Last summer, Commonwealth Credit Union reached out to Oculus and asked us to take a look at a service they offered called “Stop ‘n Save.” They wanted to start their quarter with a TV campaign to bring some much needed awareness to it. So we sat down to get a sense of what it was and how it was beneficial to their members and customers. Basically, their team will analyze all of your current financial responsibilities and put together a financial package which utilizes their various offerings to create a debt and bill consolidation plan to save you money.
First and foremost, we had to work on their existing branding. There were quite a few of red flags in its current phase: The name sounded too much like a gas station, the graphics were rasterized stock images at low resolutions, the fonts weren’t cohesive or appropriate etc. We quickly steered away from it and pitched simply “Stop. $ave.” Short, simple concise.
With a warm reception, we moved on to the main event: A broadcast television ad. The word “stop” really resonated with us, and we explored the exhausting feelings of daily business. Ultra-fast paced, loud, and just generally too busy, nobody has time to take off and re-examine bill pay. And if they do have time, that ain’t what they are going to want to do with it. So we wanted to explore the notion of freezing everything, and moving from cramped cities to wide open, relaxing country. We needed to attach serenity, kindness, and a real sense of genuineness to the image of Commonwealth Credit Union and their employees, as that’s what we had noticed when visiting their branches.
With this concept locked, we proceeded to draw up storyboards and bounce ideas of camera shots back and forth. In conjunction, musical cues were being developed to help push home the feeling and mood we were aiming for. Once locked shots were approved, we developed a rough animation of each frame to further explore camera movement and mood. This process also helps in knowing how much is going to be practical, in camera elements, and which ones will be modified or created digitally in post.
Commonwealth CU delightfully approved of the storyboards, and Oculus jumped straight into production. We had found a perfect street in beautiful downtown Lexington, Kentucky right at the corner of Short and Lime. We knew that the transition from the city to the field was key, so we used an intersection in which no streetlights currently were, so that we could have complete flexibility in post production. This allowed us to take multiple pictures of a streetlight and stitch them all together in Photoshop. With a touch of motion blur and a splash of color correction, the compositing came together without a hitch. Careful planning and execution with some luck from the weather gods paid off and we were able to do quite a bit of touch-up in post.
Commonwealth Credit Union was thrilled with the results and the campaign helped propel the service beyond their competition, as well as CCU’s brand image as a whole. This campaign provided a strong first foot forward for brand uniformity, and a clear idea of what the service represented.
And here is the final ad: