Member-owned credit unions—not large banks—should be the clear winners in our era of purpose-driven brands. But their customer satisfaction scores have declined for the last five years, and millennials and zoomers aren’t joining credit unions as previous generations did. North Carolina’s Local Government Federal Credit Union (LGFCU) partnered with Ziba to reverse these credit union industry trends. The partnership focused on the launch of a new, more digitally-forward brand that would serve as an incubator for ground-breaking brand purpose-driven customer experience (CX) strategy and design.
Ziba named and designed Civic’s brand identity elements and articulated its purpose, then generated a vision of innovative customer experience (CX) that demonstrated how the power of brand purpose could be brought to life across every CX interaction and touchpoint. LGFCU implemented and further developed three of Ziba’s CX concepts that cemented both LGFCU and Civic as future-facing, big bank-competitive, and custom-made for local citizens and communities. Launched in 2018, Civic is now one of the top-rated credit unions in the country and among the fastest-growing financial institutions in the nation. Civic’s powerful brand identity will be applied to eleven new Civic branch locations in 2025, further burnishing the new credit union’s brand as high-tech, high-touch, and in touch with credit union members’ and North Carolina communities’ sustainable economic well-being.
Ziba wishes to thank Lamar Heyward, Chief Marketing Officer for Civic and LGFCU, for his invaluable contribution to this article.
Born With It: Credit Unions and Brand Purpose
Brand management emerged in the 1950s, but brands have only become more social purpose-driven in the last decade. Ziba describes this as an epochal move from “Me to We,” as younger consumers form brand perceptions based on a company’s social and environmental impact as much its product features, pricing, and overall brand experience. According to Kantar’s BrandZ, “the world’s largest brand equity database,” companies perceived to be making a positive social impact on the world grew their value by 175% from 2006 to 2018, more than double companies with a weaker consumer perception of purpose.
As member-owned not-for-profit organizations, credit unions are in business precisely to enhance their members’ and their communities’ financial well-being. Critical providers of consumer banking services for one third of the US population, they would seem far better positioned than for-profit banks for attracting social impact-minded consumers. Big banks have suffered declining customer trust and confidence from myriad crises, including the hundreds of bank failures during and in the wake of the Great Recession, and more recently, data breaches like Equifax. The banking industry has also come under growing scrutiny for its greenwashing and fossil fuel financing.
Nevertheless, the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that credit unions’ scores dipped below banks’ for the first time in 2019 and have continued to decline. While some large financial institutions have included more social impact practices, most have focused on improving the functionality, breadth and speed of their touchpoints and offerings. Credit unions have been slower to offer fintech innovations and smartphone ease, crucial for attracting younger demographics. Where credit unions should be winning hands down—in the social impact brand marketplace, they’ve simply underdeveloped and undersold their social impact initiatives, offerings, and partnerships. Many credit unions have struggled to apply basic brand management fundamentals to their inherent strengths in supporting community and environmental stakeholders—not just company shareholders.
In Search of A New Paradigm for Banking As a Force For Good
The former CEO of North Carolina’s LGFCU (Local Federal Government Credit Union) Maurice Smith was determined to avoid his industry’s trajectory of decline. He was aware of Ziba’s futures thinking capabilities as well as the firm’s category-disrupting CX portfolio, including the brand and CX innovations developed for Umpqua Bank. In 2017, he approached Ziba for help envisioning a new brand whose identity and consumer experience would exemplify banking as a force for greater good.
The timing for the new venture was right. LGFCU, which serves local government employees and volunteers, elected and appointed officials, and their families, had emerged as a distinct entity following an earlier split from the larger State Employees Credit Union (SECU). The two credit unions maintained a cooperative relationship, so when SECU phased out commercial lending, a crucial lifeline for LGFCU’s local firefighters who relied on commercial loans to acquire essentials like fire trucks and protective gear, Smith saw an opportunity to reinvent LGFCU. He wanted to pioneer new ways to financially empower its members, and market its environmental impact and community engagement brand values.
Financial Access Means Branching Out, Physically and Digitally
Smith’s plan was to leverage LGFCU’s 40 years of brand equity while launching a new digital-only sister brand that would provide the anytime access to financial services that millennials and zoomers consider table stakes. LGFCU offers its members access to branches through its cooperative relationship with SECU. These 250 branch offices would continue to serve older members and, research shows, appeal to the younger demographics as well. Financial research firm Raddon found that post-Covid Millennials want to visit a branch for “high-touch advisory services…because of investment uncertainty, homeownership goals and financial planning needs.”
According to Lamar Heyward, Civic and LGFCU CMO, Smith was a visionary who believed in dramatically expanding digital access. But providing anytime access to meaningful financial services was a deeply felt imperative for Smith, not just a way to chase parity with big banks. Smith was committed to completely “eradicating the financial services deserts of North Carolina,” says Heyward.
Heyward points out that locking in statewide access to Civic and LGFCU’s financial services couldn’t be fully achieved without broadband. Eighty of North Carolina’s 100 counties are considered rural or rural in character, and many are off the grid. Civic and LGFCU’s current CEO Dwayne Naylor continues to champion the imperative of statewide access by ensuring both credit unions partner with broadband advocates and organizations, and the recent federal approval of a five-year plan for investing $1.5 Billion in Broadband in North Carolina gives this effort a fortuitous boost.
Qualitative Insights Help Define Civic’s CX Features and Brand Messages
At the start of the LGFCU/Ziba partnership, Ziba's ethnographic research helped the credit union leadership empathize deeply with and determine key consumer segments for Civic. The qualitative findings helped Smith resist the rest of the leadership team’s preconceived notions of their members’ needs and its desire to simply provide Chime-like financial services rather than innovate CX features and services tailored specifically to North Carolina’s financially underserved. According to Rob Wees, Ziba’s Creative Director, "Conducting ethnographic research was pivotal in shaping Civic as a brand that genuinely addressed the financial anxieties and aspirations of its community. Civic was not going to be just a bank, but a trusted advisor, purpose-built to strengthen its members’ financial well-being."
Ziba’s consumer research uncovered some crucial perceptions, hopes, and fears among Civic’s future members and non-members regarding money management, financial institutions and prosperity. Some talked about avoiding financial planning help out of embarrassment. Others perceived a lack of financial savvy as a nearly insurmountable barrier to wealth creation. Several spoke of a need to celebrate small wins towards financial goals while giving back along the way. In the race for more high-tech financial services, Civic’s high-touch education and support would need to play an equally vital role.
To formulate precisely how the new credit union would respond to these needs, Ziba devised a Maslovian framework. It guided the differentiating design of the brand’s customer experiences, services, brand identity and messages. Explains Ziba’s Creative Director Rob Wees, “After constructing the three tiers of the Civic Brand Insight Pyramid—each of which articulates the Civic brand positioning opportunity in an actionable way, we mapped the “banking, belonging, and believing” conceptual framework onto Ziba’s 360º customer journey for members and non-members. For instance, during the Borrow step of the journey, we recommended Civic make the loan application process more about supporting ideas, and less about proving members’ creditworthiness. This strategic mapping not only helped determine what specific features, services, and messages should be present for each step, but ensured that each Civic moment would be aligned with the company’s core values.”
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