Steve Rodgers

From Steve Rodgers:

One of the primary challenges credit union marketers are currently faced with is finding ways to promote the benefits and services of their credit union to increase membership and awareness of credit unions, with a drastically decreased budget.  The Marketing Chapter of the 2010 E-Scan Report focuses on strategies for tackling this challenge; however, this endeavor may be even more of a struggle than many even know.  Here’s why I say this:

Each summer, I present the findings of CUNA’s Environmental Scan (E-Scan) to third-year students at CUNA Management School, which is a three-year school held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison for two weeks every July.

I give the students a one-hour PowerPoint presentation and then my co-presenter and CUNA colleague—Kristina Grebener—gives them a little field work for the rest of the afternoon.

Kristina divides the class into five teams of about a dozen students each and gives each team a Flip video camera. Their job is to roam around the campus and interview people. The teams ask questions like, “Do you know what a credit union is?” The goal of the exercise is to gauge consumer awareness of credit unions.

The teams return after an hour and share their videos with the rest of the class. To people like me who have spent their entire professional careers trying to communicate the benefits of credit union membership, the videos trigger thoughts of a career change. They evoke the emotions of depression, laughter, panic, amazement, and back to depression.

The most common response is, “I have no idea what a credit union is.” After that, you hear a lot of, “I bank at a bank because that’s where my parents signed me up.”

Other responses include:

“I think a credit union is one of those companies that monitors your credit report and tells you when something goes wrong.”

“A credit union is where you pay your taxes.”

“Credit unions are like labor unions—you pay membership fees to belong.”

One of the teams finally came across a guy who knew quite a bit about credit unions, although he did all his business with a bank. He knew credit unions are financial cooperatives and return profits to members. He knew credit unions exist to maximize service to members, and banks exist to maximize profits to shareholders.

“Why,” the team asked, “if you know about all these credit union benefits, do you still do business with a bank.”

“I’m one of those bank shareholders,” he replied.

Suffice it to say, credit unions have a tremendous amount of work to do to move the needle on consumer awareness.

Do these responses surprise you? What is your credit union doing to promote what credit unions are and how consumers can move their money to benefit from membership (no fees attached)?

Steve Rodgers is the Editor-in-Chief  for Business to Business Publishing at the Credit Union National Association.