By Ray Birch
DES MOINES, Iowa—How does the “best credit union ever” brag without bragging? By having some fun with its TV commercials and using a creative URL it registered seven years ago.
That’s what Affinity Credit Union has done after being named by NAFCU (now America’s Credit Unions) as its 2023 National Credit Union of the Year Award for CUs below $500 million in assets.
It has produced a :30 TV spot that has young kids pretending to be astronauts and playing with little spaceships in front of an intentionally inexpensive-looking backdrop of a lunar landscape.
“Affinity one, set course for the best rate,” the voiceover states. In response, a young astronaut asks, “Is Affinity Credit Union really the best credit union ever?” To which another kid responds, “Absolutely; well, at least on earth. Who knows what credit unions are like in other galaxies…Aliens could be giving killer interest rates.”
Voiceover concludes by announcing, “Affinity credit union. Building better lives for earthlings in Iowa.”
In addition to the television spot, there is also a new microsite at www.bestcreditunionever.com.
‘Kind of Silly & Different’
“It's campy. It's kind of silly and different. But that's the whole campaign, in general,” said Chief Marketing Office Kris Laufer. “To be named Credit Union of the Year was obviously an accolade we wanted to promote. However, we didn't want to be braggadocious about it.”
What Affinity believes is most important, is that more local consumers should realize they have a credit union in their backyard that has received a high honor.
“We are not a big financial institution. We're $140 million in assets and have two branches,” Laufer said. “We wanted to point people to the to the URL—which we were lucky enough to register seven years ago—bestcreditunionever.com. We wanted to have a local feel to the commercial, too. The kids in the commercial are from Des Moines.”
‘Outside the Box’
Laufer said the CU aspired to do something “outside the box.”
“Anybody can just put up a graphic and say ‘We're the credit union of the year, you should come see us because of that.’ We wanted to do more than that,” he said.
Reaction from members and the community has been positive, Laufer said.
“It's an eternal struggle as a smaller institution, because there's only so much money to go around. We have to produce the commercials and the advertising, but then we also have to have the means to get that advertising out,” he noted. “We've done the best that we can to spread the word far and wide, but we don't have multi-million-dollar marketing budget.
‘In the Limelight’
Laufer told CUToday.info that a lot of the members who visit the CU’s locations eventually talk about the commercial.
“They’ll say, ‘Oh you know we saw your commercial. It’s really interesting.’ It's great to see our credit union in the limelight, trying to spread the awareness,” Laufer said
Affinity grew its membership last year, and there just has been a large uptick in people coming into its branches.
“And, then there are a good number of the new members, people stopping by and saying they had not been aware of Affinity until they saw the commercial,” Laufer explained. “When we look at the metrics, as far as new people reaching out to us, those have all improved. From a direct ROI standpoint, it's always hard to measure marketing campaigns.”
The video cost $7,500 to produce.
‘Worth the Extra Cost’
“The kids are hired actors. Our production company was pretty adamant about that, saying that it's worth the extra cost as opposed to using employees’ kids,” Laufer said. “They say young actors ‘know the drill,’ as opposed to working with kids who have never been part of a video shoot.”
Affinity Credit Union is also using in-branch signage, a billboard campaign and direct mail.
“We have always emphasized that a local credit union that you can trust has won this big award,” Laufer said.
“Personal service, National recognition” appears prominently on the microsite.
Seven-Year-Old URL
Laufer said Affinity was fortunate to have already registered the bestcreditunionever.com URL.
“I started at Affinity in June of 2017, and I registered that URL in July of 2017. I came from a credit union that at time would deploy vanity URLs for promotions,” he said. “It was something that I was used to and I just I just did a search, came upon that URL, and thought someday it could be useful. Now it is.”