The 2023 What is a Credit Union? awareness program launched in September. Based on feedback received from many credit union leaders, we have decided to pivot this year’s program to focus solely on promoting the content organically on Canada’s Credit Unions’ social and digital channels. We encourage all credit unions to follow us and share our posts to help amplify the program's awareness and reach.

New “Here For You” Storytelling Video Series and webpage

As part of this year’s program, we have developed a new storytelling video series with the theme “Here For You”, featuring five member stories from across the country. Below is a summary of the five selected stories:

• Atlantic Region: Jason, a new member of Brunswick Credit Union and owner of a successful auto accessory shop shares his experience of banking with a credit union after running into challenges with his former financial institution.
   
• Central Canada: Jessica, a 19-year-old university student, is a loyal credit union member who shares why she loves banking with Libro Credit Union, and how their financial “coaching” helped build her credit, allowing her to buy her first car.

• Alberta: Mimi, a newcomer to Canada, shares her story of how she discovered credit unions as an option for her banking needs, and how Servus Credit Union helped her purchase a home within 10 months of arriving.
   
• British Columbia: Kyrsten, a 21-year-old in the mining industry, shares how her homeownership dreams became a reality with the help of Williams Lake & District Credit Union after she was unable to secure a mortgage with her bank for being “too young”.

• British Columbia: Karen, a mom of four young kids and founder of a natural skincare line, shares how her banking experience improved and helped grow her business once she became a Gulf & Fraser Credit Union member.

These long-form videos are being hosted on a new member stories webpage on Canada’s Credit Unions’ website, along with additional member stories that had previously been shared with us. Submissions that were not selected for the video series may still be used in the coming months to create member story articles for this webpage as well. 

We would like to update this new webpage on an ongoing basis with new articles and videos, so please continue to share your member stories with us!

Social Content

Leveraging our new video series, we will create short-form video clips to post on our social channels, in addition to the long-form videos. We will also continue to share our educational content, linking to articles on our blog and other related resources. 

Follow us, like, and share on: Instagram | TikTok | X | Facebook

SEO & Media Outreach

To further improve our organic reach, we have implemented new SEO enhancements to drive more organic traffic to Canada’s Credit Unions’ website, and we will be pitching relevant stories and angles to the media as well. 

 If you, or someone from your credit union, are interested in being a spokesperson on topics such as mortgages, small business support, newcomer programs, personalized service, financial literacy, etc. please contact communications@ccua.com.

Assets

We encourage you all to follow our social channels and share our posts in real-time. For those of you who would also like to download the actual assets, we will share links to the previous month’s assets in Connections (CCUA’s weekly newsletter), at the beginning of each month starting in October. French assets can be made available upon request. If you have any additional questions about this program, please contact nationalawareness@ccua.com