Ugly Contest, Lovely Results

Dianne Molvig
February 25, 2010 | COMMENTS

“You can't keep doing the same things and expect to get different results.”

That statement has become the marketing mantra at Alliance Credit Union in San Jose , at the urging of Emily Condon, senior vice president of marketing and retail delivery. Her marketing team members—including marketing specialist Heather Wheeland and marketing supervisor Mark Mendez—take that principle to heart.

“We're always trying to do something different,” Wheeland says.

“That's why we went with our Ugly Car Contest,” she adds. “It was a way for people to become more aware of Alliance and to connect with us through social media.” Social media definitely was “something different” for the credit union.

It hadn't used social media before as a marketing tool—for good reason, Mendez points out.

“We were debating whether to use social media,” he explains. “We'd read about [other organizations] getting negative feedback. Social media is mostly for keeping up with your friends. People don't want to be bombarded with advertisements. So we didn't want to annoy people.”

That's why Wheeland and Mendez, along with a couple of people from a design/copywriting agency, brainstormed about effective ways to enter the social-media realm. They came up with the idea of running a contest, which they felt would motivate people to check out Alliance Credit Union's new Facebook page. As Wheeland points out, “You don't have a Facebook page just to have one. You need a reason to be on there.”

Running a contest provided the reason. Plus, adding the ugly car theme injected fun into the contest for all, whether they were entering their vehicles as contenders, voting to pick a winner, or just watching what happened.

“Our goals were to get some publicity,” Mendez says, “and to introduce ourselves into Facebook.”

Grabbing Attention

Using Facebook gave contest entrants an easy way to post photos of their cars. “We looked into creating a micro-website so people could submit their entries there,” Wheeland notes. “But we went with Facebook. It's free, and a lot of people are on there already.”

Members also could vote via Facebook for their choice for the ugliest car, by simply clicking on the “like it” function. Some 2,000 people voted on 23entries during the two-month contest period, which began July 18, 2009. Of those entries, 22 came in through Facebook, and one contender submitted an entry by mail. That photo got scanned electronically and posted on Facebook, along with the others.

While Facebook was the central tool for waging the contest, Wheeland and Mendez used many additional channels to generate publicity. They sent out direct-mail postcards to announce the contest. They created flyers for tellers to hand out with receipts to members.

They added a page to the credit union's website that provided an overview of contest rules and a link to Facebook to view the ugly-car photo album. Plus, they got the word out through messages appearing in flash banners on the credit union's website and home-banking page, on members' monthly printed and electronic statements, and on flat-screen televisions in branch office lobbies.

“After we got a few entries,” Wheeland says, “we put pictures of those up on the television screens to get members wondering what that was all about."

On a couple of occasions, Wheeland and Mendez also visited local branch offices (Alliance has five branches in California and four in North Carolina) to hand out flyers to members and talk up the contest. And the San Jose Giants, a minor-league baseball team that Alliance helps sponsor, agreed to insert flyers inside the scorecards distributed to fans during a weekend game series.

Winning Fans … and Loans

The winning ugly car was a 1998 Saturn belonging to a member in North Carolina . Vandals had keyed his car with profanities and had broken mirrors and windows. The member won $5,000, which he could choose to apply toward repairs or purchasing a new car.

The contest didn't specifically aim to spur vehicle loan business, although it did follow on the heels of another early-summer auto-loan promotion. The goals of the contest itself, however, were to offer members some fun, help someone in need, build awareness of Alliance Credit Union, and establish a presence on Facebook.

Still, during the contest the marketing team posted trivia questions on Facebook that pertained to the credit union's products and services, including vehicles loans. Members could submit answers to those questions to get a chance to win small prizes, such as $10 Starbucks cards.

Soon after the Ugly Car Contest started, Alliance 's Facebook fan count shot up to 700. The credit union won not only fans, but also car loans. For third quarter 2009, the credit union made 105 more auto loans than it had made in the same quarter of 2008. That figure includes direct loans only, not those that came in through the CUDL program.

“I can't directly correlate the numbers with the contest,” Wheeland acknowledges. “But during the contest, we did see an increase in auto loans that was not related to Cash for Clunkers. That program applied only to new car purchases. And 100 of the 105 additional loans in third quarter 2009 were for used cars.”

Because all the Facebook activity was free, the main costs for the contest were for various printed materials. According to Wheeland, expenses totaled roughly $10,000, excluding the $5,000 prize and the winner's check presentation event that included a catered barbeque for members in North Carolina .

Getting off to a Good Start

Mendez and Wheeland admitted being surprised by the number of Facebook fans Alliance garnered through the Ugly Car Contest. By December, the fan count stood at 724, with 69 percent of those being in the under-35 age bracket.

Now that the Ugly Car Contest is over, trivia questions about products and services continue to appear regularly on the credit union's Facebook page, with associated prize offers. “It's fun,” Mendez points out, “and it makes people aware of what we have to offer. We try to keep people interested and coming back” to the Facebook page.

All in all, the contest was immensely successful in creating a social media presence for Alliance Credit Union. Discussion is under way to do another major Facebook-related promotion in the coming summer.

“Now that we've done this,” Wheeland says, “we have another way to talk to our members and potential members. We want to keep the conversation going.”

This article was reprinted with permission from Credit Union Digest, the publication of the California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues.