As a nonprofit member cooperative, Virginia Credit Union has built-in differentiation against traditional banks, but still must find fresh ways to cut through the clutter caused by so many competitors advertising so many similar products.
As we developed our most recent campaign, we began to focus on one of Virginia Credit Union’s brand strengths: that they offer a level of personalized service that makes them very easy to talk with. In fact, our interviews with existing customers revealed they never feel judged by Virginia Credit Union staff—and that they trust sharing intimate, sometimes awkward, details of their financial lives with the staff because Virginia Credit Union is truly committed to helping its customers solve their challenges.
This nugget of information led us to the theme of “Awkward Conversations.” By taking a humorous approach to the creative, we felt we could create scenarios that would capture consumers’ attention and then deliver an important message: some conversations are awkward, but at Virginia Credit Union, talking about your finances never is.
We knew we had to create ads that could be used to promote many different products. So in order to maximize our budget, we developed a choose-your-own-adventure” approach to the creative. The idea was to create four unique scenarios, then develop alternate endings for each spot—making our production very efficient, while actually creating more content (and more sales messages) for our client. In this way, a single setting like our wedding commercial shown below spawned three different versions of the commercial: one that promoted an auto loan, a second that promoted a home loan and a third that promoted a savings account.
By taking this approach, we were able to develop not four spots, but twelve, all on the same budget we were originally provided. We created versions of spots for broadcast and digital pre-roll, and supported this campaign with a robust programmatic digital display buy focused on lead generation for the loans.