Cornerstone Annual Meeting provides unforgettable EXPERIENCE

During the first day of the Cornerstone Credit Union’s Annual Meeting, participants were treated to an inspired, informative EXPERIENCE with fun, engaging sessions where they stretched their knowledge and learned new ideas.

Jon Gorman, Cornerstone’s Communications & Outreach senior vice president, discussed Increasing Consumer Awareness of Credit Unions.

In this session, Gorman told members about Cornerstone’s committee of peers who developed a ground-breaking consumer awareness campaign to drive member growth. The committee’s work led to the League partnering with a creative firm to help Cornerstone:

• Execute new consumer research.
• Develop new brand messaging.
• Deliver a marketing toolkit to member credit unions to support your individual marketing initiatives.

Campaign results

In less than two years, Cornerstone:

• Delivered more than 78 million media impressions — that's 78 million opportunities to change consumer misperceptions about credit unions.
• Had more than 450,000 people view one of the ads on streaming TV.

Cornerstone executed two years of paid advertising and invested in all start-up costs without asking credit unions to contribute. The committee believed it was important to have measured success prior to asking for credit unions to contribute financially.

CUNA awareness initiative

During this time, the Credit Union National Association began its own effort to create a category-level awareness initiative for credit unions. Cornerstone was involved with CUNA as part of its Creating Awareness Advisory Group by:

• Helping to inform CUNA about our experiences in the Cornerstone region, and
• Participating in the review of national research, working with industry thought leaders on the development and rollout of the initiative.

This initiative is not an awareness campaign. Instead, it’s a consideration issue. Research showed that 98 percent of Americans had heard of a credit union, but 72 percent of nonmembers aren’t likely to consider a credit union.

Two key myths continue to block the path to credit union membership:

• I can’t join.
• Accessing my money may be hard.

Solution

Category-level brand building + Individual credit union marketing = Long-term growth.

In focus groups, CUNA found that of those to whom "Open Your Eyes" messaging was delivered, 75 percent of nonmembers would consider joining a credit union after viewing the campaign. Ads targeted 25- to 34-year-olds, and parents age 35-54 who are in the market for financial services.

What’s next?

Cornerstone will transition its advertising to align with CUNA's tagline, Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union, and website yourmoneyfurther.com.

Fundraising in the Cornerstone region is starting now with a goal to deliver advertising in all three states during the second half of the year.