Credit unions' ad campaign builds consumer knowledge

Credit unions want the world to know that they are not banks and a three-year advertising effort appears to be doing just that.

"I'm excited about the results," says Susan George,marketing and business development manager for Great Basin Federal Credit Union.

"We know that the word is getting out."

The campaign, using media materials produced by the Credit Union National Association, included a combination of radio, television, and print ads.

"The ads were not intended as marketing tools, but were for awareness," says Dennis Flannigan, executive vice president of Great Basin Federal Credit Union."And to distinguish us from banks."

Yet, credit unions financial institutions that do much of their business in consumer savings and auto loans do compete with banks for some consumer services.

That overlap, says Flannigan, is partly why credit unions have come under attack recently from national banking groups seeking to eliminate credit unions' tax-exempt status.

Banking groups,with members ranging from major financial institutions to smaller independents and community banks, argue that credit unions are essentially banks.

Credit unions, however, take the position that their structures are fundamentally different.

Non-profit credit unions, owned by members, have only one way to grow through retained earnings while banks have stock options and other public and private for-profit methods of growth.

A cooperative group of credit unions, the California Credit Union League, an organization that, despite its name, represents both Nevada and California members, launched its awareness campaign in northern Nevada three years ago.

The group purchased 1,337 30-second spots from Reno/Sparks area television stations and 1,171 radio spots in 2002, continued through 2003, and this year, between January 1, and Sept.

30, purchased 1,662 30-second television and 780 radio spots.

Some of the ads focused on a single question such as who owns credit unions.

And in a Leno-like people-on-the-street segment, the question was pondered, played with, and finally answered.

Credit unions are cooperatives owned by members.

Other ads drove home key messages of credit unions as friendly institutions and as sources of low-rate consumer loans.

The three-year ad campaign was topped with a survey conducted by Strata Research, a subsidiary of the San Diego-based research firm Directions in Research, Inc.

In it, 402 northern Nevada residents were surveyed from late September through early October 2004, and asked what they remembered from the ads.

(Results are calculated at the 95 percent confidence level; the margin of error was plus or minus 4.9 percent.) Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed recalled that credit unions are member-owned.

The report said that 17 percent of bank customers surveyed recalled the ads'message that credit unions offer low interest rates.And 28 percent of bank customers said the ads were influential in their decision to consider using a credit union in the future.

"It was nice to see that we (credit unions) are being heard," says George.