Your credit union should try “cooperative branding”

“Cooperative Branding” is when two or more brands share a promotion or idea. And  shockingly it’s not used hardly at all in the cooperative space.

Think of some summer promotions you’ve seen involving a huge hotel chain and a rental car company. Two totally different things, yet, when connected, it’s a powerful promotional and useful tool for travelers.

Now that the summer season is officially here, I’ve been looking at how cooperatives (food co-ops and credit unions) can partner with other cooperatives to create”stickiness” between the brands and member/owners and how that plays out using social media. (Yes, these are the kinds of things I think about all the time!!!!) 

For instance, take this high-production example of Dairy Queen and SpikeTV partnering for a dual branded commercial.

Granted, this is a pretty expensive cooperatively branded partnership. Still though, it serves both brands well. So what can your credit union do to create an environment for a cooperative branding experience? For that, we have to look at what’s happening in Europe.

The co-operative culture there cannot compare to the U.S. since they (co-operatives) actually all work together for one common goal – solidify the credit union brand as “for the people” instead of a lot of individual identities. (That argument will be addressed in future posts.) Cooperatives in the UK consistently co-brand with other cooperatives in or to share and connect with member/owners with a consistent message. They use what’s called the “Cooperative Commission”  to help create and sustain these partnerships. 

One such cooperative branding initiative was created between Midcounties Co-Operative and a mobility company to help disabled members/owners connect with services to help them shop in the Co-op.

I’m sure there are 1000s of other examples like this happening around the U.S. but unfortunately I cannot seem to find them being promoted loud enough to show up on social media. What can credit unions do to accomplish a successful cooperative branding partnership?

  1. Look at your credit union’s marketing goals and select one thing you’d like to promote this summer (i.e. increase home loans, provide community support for race relations, raise money for school supplies for the fall…..)
  2. Find a partner to promote the goal/issue with your credit union and create a narrative for the story. If it’s a housing organization for low-income families, or a local organization who also is working on race relations or even a local elementary school in desperate need of supplies for low-income families. Set your metric goals and running length of the promotion and get moving.
  3. Pick one social media channel to promote your combined goal. If you’ve already done your audience research, you’ll know what platform will connect and resonate with your membership and audience to do the most good.
  4. Regularly post and connect with the credit union branding goal in mind. Your messaging should revolve around these efforts until the end date.
  5. Make a huge deal out of your results. Your credit union and branding partner should both team together to unveil the results and stories gathered from this experiment with your social audience. There’s nothing worse than following a story/dual-promotion project and not hearing or seeing how it ends. Create videos or Memes or infographics to explain what you did and what it resulted in for the community and/or the two brands.

Cooperative branding, I think, should be a staple of cooperatives marketing teams around our country. Too much we are existing in our own worlds when there’s a much larger world interested in what you’re doing to make the most good happen. Too often we rely on the media to tell our story and it’s time to own it in partnership with other brands like yours that give a crap.

Michael Ogden

Michael Ogden

Michael has been in the social media business for more than a decade inside the credit union, technology, financial and food industries. He’s the founder of For3, LLC, which ... Web: www.for3forgood.com Details