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First Niagara's chief knows how to party, photos show. Lighter moment is part of serious effort at breaking the ice with new employees of a rapidly growing company, officials of the Buffalo bank say.
December 12
'Cause this is thriller, thriller night … brought to you by Mercantile Bank Corp.
The $1.4 billion-asset company used its sponsorship of the Grand Rapids Original Swing Society's weekly dance gathering to teach hundreds of people the moves from Michael Jackson's iconic "Thriller" music video.
David Tilley, the creative media specialist for Mercantile (MBWB), strapped on his dancing shoes and red bomber jacket to lead the crowd through ten dance steps in the Rosa Parks Circle plaza in downtown Grand Rapids. Rather than try to teach roughly 400 folks how to do the whole routine, Tilley focused on 10 moves, including the zombie walk, he said in an interview.
"It is a pretty complex dance, so we decided to get it down to something that everyone would be able to do," he said. The lesson lasted about 20 minutes before the group got to boogey to the music.
The night, billed as "The Mercantile Monster Mash," was part of a sponsorship deal with the swing society that gathers in the circle every Tuesday night during the warmer months of the year. As one of the sponsors, Mercantile was allotted a few nights to entertain the crowd.
"It was toward the end of the season, it is October, so we decided to do something Halloween," Tilley said.
The weekly event is popular with college and high school students, said Michelle Shangraw, retail banking director for Mercantile.
"Millennials are definitely a marketing target," Shangraw said. "And this is a fun way to engage them and create brand awareness around Mercantile."
The company has uploaded a
