Credit Unions Are Free, But Not Young...Yet

We've seen a lot of creative post-advertising from credit unions this summer, including the confusing Carl Weathers bicycle spots for a consortium of Washington State credit unions. These efforts made our post-advertising scale needle tremble. On the other hand, Young & Free Alberta explodes the scale and then jumps up and down on the debris until it turns to dust.

Okay: so this case study isn't the sexiest post-advertising story to cross my desk all afternoon, but I'm completely turned on by it. Bear with me.

Credit unions are the older hippie's alternative to banks. They're local, community-oriented and a lot simpler than banks. But young people don't smell what they're cooking. According to Tim McAlpine, president of Currency Marketing (the agency), the average age of a member of a North American credit union are pushing 50, while the average age of a North American is around 40. While this math may be a bit fuzzy, what's more concrete is that the year before Young & Free Alberta (the initiative in question) launched, the CommonWealth Alberta credit union attracted under 100 new members between the ages of 19-25.

Then, in 2007, the credit union decided to launch a free checking account program (there are no free checking accounts at banks in Canada) to attract younger members. To promote the program, Currency Marketing built Young & Free Alberta, a social media/social networking site: videos, blogs, social networking apps, etc, etc. A further wrinkle in the program was that Currency Marketing had a YouTube contest to find a young person who would run the media site, write the blog, create video. Young & Free Albera lucked out and was able to find a talented young visual arts student named Larissa Walkiw (winning vid below). Walkiw's blog posts garner tons of comments, and her videos are more than YouTube-worthy. The winner of the YouTube contest, Walkiw in this case, was given stewardship of Young & Free Alberta as a full-time job for one year, with a very nice salary and a company car with the Common Wealth colors/logo wrapped around it.

All sounds very Web 2.0, right? So two years ago. All fun and games, but does it work? Does Germany love David Hasselhoff?

Remember how Common Wealth had signed up under 100 members in the 19-25 age range in the year previous? In the first year of the program (which ends this August, coinciding with the end of Walkiw's tenure/her return to school), Common Wealth gained over 2,300 new members in that age range. An investment of $400,000 turned into over $3,000,000 in new business. And, because credit unions are, by nature, local, Currency Marketing is replicating the model all over the country. Young & Free Texas has already launched and over 100 other local credit unions have showed interest in the program.

To sum up:

• Brand is all about community
• Wants to attract young people
• Hires one of their own to run a fully-functioning social media/social networking site
• $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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