Promotion asks customers to" love" their community bank & win an iPad!

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) want their customers to show a little heart for their favorite bank. Appropriately enough, the ICBA launched their “I Love My Community Bank” promotion earlier this week on Valentine’s Day.

ICBA is urging community bank customers to create a video, write a comment on their microsite, submit a photo or post a Twitter tweet about their neighborhood bank. The association has created a microsite just for this purpose. Entrants could win an Apple iPad to be awarded in a random drawing on March 31^st. And, submissions could be featured as part of a national advertising campaign for community banks.

The ICBA published this statement in a news release: "The ‘I Love My Community Bank' campaign was created by ICBA as a method to support the new status of the industry in the wake of banking reform," said Chris Lorence, ICBA senior vice president/chief marketing officer. "The goal of the primarily social media driven campaign is to provide a creative forum for consumers and small businesses to share their experiences and show how choosing a community bank puts them at a distinct advantage."

The association is promoting the campaign on its microsite, www.ilovemycommunitybank.com and with a Twitter account, @iluvmycb. ICBA is also supplying turnkey marketing materials through several ICBA state associations for banks who wish to participate in the promotion.

PROMOTION POINTERS:
As someone who has produced these types of promotions, I’ve found some technical concerns which could prove problematic for the ICBA, but could help you in creating your own unique promotions:

LESSON 1: Make sure all elements of your promotion are easily understood. Test them out on people who know nothing about the campaign. And, look carefully at your entry forms.
Since the ICBA entry form does not ask the bank’s location, only its name, it could prove difficult to determine the bank the entrant “loves”.

LESSON 2: It’s a legal requirement that entrants are provided with the Official Rules for any contest or sweepstakes. In other words, how are prizes awarded or entries judged. The Official Rules seem to be missing for this promotion.

LESSON 3: Does your promotion have simple entry methods? Don’t make them too difficult. At the end of the promotion, you’ll have a lot of added work trying to compile them. The ICBA promotion allows entries through different media . . . Twitter as well as its microsite. They’ll need to gather them all together in some form.

Promotions of this type, especially video participation, seem to be capturing the public’s attention and have been successfully executed by a number of companies other than banks. It will be exciting to see how the public responds to this type of promotion from the banking industry.