A successful brand awareness campaign from Verity Credit Union is coming back for an encore.
The $495 million credit union – whose name means "truth" – launched a campaign last summer that asked local bands and visual artists to put together a piece that used the word "verity" in the song or focused on the concept of truth.
"We've been really happy with it, and our intention is to keep it going," said Melina Young, director of marketing and brand. "It isn't just a campaign, it really is our brand moving forward. The hope and intent was that it would be well received enough that we could add additional artists and bands over time, and that's what we have seen, which is great."
Between June 2015, one month after the campaign was launched, and June 2016 (the most recent data available), loan balances rose by nearly 11%, while membership saw an increase of 5.9%.
"We have had goals of 5% net membership growth for several years, and hovered around 3.5% for the last two years," Young said in an email. "In 2016, we are on pace to hit 6%."
While Verity has tracked membership and loan growth, brand awareness has also been a key metric for the credit union.
"The reason we did the campaign to begin with was to help increase brand awareness in areas where we have branches and where we're focusing in North Seattle," she said. The campaign was developed with Spokane-based Boom! Creative, which conducted an awareness survey for Verity as the campaign was developed. "We were right around 10% brand awareness, which is obviously not where we want to be," added Young. "We doubled that in less than a year."
A February survey of the same area revealed 20% brand awareness, and Young said the goal is to reach 25% during the second year. But she acknowledged that may be a challenge.
"During the first year there's a lot of novelty," she said, suggesting that brand awareness growth may not rise as quickly in year two.
New Songs, New Themes
One change for the second act, said Young, is a recognition that lending needed to be incorporated into the campaign along with brand awareness. As such, Verity has been doing that through targeted mailings for loans, along with other promotions being run with the branding elements of the campaign.
There have also been some slight tweaks to the campaign's musical elements. Last year, four bands each wrote and performed one song about truth (using the word "verity" in the lyrics), but this year just two performers are involved – one band and one solo artist – and each are responsible for two songs. One song from each will continue the "truth" theme, while one artist did a song with the theme of "Journey," which lets the CU tout its auto lending and RV products, as well as its Journey credit card, and another did a song with the theme of "Home," which Young said is expected to tie into a mortgage-lending push.
'Core to Seattle'
Daniel Thorpe, president of Boom! Creative, said the campaign has been successful because it can't be easily pigeon-holed.
"Is it marketing? Is it community involvement? It's been successful because it's a combination of the two," he said.
While both Young and Thorpe conceded that Seattle has a "cool" factor going for it that credit unions in many other cities may struggle to capitalize on, Thorpe attested that a similar strategy can work for CUs in nearly any market. In fact, he added, the genesis of the campaign was a similar one done for Global CU in Spokane.
Young pointed out that music and art "have always been core to Seattle," but cities of all sizes have their own characteristics that make them unique, which credit unions can capitalize on for their own similar campaigns.
"What is the unifying factor of a particular city?" said Young. "You can use that, and it doesn't have to be music or art – it could be anything."
