After the kids – now it's the moms

CU Newswire

Based on their award-winning Young & Free marketing program, Currency Marketing has created another innovative programme – Money Mom. 

The problem this addresses is that women make roughly 89% of the financial decisions in their families. But a number of CUs are not very female-friendly.

Stay-at-home moms, working moms, single moms — no matter what the situation, the fact is, CUs are failing to give moms the attention they deserve. And, since almost every bank and CU is turning a blind eye to moms, savvy CUs, who consciously build their brand and products to appeal to moms, will have a great opportunity to differentiate themselves in an otherwise homogenous marketplace.

In this programme you’ll find a local mom to be the voice of your CU. Her job will be to connect on- and off-line with the local community to raise awareness and affinity for your CU.

To date, two Money Moms have held this great part-time job, Rosemary Garner in 2010 and Daeniell Gahl, both at Verity CU. Each has brought her own unique style to the position and each has had a significant impact at their CU and in their community.

Marketing to Moms – Verity Credit Union Attracts Moms… without Turning Off Everyone Else

Credit Union Business | By Laura Enock

Momprenuers. Mommy bloggers. Deal sites for moms. What is it about moms that have turned them into the hottest demographic for marketers?

“Credit unions don’t like to exclude anyone, and so our target markets have become so broad,” says Shari Storm, SVP at Verity Credit Union and author of “Motherhood is the New MBA.”

“It’s in our nature not to exclude one group over another.”

So why would the credit union single out moms? Is it working? And how do other, non-mom members (think: men) feel about it?

Verity Credit Union chose moms as a group to focus on after its leaders read the book “Blue Ocean Strategy,” a book on marketing, which advises organizations to find the most attractive demographic for what they’re offering, focus on them, and ignore everyone else. While searching for ways to implement these ideas in 2008, the credit union considered focusing on “family” as that segment of focus.

But family was too broad. So they asked a key question: “Who in the family is making the decisions and influencing where kids start their banking relationships?”

Storm noted that when you’re looking at a target market, you want three things:

1. Strong affiliation
2. Homogony
3. Influence.

Not only was it clear that “moms” was the dominant answer to the key question above, it was also clear that moms have all three of these components.

1. Strong affiliation: individuals in this demographic affiliate strongly with that role. For example, many of us are employees, consumers, homeowners, moviegoers. But how strongly do we affiliate with that role? Now think of motherhood. It’s not something I just happen to be; it’s a central part of my identity.
2. Homogony: members of the group are alike in many ways. While all groups have a “common bond of membership,” if that’s the only thing they have in common, it isn’t much. For moms, there’s a lot that the majority of moms will find they have in common, as diverse as they may be. They’re caregivers, protectors, and advocates for the world. Additionally, put any two moms together over coffee and they’ll find out they share the same or similar views on many things. For example, most women think they’re husbands don’t do enough around the house.  That’s homogony, and it’s alive and well among moms.
3. Influence:While every human being has some degree of influence over others, moms have the most influence when it comes to their family,  friends, the businesses they own, schools, and their communities. Research shows that mothers are the most influential when it comes to where their kids will do their banking.

Another factor that makes moms an attractive group to focus on is that they’re not expensive to communicate with. After college students, the first groups to embrace blogging and Facebook were moms.

Having decided to focus marketing efforts on moms in 2008, Verity rolled out VerityMom.com, a blog for moms and by moms, with a specific spokesperson, in August 2009.  “We’d been watching Young and Free (YoungFreeHQ.com), and thought it was fantastic,” Storm says. “Our Verity Mom is Young and Free for moms.”

Verity Mom isn’t the whole program, of course. It’s just one component of the credit union’s overall strategy. Other components of that strategy include retraining the credit union staff so they celebrate kids when they come into the branch, including moms in the credit union’s creative, and redesigning the branches to make them kid-friendly. Verity also runs focus groups with moms, to find out how they’ll respond to marketing initiatives that the credit union is planning.

Another advantage to focusing on moms is that you know where they are and can easily spot the opportunities. For example, Verity CU set up a table at a local summer camp expo where various day care options for the summer were presented to interested parents­­­––likely to be mostly an audience of moms. While it’s not a typical outlet for a financial institution, with a focus on moms, Storm knew they wanted to be there.

While Verity CU hasn’t sliced moms into other segments, they focus mostly on moms of young children.

And yet, there are challenges. “Anyone not in that target market won’t immediately ‘get it’,” Storm concedes. “You don’t understand how tightknit and powerful we are if you’re not part of it. Intuitively, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Overcoming the obstacle of convincing the (primarily male) board was a matter of going back to the numbers. For example, at Verity CU, one of the goals was to lower the average age of members. The credit union is now doing that successfully, by targeting moms and bringing in the whole family. “We’ve done it, we’re showing results, we’ve established that ahead of the campaign,” Storm says.

New checking accounts was the other goal, one the credit union is successfully achieving.

For credit unions looking to target moms, Storm is encouraging. “You have to be the champion for it,” she says. That means continually reminding people and asking the question, ‘is this good for moms?’”

Targeting moms works, but what about the rest of the membership? Verity is successfully targeting women, without alienating anyone else. Here’s how:

“We’re not pro-mothers to the extent of excluding men,” Storm explains. For example, the credit union had a debit card with an image of two kids frolicking in the grass. The women liked it, but the men didn’t. While they had no problem carrying photos of their own children in their wallets, most men aren’t comfortable with photos of someone else’s kids. So, the credit union changed the image.

Another example: the credit union placed garden gnomes outside the branches. While the women love them and comment on them, men don’t notice them at all. In general, the credit union’s marketing efforts are designed in a way that women benefit, while men don’t lose out.

With more women currently in the workforce than men, it’s becoming more acceptable to market to women. It’s hard to argue the statistics. And while Verity CU is a community credit union, Storm is quick to point out that EVERY credit union can focus on moms. Many companies have work-life balance groups; they’re singling out that demographic. If you’re a credit union with a SEG, you can integrate yourself with the companies your members work for by offering workshops and other resources for moms.

“Make sure the people driving the initiative are women,” Storm says. “They don’t have to be doing all the work, but they should be making most of the decisions.”

While not every credit union has moms represented strongly in their membership, if your credit union has a typical mix of members, consider focusing at least some of your marketing on moms. Find a way to do it without alienating men, and then look at the numbers. If the strong affiliation, homogony, and influence or moms in your membership are making a difference in your bottom line, you have all the proof you need to take it further.

+ Original article

Messy Message in CU's Social Media Campaign

American Banker

An edgy anti-bank message can work well in social media marketing, but only if it also conveys a better alternative from the company behind it.

Summit Federal Credit Union of Rochester, N.Y., may have missed the mark when it created a viral video called "S*** Banks Say," — in which it more fully spelled out the first word. The promotion pushed a pro-credit union message in the mold of a satirical online video trend that evolved from the "S*** My Dad Says" Twitter account (which was popular enough to lead to a short-lived TV show starring William Shatner).

Summit's deliberately lowbrow video differs substantially from the dozens of YouTube videos spawned by Currency Marketing's Young & Free campaign. Many of those videos, generated by young credit union members, have gone viral and garnered thousands of new members for the 91 credit unions that have participated since 2008.

By contrast, Summit's "S*** Banks Say" video promotes stereotypes of bank employees as bored, rude and ditzy while failing to provide any specifics about an alternative.

The video further stresses that banks charge high and unnecessary fees and are unresponsive to customer service concerns. It ends with a brief suggestion that the viewer switch to a credit union.

"It shows everything that's wrong with your competitor while offering no details on how [Summit is] different," says Emmett Higdon, founder and principal at the banking technology consulting firm Prizm Strategy, in an email.

"[This is] a poorly done rip … and reminds me of negative political ad campaigns," says Higdon.

There are better ways for credit unions and community banks to harness social media to distinguish themselves from their larger rivals, experts say.

One reason that Summit may have shied away from direct comparisons is that the credit union itself levies a wide range of the sorts of service charges that customers loathe —from fees for inactivity to those for monthly account maintenance, paper statements and early account closures.

Nor did efforts to contact the credit union indicate that it is particularly responsive to callers. American Banker spent many minutes on hold on Summit’s customer service line trying to reach a representative. Its call was then transferred to a voice mail recording. Ultimately, a Summit representative responded to a request for feedback about its video in an email message stating that it declined to comment.

"Credit unions need to tread lightly if they are going to do bank bashing, and they better be able to look in the mirror and prove it does not apply to them as well," says Tim McAlpine, creative director of Currency Marketing, a credit union marketing company in Chilliwack, Canada, and creator of the Young & Free campaign.

Young & Free financial institutions select their young spokesperson, called a "spokester," through an online contest in which participants show off their creative talents and their social-media savvy. The winner is hired to represent the credit union for a year, using Facebook and YouTube to advertise the benefits of joining a credit union.

Young & Free's most successful video, crated by the campaign's first spokester, Larissa Walkiw, who represented Common Wealth Credit Union (now Servus Credit Union) of Alberta in 2008, has been viewed more than 150,000 times.

Part of the campaign's success is its educational value. Walkiw's first video explains clearly how credit unions operate and how these differences can benefit members. And when she criticizes banks, she does so in such a gentle and disarmingly charming way that even bankers might even find themselves agreeing with her message.

But times may have changed.

While credit unions are still challenged to bring in new, younger members — their average member age is 47, about ten years older than the average U.S. citizen, McAlpine says — messages may have to become more extreme and less thoughtful to get through to younger audiences who are inundated with marketing messages

"I think the ability of a video to break through today versus three to four years ago is more difficult," McAlpine says.

Still, credit unions do plenty of things well that banks can't do, and they should focus on those differences in their videos and other online marketing efforts, experts say.

"Credit union websites are not very good at pointing to the differences between themselves and banks, which go beyond fees," says Brad Strothkamp, vice president and principal analyst for the marketing and strategy group at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

For example, credit unions could do more to highlight the benefits of their nonprofit structure. They could also better promote any pacts they have with other credit unions to share ATM and branch access.

+ Original article

CUs need to make more use of video

CU Newswire

CUs not using video are missing out on an effective tool to communicate with:

• Staff
• Members
• Potential members

That’s the opinion of Tim McAlpine, head of Currency Marketing and developer of the very successful Young&Free program among many others. He doesn’t feel that a CU’s video needs to go viral to be successful. He cited as an example of Libro Financial putting its annual report on video. The CU broke the 50-page report into chapters and put those on youtube. They also reassembled it. What might be some other uses?

• Training
• Program launches
• Getting information to staff from diverse locations

The uses are as varied as the imagination.

There are drawbacks, such as the lack of keyword searches, but he believes someday there will be. However, a good title description and tagging means a video can be found.

Some still have the idea social networking in general will compromise systems, a view he disagrees with.

CUs do not need to hire production companies with huge costs. He recommends hiring freelancers. He does believe in using good equipment. Cannon is his favourite. He recommends that an extra microphone be used, because poor audio can kill the effect of a video. Equally important is good lighting.

Content, content, content

Boring videos can be detrimental. Having a CEO stare into a camera and speak in a monotone for 5 minutes, almost guarantees people won’t listen. McAlpine says:

• If you have 5 minutes of script, cut it to 2. Make it short and sweet.
• Look for the “stars” to speak on the video.
• Videos should be scripted and tightly edited

Videos and all social media should be part of the overall marketing program. “Everything should feed off everything else,” he said.

To read more check out McAlpine’s article here.

Young & Free co-operate in upbeat video

CU Newswire

The Young & Free Spoksters from North America came together electronically to create a IYC message with an upbeat musical background. Currency Marketing is behind the Young&Free program to help attract young members to CUs.

Currency's programs win five MAC Marketing NOW Awards

Marketing Association of Credit Unions

Why wait a year to recognize credit unions’ virtual, viral and electronic efforts that are happening now? That single question prompted the Marketing Association of Credit Unions to launch the MAC Marketing NOW awards.

With more credit unions creating and posting their work on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, microsites and developing smartphone apps, the competition is designed to recognize the best work happening right now in the credit union world.

There were 11 categories with hundreds of entries and Currency's programs won five first place awards.

• South Carolina Federal Credit Union and Young & Free SC placed first in the Best Social Media Engagement Campaign Award category with its Thursday Night Lights football promotion.
• Listerhill and Young & Free Alabama placed first in the Video category with Chris Anderson's Young & Free Musical video. This entry was also named a Superstar Finalist.
• TDECU and Young & Free Texas placed first in the Blog and Vlog category.
• Verity Credit Union and Verity Mom placed first in the Best Social Media Personality Award category with Rosemary Garner.
• Currency Marketing and Young & Free HQ placed first in the Age Agency Podcast or Internet Radio Show Award category with Why Gen Y Live.

+ MAC Marketing Now Awards

Canada's Common Wealth CU wins MACQUEE Award

Credit Union Times | By Heather Anderson

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – Those Canadian stick figures on YouTube scored another big U.S. marketing award.

The Marketing Association of Credit Unions named $1.6 billion Common Wealth Credit Union of Lloydminster, Alberta, this year’s MACQUEE Award winner at the group’s annual conference award dinner last night. Common Wealth’s Young & Free checking promotion, which relies heavily upon technology and social media, had just picked up three CUES Golden Mirror awards last week.

Common Wealth hired Chilliwack, British Columbia-based agency Currency Marketing for creative and strategy assistance to promote the account to Gen-Y.

The cornerstone of the promotion was a province-wide search for a spokesperson, someone between the ages of 19 and 25 who would work 20 hours per week for the credit union, communicating with potential young members in person and online. Three finalists were selected from video entries, with 19-year-old visual artist Larissa Walkiw selected from an online voting competition.

Walkiw is the creator of the popular video that promotes the account and the credit union difference. The video, which uses simple stick figure artwork, has been viewed more than 20,000 times on YouTube.

Young & Free takes three CUES Golden Mirror Awards

CU Newswire

Young & Free, The Common Wealth CU pioneering youth program, took top honours in three categories at the Golden Mirror Awards announced at the CUES Experience Conference in Minneapolis.

Young & Free received first place in the image enhancement category for CUs with assets more that $700 million, first place in the segment marketing category for all CUs and first place in the public relations category for all CUs. More than 900 entries were submitted to the 2008 Golden Mirror Awards from North American CUs.

The Young & Free Alberta program used a microsite, social media and traditional marketing to search for a Generation Y spokesperson in conjunction with the launch of a new Young & Free Chequing Account. Dubbed the "voice of Alberta’s under 25 crowd," the Young & Free Spokesperson creates YouTube videos, posts, daily blog entries and attends youth events to connect Common Wealth CU with young people.

The Golden Mirror Awards are awarded at the CUES annual marketing conference, recognizing top CU marketers in North America.

Currency Marketing worked with Brookline Public Relations, DSA Media and K1 Technology to execute all components of the Common Wealth program.

Looking for CU innovators

CU Newswire

An interesting website that conducts interviews with CU innovators plus gives other information is Currency Marketing. The 18-year old company is a marketing firm specializing in CU branding, marketing and social media since 2000.

The site recently featured guest Tom Webb, Adjunct Professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Program Manager of the Master of Management – Co-operatives and Credit Unions program. He teaches field research including study visits to examples of excellent co-operative business practices.

The firm conducted podcast interviews with CU experts attending the CUES Conference.

CEO Tim McAlpine believes, "In a world where banks and credit unions appear to be interchangeable to consumers, product innovation is the only way to really stand out from the crowd. Offering better service or better rates isn't enough. Better is just better. People are drawn to things that are different. To make business even harder, the built-in credit union difference is no longer enough to stand out. Not only do credit unions have to compete against banks today, credit unions have to compete against other credit unions.

Finalists for 2008 MACQUEE profiled

From a pool of over 400 entries nationwide, judges have selected five campaigns to compete for the MACQUEE, MAC’s Best in Show in its 2008 Awards Competition. The winner will be announced on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at the Newport Beach Marriott in Newport Beach, CA during MAC’s 22nd Annual Conference. Finalists include: Bellco CU (Greenwood Village, CO), Common Wealth CU (Lloydminster, Alberta), Kern FCU (Bakersfield, CA), US Federal CU (Burnsville, MN) and Wescom CU (Pasadena, CA).

Young & Free Product Launch & Spokesperson Search

• Market Segment Program
• Common Wealth Credit Union
• Assets: Greater than $500 million
• Jeff Mulligan, CEO
• Currency Marketing, Agency

Many credit unions talk about the importance of attracting the youth sector as members. Those that are truly serious about it should look closely at Common Wealth CU’s innovative use of social media and technology.

According to Jeff Mulligan, Common Wealth’s CEO, it’s a turbulent time for youth in transition—better known as the 17 to 25 year old segment. “No one is listening to them, or valuing them as a consumer in our market place. We wanted our CU to be an organization that was committed to fostering a dialogue with this group and give them a product that will help them get a firm footing in the world,” said Mulligan.

In this case, the product—a free youth checking account called “Young and Free” for Northern Alberta’s 25 and under group—was hardly a new concept. The strategy for targeting this group was quite a bit more innovative—Common Wealth sponsored a province-wide spokesperson search to find someone who could engage this group in conversation about their financial needs. To promote the search, they set up a special microsite and then drove traffic to it by establishing a presence on various social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. The site was also used to conduct final voting among three finalists and was the subject of a number of TV and newspaper stories across Alberta.

The winner, 19-year old visual arts student Larissa Walkiw, received a one-year contract with Common Wealth, was provided a leased vehicle, digital video camera, phone and MacBook laptop to utilize as a means of connecting with her age group. A dedicated branch employee from the Young & Free target audience supports Larissa, providing administrative backup at the organizational level. Her responsibility in the 20-hour per week post is to continue to bring the Young & Free brand to life, through blogs and podcasts—or in other words, “talk, type and tell good stories.”

While the early stages of the campaign were directed at creating awareness of the Young & Free checking account and selecting a spokesperson, Mulligan indicates that the member acquisition will be the focus for the remainder of 2008. Judging from the initial results, Common Wealth should not be disappointed with the youth segment that they are aiming to capture.

The new influencers

Alberta Venture Magazine | By Eve Lazarus

Social media has changed the marketing environment. Now millions of ordinary people are determining what people say, think and buy.

Larissa Walkiw, 19, loves hanging out with her friends, surfing the web, and wearing skinny-leg jeans. She’s pretty much your typical teenager. And that’s exactly why Common Wealth Credit Union picked Walkiw to be its youth spokesperson. Each week she cranks out four blogs, creates a video post and represents the credit union at various events across Alberta.

It’s a brave leap of faith for a conservative financial institution to take, given that there are no restraints that might make the conversations boring or unauthentic to the under-25 set. Walkiw gets to do whatever she wants.

Last year Common Wealth executives examined their member base and realized that 17-to 25-year-olds made up only 10% of their total membership, completely out of whack with Alberta’s demographics. CEO and president Jeff Mulligan felt the Lloydminster-based credit union should do something to target this specific age group and regenerate its aging membership. “They [the under-25 set] are making countless decisions far sooner and at a far greater magnitude than generations before them,” he says.

The challenge, says Mulligan, is reaching this seemingly unreachable Generation Y, building brand awareness, while at the same time having 400-odd staff members pull behind you. Mulligan is a plugged-in 48-year-old, but it quickly became apparent to him that if the credit union wanted to reach people under 25, it would have to offer a product with benefits.

Common Wealth partnered with Currency Marketing, a Chilliwack, B.C.-based advertising agency to do a brand audit and identify ways to connect with the target audience. To his dismay, Currency president and chief strategist Tim McAlpine discovered that Alberta financial institutions were pretty much ignoring the needs of youth. “Unlike B.C., where there are a number of credit unions that have an under-25 free chequing account, there was no product in that space in Alberta,” says McAlpine. The agency and Common Wealth quickly launched Young & Free, a free chequing account targeted towards 17- to 25-year olds.

The next step was to find a spokesperson. Instead of hiring an actor, the credit union launched a contest, letting the under-25s pick their own spokesperson. The winner would blog on a regular basis, post video clips to the company’s newly created microsite, promote Common Wealth around the province and essentially work for the credit union 20 hours a week for one year. In return, he or she would receive a car, an Apple MacBook computer, a digital camcorder, camera, and a phone. “Right away we were letting the 17-to 25-year-old demographic have a say about who was going to be their spokesperson in our organization,” says Mulligan.

The credit union’s microsite, Youngfreealberta.com, quickly became the information hub for the product launch and the spokesperson search. Common Wealth received 15 applications, most of them 60-second YouTube video clips and one blog post. While candidates tried to win over voters during the two-month-long contest, they generated a ton of publicity for the credit union. Runner-up Paula Mickelson recruited DJs from a Lloydminster radio station to promote her campaign. The local newspaper profiled Mickelson in a full-page article and she was interviewed by the city’s local TV station. At the close of the contest, November 2007, Walkiw, who had created a podcast, thank-you video and attracted more than 200 friends to her Facebook page, received the most votes and was declared the Young & Free spokesperson.

With its highly branded campaign, Common Wealth managed to generate a decent amount of success in the online medium, specifically within its targeted demographic: under 25-year-olds. By introducing a dialogue between brand and consumer, Common Wealth got consumers to pass back information to friends and colleagues, not only about the new account but about themselves, through social media marketing.

Social media refers to a broad spectrum of online communities ranging from blogs and podcasts to Internet sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com. The latter dominates social media sites in Canada with 7.6 million members over 18 and another 1.7 million under 18. In other words, almost one-third of the population of this country is on Facebook.

David MacDonald, vice-president of consumer research at Environics Group in Toronto, says that while online users are generally younger, things are starting to change. “People online are very socially engaged,” says MacDonald. “They are in charge, they like to go out and do their own research and confirm their questions or find out about products and features and brands from circles that they otherwise wouldn’t have contact with. In a sense, social media is an expansion of word of mouth only it’s not face-to-face.”

The concept of combining social media marketing with non-web marketing is one whose time has come. Telus recently had over 100,000 downloads after it advertised its new Fish Bowl application on social media sites. The application allows users to customize a fishbowl and add fish, representing the friends included in their Telus “MyFaves” cellphone plan. “That was great for them because they had their brand and messaging in front of people who wanted it, downloaded it, and played it,” says Robert Jenkyn, vice-president of on-demand media at Media Experts in Toronto.

The ultimate goal of any social media marketing is to create a campaign that will spread from person to person, with very little advertising through traditional channels. The onus is then on the advertiser to create an interesting and engaging piece that people willingly view. Dove Evolution, a video showing how an average-looking woman could be transformed into a supermodel, scored 1.7 million views on YouTube and garnered dozens of international awards. The piece was delivered through YouTube only, costing the company virtually nothing to distribute.

On the flip side, the brave new world of social media is fraught with risks for those who don’t take the time to understand it. Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis, a Toronto-based public relations agency specializing in social media, points to Molson Canadian’s Campus Challenge last November: Molson’s stunt of asking university students to post “party photos” on Facebook back-fired when consumers accused the brewery of promoting binge drinking. “Marketers have viewed social media tools as just another channel like television, radio or newspapers and as a consequence totally violated people’s sense of what’s right and what’s trustworthy,” says Thornley. “Whatever actual results that these campaigns may have received in terms of conversions or track-through to actual sales were lost in the black eye that the corporation got by going into this world and not understanding the cultural mores and observing them.

Common Wealth’s Mulligan spent a lot of time assessing the risk of venturing into social media. The damage to the brand was Mulligan’s biggest concern. “What if somebody takes some of the dialogue on the website down a path that is absolutely contradictory to our corporate mindset?” says Mulligan. “Every time you create a spokesperson, whether you are hiring Tiger Woods or somebody from a rock band, you have to worry about that because now it is out of your control. Those were the biggest risks and of course the risk that we don’t connect – that we are wrong. But of course we found that we were absolutely right and all of the pieces lined up accordingly.”

The results so far are impressive. The credit union has doubled its 25 and under membership base. Young & Free account deposits were worth more than $1.1 million in the first three months of the program. An estimated $200,000 in unpaid media was brought in by public relations. As well, at the three-month mark, the microsite had 17,270 unique visitors and 15,460 viewers had watched the YouTube videos.

“Normally you would take a marketing program and say this is how it will be and this is how we will measure it and this is when it ends and this is when it starts,” says Mulligan.

He doesn’t view Young & Free as a campaign; it’s more about changing the corporate DNA. “This is a living, breathing, ever-evolving social network that’s going to help define and shape how we are valuable to that group. It’s a very different approach.”

Power lies within

HOW Magazine | By Darren Painter

See how creative firms are using technology to manage team resources and develop closer client relationships.

Steve is the go-to guy when any of Currency Marketing’s 10 employees forget the preferred way to reorder pressure-sensitive laminate or need the firm’s username and password to access a stock-photo website.

He’s thoughtful, the kind of guy who remembers that Sandy Pitkethly, Currency’s director of client services, prefers chocolate pecan pie instead of cake on her birthday, February 12. He’s also resourceful (he reminds the team that garbage is removed from the premises on Fridays at 9 a.m.), a little nerdy (he knows that each employee’s short-term disability benefit is two-thirds of weekly earnings or $800, whichever is less) and unabashedly eclectic (the best way to cook “turducken”—a chicken stuffed in a duck that’s stuffed in a turkey—is for about nine hours at 225 degrees F).

"Steve is the man who knows everything and has the lowdown on everybody,” says Tim McAlpine, president and chief strategist at Currency Marketing, based in Chilliwack, British Columbia. “He’s a superhero. If you need anything, you turn to Steve."

Actually, you turn him on.

Intranet infuses new mission

Steve is the name if Currency’s intranet, which McAlpine launched in 2003 after a strategic review of the agency’s branding, positioning and operational procedures. At the time, the firm, then called McAlpine Design Group, served 130 clients and had experienced two years of sales stagnation. “Most marketing agencies try to offer something for everyone, and we were no exception," he says.

So McAlpine repositioned his company as a specialist, concentrating solely on helping credit unions and travel firms promote and reposition their brands. Today, Currency Marketing works with only 15 clients, yet brings in twice as much annual revenue as it did five years ago. As the company repositioned, it also streamlined internal processes. Workflow had been driven by different software systems, and knowledge among employees was fragmented, McAlpine says. For example, folks in the firm’s interactive department saved important IP addresses, usernames and passwords on the company’s server, but not in a common folder that everyone used.

McAlpine turned to one of its technology partners, K1 Technologies of Abbotsford, British Columbia, which specializes in developing and deploying website tools for businesses. K1 designed an intranet for Currency Marketing that adhered to the agency’s new branding mantra of being "smart, solid, surprising and single-minded" when working with clients.

And so, Steve was born.

Why "Steve"? Once, a client of McAlpine’s (who wasn’t named Kevin) said he no longer wanted to sign going-away cards for departing co-workers with short, insincere messages. So he began signing each one, "I will miss our lunch-time basketball games. Take care!—Kevin." Says McAlpine: "I loved this story. And since we already have a Kevin at the office, Steve was the next best name."

Today, Steve serves as a valuable information repository with a kind of multiple personality disorder, a central place from which employees can access answers to common HR questions, read and contribute ideas and improve business, and post irreverent musings. Additions and edits aren’t made in real time, as done on a wiki. Rather, employees submit them by completing short forms on the intranet that are approved by McAlpine and uploaded later.

Steve’s four content sections—Smart, Solid, Surprising and Single-minded—reinforce Currency’s mission. The first includes day-to-day operational and HR details, such as the employee handbook and a discussion about the firm’s profit-sharing plan. The section has a widely used “Technology Information’ link that includes directions for accessing server paths, company licenses, website administration tools and other sensitive information.

"A key goal for Steve was not to make him a management replacement," McApline says. “An intranet can’t fix every problem or solve every challenge, so we have to continually engage with each other. Steve is a place where we can go to solve issues, but it’s not a place for conflict resolution."

The second section, Solid, embodies one of McAlpine’s management principles:

"I think management and employees should be in business together,” he says. “Employees want open leadership and the empowerment to know what’s going on now and what they can expect in the future.” To that end, the area includes new-business news (who the firm is wooing and who’s biting), client rankings by revenue and gross income, monthly and quarterly sales data, supplier file specs and more.

Steve’s Surprising and Single-Minded sections showcase Currency’s penchant for fun and focus, respectively. Employees in a sharing mood can post a movie review, video or their favorite recipe; new hires or employees preparing for a presentation can read about the agency’s recipe for market specialization. A believer that the right idea can come from left field, McAlpine added a Business Ideas area on Steve where employees can complete the sentence, “If I ran this place, I’d…" Once recent idea was to include all Currency staff on the press release distribution list, so employees can reply more knowledgeably to clients who respond to those releases with questions.

McAlpine says he’s considering making the next generation of Steve an open-source wiki, but that the current version achieves a “good balance between comprehensive and controlled."

Cuckoo brings big boy advertising to mom-and-pop CUs

Adrants

Welcome to the brave new world of ready-to-wear advertising. Cuckoo Campaigns enables small credit unions to compete against major banks with its stock marketing service.

Basic packages start at $6,500 US. You just pick a campaign that you like and a Cuckoo rep will deliver a fully-produced campaign within a month.

The only other things you really need are a ready-made swatch of suits, in campaign colors, and a peppy personality to match the shiny new veneer. We doubt Cuckoo helps with those but we're sure there's another firm out there that will.

Specialty shop: Focus works for small agency

Marketing Magazine | By Eve Lazarus

You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Chilliwack. It’s a small city about an hour-and-a-half drive from Vancouver in BC’s Fraser Valley that many locals have yet to visit. It’s also the home of an ad agency which—depending on whether a client is part of the financial services industry or in the tourism business—calls itself Currency: The Credit Union Marketing Agency or Passport: The Destination Marketing Agency.

Currency Passport has 11 people headed up by creative director and principal Tim McAlpine. McAlpine, 35, started a small graphic design studio 15 years ago. He gradually expanded into other areas as clients demanded more services, changes the name from the McAlpine Group and decided to focus on two business streams.

McAlpine has an impressive list of clients that includes Envision Financial, the fourth largest credit union in Canada, and almost a dozen other credit unions in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario, as well as Harrison Hot Springs Resort & Spa. But the agency’s biggest coup, and proof that specialization works, was its wrestling away Rocky Mountaineer Vacations, and its multimillion-dollar marketing budget, from incumbent TBWA Vancouver.

Michele de Rappard, director of marketing for Rocky Mountaineer Vacations in Vancouver, says it was the agency’s “alternative style and creative” that attracted them initially.

"It’s the creativity, their thought process, the attention they give and the planning process,” she says. Passport handles direct mail, magazine ads, product brochures and has just finished rebranding the company from Rocky Mountaineer Railtours to Rocky Mountaineer Vacations.

De Rappard says that while Passport is strictly creative and strategy, she was impressed with its ability to bring different partners in when necessary. For instance, it brought in Vancouver media shop Genesis Shepansky to work on RM’s media buy, and de Rappard says they liked the idea of working with this kind of "hub agency."

Specialization, says McAlpine, has allowed his agency to notch up and impressive client list and, at the same time, to venture outside the B.C. market. “When we were in the new business situations,” says McAlpine, "the first comment that would come up was ‘we have 40 firms we can choose from that are just down the street and you are in Chilliwack, why would we possibly go with you?’." McAlpine says since making the decision to specialize that question is rarely asked.

Certainly, Cathy Mombourquette, senior manager marketing at the seven-branch Woodslee Credit Union in Essex County, Ontario, didn’t care when she was shopping for an agency earlier this year.

"They marketed themselves as a credit union marketing agency and listed all the benefits of why I should use them," says Mombourquette. "I don’t have to educate them on credit unions, they know all that stuff."

Specialization to McAlpine is a "no brainer," but he reckons it’s still pretty scary to most agencies that think it will limit their potential. "What it does is it just opens everything right up, it allows you to be small and nimble but get beyond your geographic constraints."

Chilliwack design firm makes the list

Chilliwack Times | By Staff Writer

It's official. Business in Vancouver recently published its annual list of the top 20 graphic design firms in British Columbia. The list ranks Currency Marketing, of Chilliwack, as the province's 15th largest graphic design firm.

Currency Marketing was the only firm based in the Fraser Valley to make the list. Most of the other firms on the list are concentrated in Vancouver's downtown core. So Currency Marketing continues to take the path less traveled in its quest for success. More impressive is that six of the firms against which the Currency Marketing is ranked on the list are divisions of large advertising agencies. Merely making the list is an accomplishment amid British Columbia's highly competitive graphic design industry, which boasts more than 300 design firms.

"I'm pleased with our accomplishments," notes Tim McAlpine, president and creative director of Currency Marketing. "I am particularly proud that we remain independent and continue to work and live in Chilliwack while expanding our client base throughout the province. In a relatively flat economy, it is rewarding to know that our work has positively affected the bottom line of the clients we work for. This is the key to our continued growth and our strong reputation.

Award-winning Currency Marketing is Canada's leading credit union marketing agency. We are experts in helping credit unions relaunch, promote, and reposition their brands across all points of member contact. Currency Marketing is based in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

Small-town feel, big-time success

The Chilliwack Progress | By Jennifer Feinberg

Chilliwack's McAlpine Group has been named one of the 50 fastest growing companies in BC.

Business in Vancouver Magazine recently published its annual ranking of the province's leading businesses and the McAlpine Group nailed the 33rd position on its list. And it turns out the award-winning company was the only marketing and communications firm to crack the Top 50.

"I was blown away by the honour,” says Tim McAlpine, the company president and creative director. “We were named alongside some very big companies, including heavyweights like Telus and Intrawest Corp. So it gave me a lot of pride in a small-firm-makes-big kind of way."

Asked what he thinks the company is doing right, he replies, “I started this firm in 1990 as a home-based design studio. It was a one-man shop that has grown to include 10 full-time and six freelance staffers.

"We’ve done a heck of a lot of business locally but we know we had to look beyond the hometown to grow the business. We focused on the marketing and communications for larger companies with more than 50 employees. We specifically targeted those with over $10 million is sales and in a lot of cases it was businesses with multiple sites."

But the company also retained some smaller Chilliwack companies on its roster of clients, "in order to maintain and foster our hometown roots," says Mr. McAlpine.

Local clients include UCFV, Fraser Valley Meats, IMW Industries, Tourism Chilliwack, CEPCO, Minter Gardens and more. Some of their larger clients include Harrison Hot Springs Resort & Spa, Envision Financial, Tim Hortons BC and Ethical Funds.

"Many are surprised to find we are located in a small town like Chilliwack," Mr. McAlpine continues. "But we made a conscious decision to stay here. We're here because of lifestyle and excellent quality of life. We didn’t want the rat race of commuting to Vancouver.

"And once we have a potential client on side, we make the distance a complete non-issue by delivering materials electronically," he adds.

Over the years they’ve morphed from graphic design studio to a full-service branding, marketing and communications firm.

"We’ve not only added designers to our team, but also marketing strategists and we have aligned ourselves with talented PR and market research companies to be able to offer our larger clients the full-service treatment," he points out.

The magazine came up with it Top-50 ranking by measuring growth in annual sales from 1997 to 2002.

For the McAlpine Group, that meant a 258 per cent increase in annual sales over that period.

"I made a conscious decision to surround myself with very good people," he says. "That means people who know more than I do in their particular area of expertise.

"Most of our staff are local residents, who at one point commuted to large companies in Vancouver. Now most of them just have a five minute commute in Chilliwack."