With the return of "pumpkin spice" foods and drinks, a Wisconsin credit union is applying the same fall flavor to one of its products.
Verve, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, began offering a "pumpkin spice loan" in 2014 after seeing the name catch on following its use as part of Starbucks' menu in 2003.
"We've run different approaches to the pumpkin spice loan in the past, where it began by playing on the pumpkin spice trend, and we've [since] expanded to other fall activities like getting lost in a corn maze," said Jordan Destree, assistant vice president of brand and design for the $1.5 billion-asset credit union. "Currently, it morphed to what you hear now, which is our spokesperson acting as a scarecrow having a conversation with a crow."
The credit union set up special websites for each campaign —
"It gives us a really good way to measure overall effectiveness, because instead of driving everyone to our [homepage], the majority of the users are going to be directed to the specific URLs so we can always have a really good idea of how much interest each of the campaigns are drawing specifically," said Anna Allen, vice president of marketing for Verve.
Since the debut of the autumnal product, which offers terms that differ from other traditional products such as low rates and 90 days of no payments required, Verve leaders have seen younger consumers respond positively to the promotion. Performance metrics were unavailable before American Banker's deadline.
"The main goal was to create memorable, attention-grabbing campaigns that aligned well with our brand, were easy to understand and resonated well with consumers. … Using humor, creative campaign names and direct URLs allowed us to break through and gain attention," Allen said.
Other institutions have taken to food-focused initiatives to break from the norm of advertising, including the $16.4 billion-asset
Unusual marketing ideas like Verve's pumpkin spice loan are effective methods for capturing a consumer's attention against the rising number of advertisements published each day, experts say.
The overall ecosystem of promotions has exponentially grown over the past several decades, but consumer attention spans have remained the same, said Jared Watson, assistant professor of marketing at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business.
"If you were to step back into the 1960s, we'd be exposed on average to around 500 ads a day, and now it's over 10,000 ads per day … but our attention hasn't gotten any greater," Watson said. "So we're seeing a lot more kinds of fun [and] creative ways that marketers are using people's already situational interest in things to capture their attention."
Nontraditional advertising mediums such as memes can influence the choices consumers make, incorporating seasonal trends to create opportunities for free marketing in the form of social commentary and word-of-mouth promotions, Watson said.
"This campaign allows consumers who share this content to say something about themselves or their friends. … When we look at the meme relevance in the marketing space, it's really a way to show that marketers understand their consumers and that they are able to authentically connect with their consumer base," Watson said.
By strengthening the connection with their members, credit unions can additionally draw in customers that shy away from interacting with their financial institutions beyond basic needs.
"Credit unions have to think about how to grab people's attention away from a topic that's often unpleasant, as most people don't like to think about money and they don't like to think about the hassle of banking," said Peter Caprariello, associate professor of marketing at Stony Brook University. "But you can get people's attention with fun ideas and concepts like pumpkin spice and that's going to draw people's attention and make it seem like it's more fun than it is."
