Todd Palmer, AE, KPRI; Gloria Gerak, Media Planning & Placement; Marcia Buchalter, Buchalter Consulting; Andy Safir, Buchalter Consulting; Kelli Beck, VP marketing, NICU; Todd Williams, AE, XX Sports

North Island Credit Union put more than half its marketing budget into radio for the first ten months of 2007 in the form of the Island Car-A- Month Campaign. And it definitely paid off. The promotion, created by Buchalter Consulting and produced by Laguna Productions, aired on ten local stations. It was designed to secure the loyalty of existing customers and entice new ones to join the credit union by offering a variety of rewards including free gifts, special auto loan rates and the chance to throw out the first pitch at a San Diego Padres game. The promotion™s biggest enticement was the giveaway of a hybrid car every month of the year.

According to NICU™s Kelli Beck, the investment in the radio campaign brought spectacular results. We launched the campaign because growth in the credit union industry was flat in 2006, and a forecast for 2007 warned of negative growth due to a cooling economic climate nationwide. Instead, she says, The Island grew by 1,659 members (net, after attrition) in 2007, which amounted to a 1.17% increase. Additionally, retention of existing members was 91.4% for the year, while most financial institutions™ retention rates averaged 87% – 89% for the same period.

Nearly 34-thousand entry forms were collected for the sweepstakes. That translated to more than 33-hundred new members who joined The Island in 2007, with 20-25% of those new members opening a checking account “an important measure of success since getting customers to switch their checking accounts is one the hardest things for financial institutions to do.”

Overall, The Island opened 9,760 new checking accounts in 2007, approximately 11-hundred more than the year before. They credit the radio campaign for that, too. It was the only medium in which they advertised checking accounts.

Posted under Creative, EAR Award Winners