By Kristin Gilpatrick with Lisa Hochgraf
Tomorrow, Tim McAlpine and $1.3 billion Common Wealth Credit Union, Lloydminster, Alberta, will launch Young & Free Alberta, a site and brand targeting the 25-and-younger crowd, hoping to interest them in financial education and responsibility and--of course--credit unions.
"We see it as a way to help Common Wealth CU establish itself in the youth market," explains Tim. For those who don't yet know him, Tim is president/chief strategist of Currency Marketing, Chilliwack, British Columbia, and chief blogger for its CU Brand Blog.
"The credit union wanted to do something special--something just for this market--because they are the future of a strong membership," Tim says. "Alberta is Canada's youngest province and the youth are not just starving students who will become affluent, though they are that too; many are affluent already in the trade or oil industry. This microsite is a way to further connect to that under-25 community and serve what is really an underserved segment."
The site will launch with much radio, newspaper, and billboard advertising as well as PR and CU Web site marketing. However, the biggest drive, Tim and Common Wealth CU believe, will be the unique offer of free checking to those who join the Young & Free Alberta community.
"In Canada, even among credit unions, free checking is special. It's not just a promotion for promotion's sake, but it really is a beneficial and unique product; a real differentiator ... the kind of thing people will like and talk about on line and forward to their friends," he explains. "We hope that this viral component (the Internet's answer to 'word of mouth') will develop about the site, where people are forwarding it to friends and people are finding it via third-party sites such as You Tube."
The first phase of launch is to solicit a paid spokesperson, hired by the end of 2007, to contribute to blogs and podcasts, coordinate blogs and help communicate to Common Wealth CU the needs of the group. Once hired, the spokesperson will meet bi-weekly with the credit union CEO and video the meeting as a podcast, Tim says. "Because that spokesperson will be hired from the community, he or she will be able to ask questions and ask them in a way that appeals to that market group; that alone will generate more interest."
To further reach the social networking demographic, the microsite is also plugged into YouTube and Facebook and features blogs and vlogs (video blogs), a youth-oriented tone, and a non-corporate flavor. However, the CU’s brand is still part of the microsite.
"We didn't want to go too far and hide the corporate affiliation--though some microsites do so," Tim says. "The credit union is on the home page, in the upper corner, and its Young & Free Account (checking) is a tab from the microsite's home page. But YoungFreeAlberta.ca had to have its own tone and flavor, something less conforming. That’s why we did the microsite."
In cases where a market segment responds better to a flavor of its own (such as YoungFreeAlberta.ca), or in cases where a credit union has a brand-new major initiative to target to an audience (such as entering the home loan market with its own business as redfrog.ca did), microsites are a good way to build a cyberspace water cooler, Tim suggests. However, separate sites are not good for every new or different situation, he cautions. "If you're doing a major initiative, you might warrant a microsite with a distinct URL you can market, but if you are just going to do a promotion, integrate it into your site."
Tim brings some success with microsites to the project. You may remember him as a co-creator of redfrog.ca, the microsite that launched $2.7 billion Envision Financial CU’s all-in-one mortgage and savings product. (Read more about redfrog.ca in the Credit Union Management magazine column, E-Marketing: Leap out of Debt and in the Nexus post, “Redfrog an Alternative to Marketing Solely on Price”. You also may wish to read Tim's post about microsites on his CU Brand Blog.)
Best wishes with the launch!
Kristin Gilpatrick is a former editor of Credit Union Management magazine. She writes the war-history series "The Hero Next Door."
