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08/29/2008

Shout out: Hockey Stars microsite by Citizens Bank looks like a winner!

By Tim McAlpine

Citizens Bank of Canada, the virtual bank division of Vancity, has just taken its Hockey Stars website out of private beta. The site is gorgeous and I can tell that Citizens Bank is doing a lot of things right with this site and initiative. Here is a link to a description of the initiative on its site.

Earlier this week I published a pretty exhaustive post on what I think credit unions need to be doing to be successful with their social media efforts. Let's put Hockey Stars to the test.

Talent: looks like there will be a dedicated blogger and most of the content will be user generated.

Purpose: Connecting the real stars of the game. It's right there, front and centre and it's very compelling.

Point of view: A little hard to say at this point, but I get the sense that the content will be encouraging and extremely positive. This is the type of site that doesn't need opinionated editorial commentary to encourage dialogue and participation.

Content: The content will be compelling to a highly engaged niche group. Hockey and Canada go hand in hand and as long as there is a high level of participation, compelling content should not be a problem.

Frequency: The site is brand new, but I imagine there will be a lot of activity taking place here.

Promotion: Right out of the gate, there is an interesting Season Opener contest with more than 100 prizes that is sure to encourage people to register on the site and take part. I am unaware of the supporting on and offline marketing strategy for Hockey Stars, but knowing Vancity, they will back it with appropriate marketing support.

Well done and congratulations to the Citizens Bank team.

Comments

1) Jeffry Pilcher @ Aug 29, 2008
http://www.thefinancialbrand.com

How can you tell this is for/from Citizens Bank?

2) Tim McAlpine @ Aug 29, 2008

@Jeffry - Good point. The branding is very minimal and not obvious. There is a subtle Powered by Citizens Bank link at the bottom of every page. I would think that this was done on purpose, but you do bring up some good questions that I left out of my post.

1) Since Citizens Bank is not a household name, will people trust it enough to give their personal information and their children's personal information over to sign up?

2) Since this a very passive brand building exercise without a clear product tie in, will Hockey Stars provide a return on investment?

3) Maureen McCartney @ Aug 31, 2008
http://www.citizensbank.ca

Thanks for the feedback Tim. As the Web Marketing Manager at Citizens Bank I’ve been managing the development of the HockeyStars project for the last year and it feels great to have the site launched and well received. We’re really happy with the results.

Just to clarify, while Vancity has an online banking channel for its members in BC, Citizens Bank of Canada is a separate entity with its own CEO and marketing dept etc and can carry out business across Canada as a national online bank.

With that said, Canada is a huge territory to cover and as you mentioned, we’re not a household name across the country so we are hoping by giving back to niche communities, in this case hockey, more will be introduced to our brand. Once the community does come to know us as an online bank (since 1997) hopefully the next time they are thinking of a financial product that we will make the consideration list.

There’s a video on the About page that I think conveys the message well on why we created HockeyStars. http://www.hockeystars.com/about

Our brand is subtle and imbedded within the site in different areas such as the ads on the rink boards and on every player and team profile page. It’s more about building brand awareness and building the community over time. The next step is for the users of the site to tell us what they want to see in their community so we can begin to add to the site and marketing is underway within the hockey communities.

I hope if you are involved in hockey or know someone who is that you would pass along the url so they can join the community and find it fun as well as useful.

www.hockeystars.com

4) Pierre Burrns @ Sep 02, 2008
http://blog.doxim.com

@Maureen - congrats on the launch and best of luck with the site, I know how much work it took to get to this so kudos!

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Shout out: Hockey Stars microsite by Citizens Bank looks like a winner!

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