Formed during the Great Depression in 1934 as a financial home for Tampa Bay-area teachers, Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union had endured 75 years of economic ups and downs when the Great Recession took hold in 2008.
Poised to weather the downturn and emerge stronger than ever, the company turned to Ideas & Storytelling to help manage the company through the financial crisis and chart its course to a more prosperous future.
We listened to Suncoast’s ideas about how the benevolent spirit that was present when the organization was founded had endured and was a sacred value.
We analyzed not only Suncoast’s storied history, but every facet of the credit union industry’s past, present, and potential future.
Then, we formed a belief system. Suncoast was the rare financial institution that held to the convictions of its founding, namely that the members who comprised the credit union were, in fact, Suncoast’s owners.
We went to work creating stories that espoused the essential truth that unlike at a bank, where decisions are made to benefit the shareholder, at Suncoast, everything is done with the members’ best interests at heart.
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Throughout the recession and in its wake, Suncoast was forced to restrict its advertising efforts to a minuscule level. I n 2014, Suncoast Credit Union launched a massive branding campaign whose primary goal was to reintroduce the credit union to its DMA.Before it...
For over 10 years, Ideas & Storytelling worked closely with Suncoast in developing several of its advertising campaigns to ensure the credit union is poised to face the future in a position for success.
Logo Evolution
In 1975 Hillsborough County Teachers Credit Union changed its name to Suncoast Schools Credit Union and developed a new logo to proudly reflect the evolution the trusted financial cooperative had undertaken.
Three years later that word “Federal” was added to Suncoast’s name and corresponding logo to create a symbol that would represent the beloved credit union for next 36 years.
Suncoast’s new logo originated from a set of logos called the “Illumination” series, a collection of designs that would shine in the modern world of smart phones, tablets and computer screens.
The new design highlights orange in a way that carries on Suncoast’s ownership of the color that the credit union has earned over the last 36 plus years. The new logo’s color palette presents the sun as an illuminated representation of all orange’s variations in a manner that suggests a warm, inviting and familiar symbol.
The style of the typography is designed to be just like the credit union it represents: familiar, friendly, unstuffy and plainspoken. The result is a new logo designed for an old friend; a symbol that is warm, uplifting and comfortable like your favorite cotton shirt.
Research
I&S hunkered down and got cozy with hordes of Suncoast research including the credit union’s annual member survey and reports published by leading industry resources.
The truths we extracted from this research would provide the foundation of Suncoast’s branding and advertising campaign.
According to the 2012 Credit Union National Association’s 2012 Benefits of Membership report, people who bank at Suncoast save a yearly average of $227 per member household compared to those who use banks. High-use members (defined as households with 6 or more suncoast services) save a yearly average of $1040.
This truth became the basis for Suncoast’s Save More for Life campaign.
In addition to devouring credit union industry research, I&S wrote and administered our own surveys to help us attain a more clear picture of how people in Suncoast’s DMA feel about the credit union. You can never have enough data to help guide your marketing efforts.
Our research, acquired data, and storytelling combined to form the basis for Suncoast’s Save More for Life campaign. This was the credit union’s first major campaign in years and one that is poised to thrive in the future.