EUGENE, Ore. - And the Big Break goes to...SELCO Community CU, which managed to break out of the crowd of financial services advertising with its “Your Big Break” contest that allowed the CU’s members to vie for the opportunity to produce the credit union’s next ad campaign.
SELCO members Marshall and Haley Roeman were among the contest winners with their video entitled “Grow With Us,” which depicted a young girl earning her first dollars at a lemonade stand.
Members submitted videos for six weeks up to April 25. After a top 10 was designated by a panel of judges, from May 12 to June 6 the CU invited visitors to its selco.org website to view and vote on their favorites. More than 2,500 votes were received for the 10 finalists, and the page received more than 10,000 unique visitors, according to Bonnie Larson, SELCO’s vice president of marketing.
On June 19, the winners were feted with fake-paparazzi flashbulbs at a meeting room in a SELCO branch which had been turned into a temporary movie theater–complete with popcorn, soda, candy, ice cream and nachos. The Roemans took the first place prize of $5,000. The second place $3,500 award went to Elliot Heine for his untitled video that compared credit unions and banks. The third place $1,500 prize went to Dustin Dybevik of Dedo De Luna Productions for his “Can You Thank Your Bank?” video, featuring a preschooler with a guitar rapping the various differences between banks and credit unions.
In addition to the winners being selected by community voting, the SELCO marketing team gave additional recognition to five videos they felt warranted special attention. Those five “Director’s Choice Award” winners received $200 cash prizes.
The winners and their categories were: the award for “Most Romantic” went to Henry Weintraub of 531 Productions for his video “SELCO Likes You, Too;” the award for “Funniest” went to Roxana Trejo & Jose Gomez for their commercial titled “Recession is a Choice;” the award for “Best Choreography” went to Chris Kas for the video entitled “Hoop Happiness”; the award for “Best Use of the Word ‘Sizzle’ (the tagline for the contest)” went to Coty Werner for his “SELCO BBQ” video; and, the award for the “Best Product Reference” went to Sarah Dodson of Bright Fauna Productions for the commercial titled “Meet the SELCO Crew.”
A complete listing of winners, video entries, and a photo gallery from the awards event are available at www.selco.org/yourbigbreak.
Larson told Credit Union Journal eight commercials with 11 different messages currently are airing within SELCO’s six-county service area. She said everything about the contest exceeded the credit union’s expectations.
“The commercials were so well-produced,” she said. “We were surprised at how good they were.” The guidelines were “pretty open,” Larson continued. Contestants prepared a 23-second commercial saying why people should join SELCO, what makes a CU different or what makes SELCO “sizzle.”
“People spent time visiting locations, doing person-on-the-street interviews, backdrops and lighting,” Larson recalled. She said 1,000 people read the rules, 90 people pre-registered for the contest, and SELCO received 36 completed commercials. “We also received a couple of jingles and a few commercials in formats we considered unusable.”
The marketing team pre-screened all submissions to make sure they met SELCO’s guidelines. The spots then were reviewed by a panel of nine judges–all SELCO employees–who picked the top 10 for the online public vote.
For the awards presentation, SELCO invited everyone who had made a commercial for the contest, plus a guest. The CU’s marketing team, plus some of its area managers, also were invited.
Laughter And Awwws
“We ended up with 70 people total, which was perfect for the room,” said Larson. “We played all the commercials: there was lots of laughter and some ‘awwws’ for the cute ones.
“I am very happy with how the contest went,” she continued. “We are in the process of post-producing the commercials and adding seven-second taglines. Some of the commercials spotlighted specific products or messages, and we are trying to match the taglines to what the producer was trying to say. As promised, we include the producer’s name on each ad.” Larson said one commercial had so many good things to say about the CU, she tagged it three times with different messages.
Thanks to the growing popularity of online networking sites, Larson said several of the commercials will be on Facebook and MySpace in the near future.
“I am absolutely thrilled with how everything went,” she said. “It takes some faith to trust community residents to say good things about our credit union, and they came through for us.”
With a network of 13 branch offices located throughout western and central Oregon, SELCO provides services to more than 80,000 members locally and worldwide.(c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
