Social Media Spotlight
Dec 3, 2007 
CU Communicator Blog | By Jeff Hardin
Young & Free Alberta gets ready to announce winner after wildly successful campaign. (Note: this is an update to a previous post about a Social Media Campaign that is both eye-catching and innovative.)
The applications have been processed, video blogs recorded and the votes tallied in Common Wealth Credit Union’s Young & Free campaign! Young & Free, developed and rolled out a few months ago for Common Wealth by Currency Marketing, enjoyed wild success—much more I’m betting than even the credit union and Currency envisioned.
The campaign was created to call attention to Common Wealth’s free checking product for young adults under the age of 25. The concept is for applicants aged 18-25 to record videos sharing why the credit union should hire them on as a spokesperson for the credit union, as well as a blogger about the social scene in Northern Alberta. Blog readers then got to vote on who they thought should be the spokesperson.
All told, 11 people submitted video applications. From this pool, three finalists … Shane Lamotte, Larissa Walkiw and Paula Mickelson emerged. During the voting period last week, the finalists nabbed a ton of attention on local news and radio programs, and thousands of people visited the blog site to watch the videos and cast their votes.
I wonder how much money it would have cost Common Wealth to garner that kind of media and public attention in a more traditional advertising campaign?
The winner will be announced Monday, December 10th on the Young & Free site. I suspect that Currency’s Tim McAlpine will have plenty to say about this campaign once it concludes (and he has the chance to catch his breath!). When we hear from Tim, we’ll pass along that information.
Kudos to Tim and Currency for the concept, and to Common Wealth CU for taking a very public chance on this Social Media Campaign. Anyone in credit union land giving serious thought to Social Media should spend a few hours scanning the Y&F site!
