Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, which often goes by Vancity, has chosen Wasserman + Partners Advertising to market a new vision to members and prospective clients.
Richard Seres, vice-president of marketing at the credit union, said the focus has changed from brand and awareness building to one of developing a “new value proposition.”
“There’s been a lot of change at Vancity over the last two years,” he said. “Our value proposition is that joining Vancity–a progressive financial cooperative–means taking pride that building your own wealth builds your community’s wealth. That’s the core of how we differentiate ourselves and deliver value in the marketplace.”
Vancity has an annual marketing budget of around $3 million.
TBWAVancouver was the credit union’s AOR for the past six years. During that time, the agency helped grow the member base from 302,000 to close to 415,000 and saw ad campaign awareness hit over 60%–double the norm for financial services.
“We’re really proud of the work that we’ve done with Vancity, we’ve got great results for them and helped them build business and numbers and wish them well in the future,” said Andrea Southcott, president of TBWA.
TBWA was on the agency short list along with DDB Canada in a three-month search led by marketing and communication consultants Reynolds & Fyshe.
“[Vancity] is a brand that has a lot more leverage than it has been using,” said Alvin Wasserman, president of Wasserman + Partners. “I think it could be a bigger force on the local market than it is. People feel good about it, but it’s not always top tier consideration and I think we can change that ‘feeling good’ to having more of an impact and being more first tier.”
Wasserman + Partners has also recently won Granville Island Brewing (formerly with Publicis Vancouver) and Port Metro Vancouver.
While the international shipping port markets to business, consumer and trade audiences, Granville Island Brewing–now owned by Molson –takes a more grass roots approach to its advertising.
“They are a small-batch, handmade beer and we envisage small-batch, handmade advertising for them,” Wasserman said, adding a summer 2010 campaign will break in May.
