ROANOKE, Va.-Seeking to overcome the fact many consumers said they had "never heard of" Freedom First CU, the credit union is giving away cash as one strategy to boost awareness.
The cash giveaway comes at the same time Freedom First has revamped its logo and tagline and is giving away cash throughout the community as a way to spread the word.
"We have found that we have a lack of awareness of our credit union in the community, and we wanted to try to differentiate ourselves among other financial institutions and other credit unions in the area," explained Cari Humphries, AVP of marketing at the 45,000-member, $292-million credit union.
The new slogan is "Where People Bank for Good," and Humphries noted that it plays not only on the notion that members can have a lifelong relationship at the credit union, but also hints at the good Freedom First does in the community. FFCU is the region's largest CDFI, noted Humphries, and the slogan is meant to keep that sense of community activism at top of mind.
How Good Can You Be?
Freedom First is emphasizing its do-good position with a "Blue Envelope" campaign, passing out blue envelopes filled with cash to random strangers throughout the community. Each envelope contains anywhere from $5 to $50 in cash, and is emblazoned with the phrase "Let's see how good you can be with money."
"We're trying to show how good we are with money," said Humphries. "Our hope is that people will be so moved by the gesture that they will refill the envelope and pass it on."
In addition, Freedom First has empty envelopes available at branch locations for members to fill and pass along to others.
The rebrand and awareness push came about because of "the overriding sense that we frequently heard people saying 'We've never heard of you before,'" said Humphries.
Freedom First crafted the campaign and worked with a local ad agency to run a short awareness survey just before the promotion launched. FFCU is still waiting on the results of that survey, but will use those responses later as a baseline to measure whether or not the rebranding and cash giveaways have moved the dial.
Freedom First declined to say how much money it is spending on the Blue Envelope campaign, but it has filled 20,000 envelopes with at least $5. All employees and board members were given cash-filled envelopes and challenged to make a difference for someone during their day-to-day lives, and Freedom First has also selected more than 300 "envelope ambassadors" from throughout the community to also distribute the funds.
FFCU is spreading the word about the rebrand and the Blue Envelope drive through its social media channels, newspaper ads, and radio and TV commercials (one of which can be seen at http://vimeo.com/59452437).
There is no end date for the campaign-Humphries said she hopes the envelopes will still be making the rounds several months from now-but Freedom First is staggering distribution of the cash-filled envelopes over a four-week period ending in mid-March.
Social Media Awareness Doubles
Because this is mostly an awareness push, FFCU does not have loan or membership goals associated with it, but the credit union is looking to increase its social media penetration.
"We had hoped that in four weeks of campaigning we would double our Facebook and Twitter followers, and we did that in week one," said Humphries. "We would love to see some share and loan growth from this, but the main purpose was making people aware of who we are and that we're different and getting them to start interacting with us through social media."
