SOPOT, Poland — It's an ad slogan many U.S. credit unions could back-with results many would also envy.
A two-week ad campaign sponsored by credit unions in this country that used the tagline "Don't blame us! We're not banks," has appeared in newspapers, radio and on TV and has generated significant publicity for the country's not-for-profit financials. The goal has been to leverage an economic downturn and to differentiate credit unions from competitors, which are primarily foreign-owned banks.
The campaign was developed by the National Association of Cooperative Savings & Credit Unions (NACSCU), Poland's credit union trade group, and has been criticized by banks in the country. Paweł Grzesik, head of NACSCU's Warsaw office, said the campaign has generated coverage on prime time television news programs and in major Polish daily newspapers.
"The banks wanted the campaign banned," Grzesik said. "They said the ads suggested Poland's banks were not secure, something we never said. We merely noted that credit unions were not involved in creating the global financial crisis, and that's a fact."
The World Council of Credit Unions reported the Association of Polish Banks attempted to stop the campaign through a letter to Poland's Commission of Financial Market Supervision, but the appeal was rejected.
One other result of the campaign, according to NACSCU: It has been receiving daily hundreds of job applications from former bank executives who previously would not have considered a job with a credit union.
