Union Bank Promotes Custom Financial Product with User-Generated Content
Union Bank allows customers to “Design Your Own Bank” by customizing features on their checking accounts. To draw attention to this, it is asking customers to design their own commercials about the financial product.
After watching the original TV spot, users can combine various scene and plot elements to make unique commercials, with up to 40,000 versions possible. In addition, customers can upload their own photos into their spots (watch the coffee mug for placement). Once they’re happy with what they’ve created, participants can submit their commercials to a “post and vote” social promotion. Judges review the top three finalists and determine the winner, whose commercial goes “live” on the air.
Take-away #1: Make it relevant
The “customize your commercial” hook of the Union Bank campaign reinforces the bank’s customizable checking accounts. This makes the entire effort – which results in marketing collateral for the bank – relevant and drives home the key benefit of the financial product: choice.
Take-away #2: Ask for – and utilize – user-generated content
In marketing for a social world, a great way to interact with consumers – and give them a stake in your products and campaigns – is to incorporate user generated content (UGC). Conveniently, this Union Bank example the method for creating UGC imitates the interface customers use to customize their checking accounts.
Take-away #3: Seek votes and offer a prize
While the voting mechanism of this could have been more dynamic, Union Bank was right to use a social promotion element to encourage participation and boost effort. Creating the commercials is fun and easy enough, but the addition of a voting- and merit-based prize motivates users to develop entertaining entries … and share them with their networks.
