COLUMBIA, S.C. — A new marketing campaign from Carolina Collegiate Federal Credit Union here is about a lot more than just being clever.
The Carolina Collegiate recently unveiled "Banking In Your Boxers," a four-part, weekly series of videos highlighting the $87 million CU's self-service features, such as remote deposit capture, bill pay and more.
Carolina Collegiate's membership depends heavily on the University of South Carolina community of students, faculty, staff members and alumni.
The spots, which were developed with the help of Greenville, S.C.-based marketer Bo McDonald and his firm Your Marketing Co., are aimed at the university's students and focus on how easy it is to use the CU's e-service and self-service channels.
But the spots are also part of a much bigger campaign at the CU, according to Helen Beam, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Carolina Collegiate.
One of Carolina Collegiate's main offices was an 8,000-square-foot facility built in 1989, but "our foot traffic has lessened and the traditional teller line... is just not as conducive to the new environment," she said.
Carolina Collegiate built a larger facility in 2003 and recently sold the old building to serve as student housing for the University of South Carolina.
However, Carolina Collegiate will still have a space in that building with a new, ultra-modern branch design, including high-tech automatic teller machines, modular pod environments and more, Beam said.
"Our goal is to help navigate our members with a smaller footprint and using e-services, which we also find a big demand for because of our membership being a university membership," she said.
Carolina Collegiate is tracking not only how many times each video is viewed but how branch traffic and self-service channels are used, as well.
Carolina Collegiate should be able to track increases in e-channel usage back to the "Banking In Your Boxers" campaign, Beam said, but she and others involved with the videos said that those numbers probably won't be available for another month or two.
Carolina Collegiate likely will not only boost e-service usage with these spots but will also see a return, she said.
"Because we are offering these services, we will gain more members by this," Beam said. "We do have a student-run branch on campus, which is very appealing to the student membership group, and it's been very popular."
The spots can also help potential members who don't know what a CU is, particularly if they are largely only familiar with the big national bank brands.
"They might be coming from other parts of the country, and they see a credit union and automatically they don't think we can compete on convenience, but we can," he said, citing up-to-date technology offerings, shared branching and more.
'Old-School' Dismissed
So is Carolina Collegiate focusing on the standard social-media platforms of Facebook and Twitter to promote the campaign? Not exactly.
"That's so old school. Get with it," McDonald joked.
In addition to using those "old-school" methods, Carolina Collegiate has gone "new school," promoting the campaign on the popular Internet radio-streaming service Pandora.
Although Pandora is based in Oakland, Calif., users hear ads targeted to their registered zip codes, so that any user with a zip code in Carolina Collegiate's market will hear it, regardless of where they are, McDonald said.
"We started using Pandora back in January, and the biggest thing is that it's trackable," he said.
"We get a monthly report on how many people have seen the ad, heard the ad and clicked on it. When we report to the board we can show them hard numbers, as opposed to a radio ad..." McDonald said.
"With Pandora you're not stuck in a commercial break with five, six or seven other advertisers. There might be seven songs, and then there's a quick 30-second ad and then you're back to the music," McDonald said.
"You're not likely to turn away, so I think our message gets heard more," he said.
Carolina Collegiate and its marketing team are also working on breaking into new social-media realms, including Vine, which lets users upload quick-hit six-second videos.
That hasn't launched yet, but Carolina Collegiate is gauging the response to the full-length YouTube videos, "and if it goes over well, how can we turn this into something shorter and quicker that we can put on Vine?" McDonald said.
Carolina Collegiate is also using Google Remarketing and Internet Protocol targeting to help make sure its ads get seen.
"Think about if you go to Hilton.com to book a room, and then all of a sudden Hilton ads are all over the Internet," McDonald said.
"It's not a coincidence," he said. "You got tagged on that website, and Hilton wants to remind you to come back and book your room."
Carolina Collegiate is hoping a similar strategy will work for it.
