created the microsite dropthebank.com for thecampaign. The site highlighted the advantages of credit unions overbanks, information about credit union locations and an “apply now”feature.
“If you give anybody something in their hand that says don't go tothis Web site, of course they're to going to go to it and see whatit is,” explained Susan Follick, PSCU segment marketingmanager.
The Advantage Checking street team put up posters and drew sidewalkgraphics and chalk stencils of the bad banker image.
The bad banker was also the star of what Follick called the heartof the campaign, a video posted to YouTube and the Drop the BankFacebook page.
The video showed a young man in his college dorm room signing upfor an online bank account. As he's signing up, the bad bankerappears and takes his dog as collateral. Angry that the bank wouldtreat a new customer that way, the young man checks out a creditunion Web site. A nice credit union employee appears and explainshow credit unions are different and don't require collateral. Thenice credit union employee then pepper sprays the bad banker as theyoung man signs up with the credit union online.
“It was a great creative aspect of the campaign and a fun way toportray hidden fees and issues that banks have to deal with,”Follick said.
Though the Drop the Bank campaign is over, Deyo said the creditunion plans to use it again in the future.
During the campaign, the microsite drew 4,400 visits and the videohad 2,300 unique viewers.

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