HARRISBURG, Penn. — Credit unions in the Keystone State are about to have their voices heard by a potentially very big audience.
The Pennsylvania CU Association — which in 2007 launched its "iBelong" awareness campaign — has purchased airtime in four of the state's seven media markets to promote iBelong during the 2015 season of the wildly popular NBC series "The Voice."
The show — hosted by Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, Christina Aguilera and Pharrell Williams — returns for its eighth season at 8:00 p.m. EST beginning on Feb. 23, and at 7:58 p.m. before each show, a lead-in announcement in the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Altoona/Johnstown markets will say "'The Voice' is brought to you by the region's credit unions. To find a credit union that's right for you, go to iBelong.org."
Each episode will also feature a commercial for iBelong, and Mike Wishnow, PCUA's SVP of communications and public relations, said that credit unions throughout the state are looking to dovetail their marketing efforts with the league to get their ads on TV during "The Voice" in order to leverage some of that momentum.
"They want to know when we're running, and they run their spots in conjunction," Wishnow explained. "We haven't seen it yet with the high-profile stuff, but certainly with the rest of the media buy, they want to know what channels we're on, what [daytime TV], what shows, and what news."
According to Wishnow, this is the most high-profile ad buy the league has ever done. A few years back some smaller markets ran inexpensive local ads during the Super Bowl, but this is the biggest buy PCUA has ever done "in terms of doing a concentrated buy around one specific primetime show."
In addition to seeing airtime all season long, Pennsylvania's CUs may also see a boost online. Viewers will be encouraged to visit their local NBC affiliate's website to vote for their favorite contestant after each episode, where the iBelong campaign will be "prominently displayed, and we sort of own the section of the website devoted to 'The Voice,'" said Wishnow.
PCUA's target demographic with iBelong has been females between the ages of 25 and 49, said Wishnow. "But at the same time, with an aging population, all of our credit unions are trying to attract younger members. We're trying to skew a little bit to the lower end of that demographic — maybe 18 to 34."
In order to better reach that market, PCUA has upped the ante with digital marketing, including Google AdWords, buying pre-roll videos on YouTube, stepping up its ad buys on Pandora streaming radio and jettisoning traditional radio all together. The league has also made a push to do more spots and sponsorships of TV stations and programs with high viewership in that demographic, including "The Voice."
Track By Track
PCUA has measured the success of iBelong by doing third-party polling to track attitudinal changes, along with tracking growth rates by examining Call Reports and measuring those against national averages and population growth. Part of the push to more digital promotion has been the ease of tracking it, measuring hits, clicks and impressions.
"The more digital stuff we do, the more numbers we have," he said.
In the meantime, PCUA has high expectations for this season of "The Voice."
The show, said Wishnow, "is certainly a new high profile thing that we hope will garner a great deal of attention for our credit unions."
Though credit unions have long used mass media to promote themselves, the last few years have seen CUs significantly up their game, such as Navy FCU's foray into national, primetime television with ads running during
