CHARLOTTE, N.C. -
The promotion is aimed at assisting members with buying beat-up and worn down cars and is being called "I Love My Hoopty." It includes a contest that is a bit out of the ordinary. Through Nov. 30, members may take pictures of their junker cars and submit them to the CPCU website. They also have the chance to write stories about how much they love their very own "hoopty."
"Hoopty" is defined by urbandictionary.com as a car that is "usually cheap and/or broken down. Can be any size, make or model, but must (or should) be embarrassing to drive for some reason, such as all the plastic 'effects' you have hot-glued to the exterior rattle, instantly betraying the cheapness of your bling."
CPCU VP of Marketing Deb McLean said the program started from a staff meeting when she asked her loan officers if there were any products or services the members were asking for, but not getting from their credit union. The loan officers joking suggested a loan program for "hoopties," a slang term McLean admits she wasn't familiar with. As it turned out, many of the letter carriers in Carolina Postal use their own cars to deliver the mail, often in rural areas, on gravel and dirt roads.
McLean said letter carriers who aren't assigned a government postal vehicle don't want to use the family SUV or sedan, so they buy a junker car that can just make the daily rounds, but little else. CPCU loan officers had actually been making small loans for such purchases to qualified members for years, she said.
"It turned out to be a legitimate need. Many of them don't have a mail truck. It's something the staff has always done, I just branded it," McLean said. "The big thing is the engine will run and that it gets back home. They don't want to spend a lot of money."
The marketing tag line for the effort is "Great Loans for Ugly Cars." Mclean said the typical hoopty loan ranges from only $150 to $1,000 and are designed to merely keep the car running each day.
Many parents have also been getting the same loan for a teen's first car. McLean said the loans are based on the member's credit and history with the credit union and are not an "auto loan" in the traditional sense.
"There's no note on the car because the car has no value," she said.
McLean said the only costs for the program were for marketing materials; the contest website is being hosted at no cost at blogspot.com. The contest featured in the marketing plan has four categories: biggest hoopty, smallest hoopty, ugliest color and the "best utilization of duct tape on a hoopty." The winners get a CPCU Emergency Car Kit with jumper cables, Fix-a-Flat, road flares and a roll of duct tape. Each member entering the contest gets an "I Love My Hoopty" bumber sticker.
The CPCU website now posts several photographs of submitted cars, plus YouTube.com videos of rap and music, all about someone's favorite hoopty.
For info: www.cpcuonline.com and click on the "I Love My Hoopty" link.
