UMe Credit Union’s True Hollywood Story

UMe is a credit union with pluck and personality. The Burbank, California based institution was fun and quirky, and had many loyal fans in its region, but needed some advertising and branding love to update and unify its messaging.

May 3, 2018: By Adrenaline

Make magic in a city rich with creativity

UMe is a progressive, one-branch credit union in Burbank, California. Though she be but little, she is fierce. With small ad buys and smart guerilla tactics, UMe has built a solid reputation for itself over the years in the financial space. But in 2017, UMe came to Adrenaline asking for an advertising campaign to elevate its brand from being part of the conversation to being the most memorable voice in the room.

Translate financial-ese for the yous and mes.

Good messaging in the financial space is often explanatory messaging. How do CDs work? What are the benefits of refinancing your home compared to taking out a home equity line of credit? The catch is, once you get into the nitty gritty of this versus that, banks versus credit unions, financial planning versus financial management – most people stop listening. Attention spans are short and, if you can’t make it fun, you’re going to lose a lot of folks. In the industry that brought you the term “remote deposit capture,” you have to be creative about how you deliver your messaging. (At Adrenaline we advocate for calling RDC by its true name: selfies de la shillings. But it hasn’t caught on.)

Meet the UMe Emu – UMe’s first ever spokesbird.

So, we created the UMe Emu — a giant cartoon bird, who worked at the highest echelon of global finance before coming to the realization that money should be local and cooperative, instead of global and corporate. This dude has seen it all and is here to drop some high-quality, dollars-and-cents know-how. The UMe Emu is a truth teller, brand champion and wisenheimer wrapped in a chic, purple-feathered façade.

Bank on UMe

As the counterpart to the UMe Emu, Adrenaline created a sister campaign called Bank on UMe. The campaign marries funkadelic patterns with copy celebrating Burbank’s counterculture zeitgeist. The two campaigns work well together and alone to further UMe’s search for banking on a higher consciousness.

The UMe Emu launched in April 2018, with digital buys, in branch signage, an email campaign and a door hanger to 15,000 homes in Burbank.