In this special guest episode of the Believe in Banking podcast, Gina and Juliet welcome Yvonne Garand, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer and Jevonne McLaughlin, Vice President of Brand Marketing, both from EastRise Credit Union. In their dynamic discussion, Gina, Juliet, Yvonne, and Jevonne address the merger of New England Federal Credit Union and Vermont State Employees Credit Union to form Vermont’s largest credit union and residential mortgage lender and how EastRise built consensus for a new name and brand transformation. Yvonne and Jevonne talk about how they managed the cultural elements of organizational change and how the credit union achieved member approval for the merger. They discuss the powerful multi-phase communications and engagement strategy to educate members on the merger’s benefits and encouraged participation in the voting process. Finally, they address the importance of leveraging member insights to develop a brand strategy and name that would resonate with both legacy member bases and the broader Vermont community.
Text Transcription
Intro: This is Believe in Banking, a podcast series for decision makers, influencers, and leaders, featuring experts taking on the financial industry’s most pressing issues with insight and empathy. The podcast features information and conversations designed to enlighten and empower.
Gina Bleedorn (00:18): Welcome to the Believe in Banking podcast. I’m Gina Bleedorn, President and CEO of Adrenaline.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (00:23): And I’m Juliet D’Ambrosio, Chief Experience Officer at Adrenaline.
Gina, this is going to be a great episode, because I feel like there is a lot of women power on the line with us today. I am so excited. I’ve been looking forward to this podcast recording for weeks now, because joining us are two of the most brilliant and powerful women in banking that I have had the pleasure of knowing. We are joined by Yvonne Garand, who is the Chief Brand and Marketing Officer at EastRise Credit Union, along with Jevonne McLaughlin, who is the Vice President of Brand Marketing. Don’t get Yvonne and Jevonne confused. They have similar roles but are absolutely pillars of their credit union in their own rights. So, Yvonne and Jevonne, welcome to Believe in Banking.
Jevonne McLaughlin (01:31): Thank you.
Yvonne Garand (01:32): Thank you, Juliet. Thank you for that kind introduction.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (01:36): You are welcome. And I just want to go back and give our listeners a little bit of context around why we’re so excited to welcome you here. So, EastRise Credit Union launched to the market this past September and is the result of a merger of New England Federal Credit Union, lovingly known as NEFCU and Vermont State Employees Credit Union, also known by the very easy to remember V-S-E-C-U acronym. Combined they created Vermont’s largest credit union and residential mortgage lender. And you both helped to lead the process of that merger, both from the cultural standpoint and then from the brand and how it was expressed. Many of our listeners – from the community banking side, regional banking, credit unions of all sizes and shapes – are facing the prospect of M&A, and what it looks like from a brand perspective. And so, we have two people who have expert points of view from the inside-out. And I’d love to start the conversation really going back and telling us a little bit about EastRise’s origin story, how you evolve, what that looked like, and how you serve your members.
Yvonne Garand (03:07): Yeah, so both credit unions are rooted in Vermont. Unfortunately, many people didn’t understand that New England Federal Credit Union was a Vermont-based organization. That’s the power behind a name. Many people thought that New England Federal Credit Union existed in Connecticut or Massachusetts or Maine. And in the spirit of cooperation, and this is the beauty of the credit union industry, when we talk about mergers more so than acquisitions, both organizations shared a community-minded perspective and both credit unions’ leadership understood that in Vermont – a very small state where local ownership, knowing your neighbor, practicality, and humanness really makes a difference – gave both organizations an opportunity to come together and partner in an era where many larger banks and regional banks are beginning to poke the holes through our moat here in Vermont. Fifteen years ago, we didn’t have the Chases and Citibank and Wells Fargo – these larger banks and these institutions that are now beginning to set footprint in Vermont.
So, we recognized that if we wanted to maintain our values-based, mission-driven purpose, that it would benefit our people, our employees, and our members if we partnered with another like-minded institution. And that’s how this marriage between New England Federal Credit Union and Vermont State Employees Credit Union came about. For listeners who may not recognize that for some credit unions, your bylaws may or may not dictate that in order to merge with another organization, either the board of directors or your membership holds that authority. For Vermont State Employees Credit Union, our bylaws indicated that our members held that authority. On top of the complexity behind an M&A cultural transformation and brand conversion, we also had to manage a voting process and help our members understand the value and benefit the member benefits in merging with another organization.
Our team, under Jevonne’s leadership with all of the campaign development and communications that she and her team orchestrated, successfully influenced first members to go out and vote, and secondly, to vote in favor of the merger. And we did that not necessarily by asking people to vote in favor of the merger, but we created different segments and spoke differently to those segments to help them understand the value of the merger. And that’s where I’ll pass the baton over to Jevonne because she is the one that devised that strategy.
Jevonne McLaughlin (06:17): Yeah, thank you. So, to Yvonne’s point, we really focused on helping the Vermont State Employees Credit Union membership, those who were going to vote on the benefits to this merger of equals, and coming together and what it meant for future generations of Vermonters and our members and that long-term stability and the opportunities with offerings. So, it was very much focused on the ‘why.’ Some complexities with that were that we didn’t have all the answers yet. While we were trying to bring that messaging and those communications down to something tangible, it was incredibly challenging to communicate that vision in a way that felt like we would follow through on that and that the members would truly benefit.
When we got to the vote, that was actually a separate campaign. So, we did about 3-6 months of awareness to our members to bring them into the conversation, prepare them with information so that they could participate in the vote. And then that second campaign when we dropped all of the voting materials, was not asking for the members to vote “Yes,’ but asking them to participate. So, participation in that vote was going to be absolutely critical in getting that vote to pass. And as Yvonne noted, we were successful in that.
Gina Bleedorn (07:48): What you have done, it might seem easy on the surface and certainly looks amazing from someone like me that didn’t have to actually go through all of the work. I think you should be so proud of this identity and this brand and all the pieces and parts of it. So, just a big congratulations, because I know all that it really takes to do this right. And you really did do this right. I’ll also say that I’m very happy to see credit union mergers of scale happening. This is absolutely a testament, I believe, to the broader credit union movement as you explained. Yvonne, I wanted to ask –when you began this process back in even the earliest stages of probably just top leader discussions, when did it become evident that a name change had to be in your future? Was it immediate or did you have a lot of back and forth on that?
Yvonne Garand (08:54): That’s a great question. No, it was not immediate. However, the commitment that we made to our membership as part of the voting process was that we would go through an internal assessment to determine whether or not we should change our name. And of course, the biggest question from members was, ‘Well, who are we going to be if we merge? Are we going to be Vermont State Employees Credit Union? Or are we going to be New England Federal Credit Union?’ And strategically, we determined that it was in our organization’s best interest and in the best interest of our members to retain our federal charter because VSECU was a state-chartered credit union, and New England Federal Credit Union was a federally chartered credit union.
So, strategically in our boardroom, in our strategic discussions, these are some of the behind the scene complexities that people might not be aware of. We had to determine which model was going to serve us best and serve our membership best, knowing that we wanted to retain the federal charter that informed the name and that our name after the merger or on legal day one would be New England Federal Credit Union, with the promise that we would go through an internal process of discovery to determine and evaluate whether or not New England Federal Credit Union was the appropriate name. Or should we consider a new name? And we upheld that promise.
Gina Bleedorn (10:26): How much pushback or trepidation was there internally from leaders at the credit unions about the idea of changing names? I think most clients that we work with when they are at that stage, it is a moment of truth, a moment of uncertainty, really, that for some can be very difficult. How was that for these two, your two organizations?
Yvonne Garand (10:57): Well, for the marketing team, we were ready. We were ready to go, because intuitively we recognized that New England Federal Credit Union was not the appropriate name. However, we also learned through past experiences in attempting to change our name previously at Vermont State Employees Credit Union, that the marketing acumen and professional expertise and knowledge of stating this name is not appropriate from a brand perspective. It doesn’t resonate with our current membership. It doesn’t speak to potential consumers. It is actually going to prohibit us from growing. We knew that that wasn’t going to work.
We knew that we needed a process that was data-driven, a process and approach that focused on integrity that would give our leaders the confidence in moving forward with a new name. So, we actually took a two-pronged approach. The first step that we took before evaluating which name, what should our new name and identity be to help us go through that discovery process to determine whether or not to consider a name change. And I’ll let Jevonne speak to that because again, she went through that process to help the leaders from both legacy credit unions recognize the need to change our name. Do you want to take that Jevonne?
Jevonne McLaughlin (12:29): Yeah, absolutely. I think this is one of the most critical steps in our process because to your point, Gina, this was really early on, and we needed buy-in internally amongst the leadership and some of our key marketing professionals that a new name and taking that path was where we needed to go. We did an entire valuation from market research to some member surveys. We did internal surveys throughout the org, evaluated all – we had three legacy brands at the time – all of the branding materials, the strategic approach. Then we had an assessment and a recommendation where we reviewed everything. And ultimately, and this was incredibly helpful in aligning and creating that buy-in to take that journey to a new identity and name, that discovery process confirmed that we absolutely needed a new name for future growth.
There were limitations to both of our legacy names geographically. They weren’t overly inclusive. A new name would showcase this combined mission and purpose that we didn’t have yet. And I think ultimately what really created that buy-in and this confidence in moving forward was that a new name would truly reflect that this was a merger of equals that was going to be really important for our membership to see an experience and create a lot of opportunities for the vision of this new org. So it would be not only just a new name, but this research that we did very much told us that this was going to be a new entity as well.
Juliet D’Ambrosio (14:13): Yeah. I love you both picked up on this idea of a data-driven decision-making process, really at every stage of your rebrand, whether or not to rename and then once we went through the naming process and to help deliver on the brand strategy. One of the biggest insights that I remember from the research that it’s not divulging any trade secrets at all, but that one of your focus group members said, “Yeah, when I think about V-S-E-C-U and I think about NFCU, I think about the best of what Vermonters can be and that means it’s Birkenstocks and Blazers.” And it’s such a great metaphor for this idea of a very practical, down-to-earth approach to finance and to what a member wants out of their relationship with their financial institution.
That trust, which represents the Blazer side and the Birkenstock is also practical, but in a different way, a little bit more speaking more to a progressive mindset and inclusive mindset. And I think that insight helped to drive so much around both your brand strategy, which ultimately led to a name in which both member bases, employee bases, and both communities could really see themselves represented.
Outro: You’ve been listening to Believe in Banking, a podcast series created to empower decision makers, influencers, and industry leaders in financial services. Be sure to also join us on our flagship site, believeinbanking.com.