Posted by Jamie McMahon
Last fall Lisa wrote a post on the "fun first, detailed explanations later" marketing approach, using examples such as the Young & Free Alberta campaign to illustrate how credit unions may be able to draw young people in with entertainment, then mix the "boring" financial-related information into that entertainment or even leave it entirely for later.
While the approach probably isn't ideal in all situations, I think Mount Lehman Credit Union's new online community The Mount Lehman Show is a perfect example of what could be a successful model. It draws you in with its own Facebook-like social network, providing members their own profiles as well as the ability to upload photos, videos and blog posts. That represents the fun.
The information part comes through the actual show, which has online episodes posted at the top of the Web site's home page. They themselves are tinged with a bit of wackiness: The inaugural episode features an introduction from Mount Lehman CU's CEO Gene Blishen, a "get to know an employee" segment, and a clip of the CU's mascot, Payday the horse, dancing on the credit union's lawn. The show, however, only constitutes a small portion of the site, which is dominated by member-generated content.
Why might an online community like this be successful in attracting young people to a credit union? For one, exploring the lighthearted bits and pieces of the site was a refreshing experience for me, a 22-year-old set to enter the worst job market in recent memory and tired of news of economic doom and gloom. But I also think it's important to look at the social-networking capabilities of The Mount Lehman Show as more than just entertainment. Here are a couple ways such capabilities go beyond fun and actually begin to promote loyalty to Mount Lehman CU:
They encourage aggregate behavior. It's easy, even for my me and my friends, to dismiss communities like Facebook and Twitter as nothing more than procrastination tools—as channels through which we generate the ridiculous notion that the world cares about what we have for breakfast every morning. Taken by themselves, for example, my Twitter posts are absolutely useless. But when they're added together, and added to the posts of my friends, they begin to form aggregate behaviors that we all use to guide our daily lives. We may not realize it, but when deciding how to act, what products to buy, and yes, even which financial institutions to trust, we rely more on our friends and these networks than we do on TV or radio ads. What's great about The Mount Lehman Show is it provides a very specific version of that sort of network, allowing young people to explore and gain confidence from financial behaviors of their peers—the most obvious and important behavior, of course, being joining the community and Mount Lehman CU in the first place.
They provide users the means to do something good. My friends and I also want to make the world a better place, and we want to know that we're doing it in significant numbers. (I've seen countless movements succeed on Facebook solely because members saw the sizes of certain groups and realized they could actually make a difference by joining up.) On The Mount Lehman Show site, users can view a video explaining how the CU helps the community, then scroll down and see all the subscribers who have become a part of that. This feeling of collective action is harder to promote if you're simply sending Tweets out to isolated subscribers. (And it's reminiscent of Vancity's changeeverything.ca.)
So I think The Mount Lehman Show adds another level to the “fun first, information later” mantra. Certainly people will stumble upon official information from the credit union through the site, but the information more relevant to them will be obtained through networking with their peers—while they’re simultaneously having fun, that is.
Could this represent the next movement in marketing to Gen Y? Other industries seem to think so: the free service used to create The Mount Lehman Show, Ning, is growing in popularity. Everyone out there is looking to harness the power of social networking, and this allows you to literally focus that power on your organization alone. You can decide exactly what you think fun is to your members, then design your online community to reflect that.
