Celebrity Endorsements Aren’t Just for Megabanks. Just Ask This Wisconsin Credit Union

Most community banks and credit unions have never engaged in high profile sports endorsements. They’ve tacitly decided that the marquee moves belong to the big players in the industry. The national logo on the stadium, the A-list face in the ad, and the seven-figure campaign are not accessible to community financials. They tell themselves those plays are for institutions with a different budget and never explore these opportunities.

Reality check: Fox Communities Credit Union looked at these assumptions and decided they were wrong.

The $3.3 billion Wisconsin-based credit union was pushing into the Milwaukee market, a market where they had no current branch, and at best, limited name recognition in a crowded field. They did something most institutions their size never seriously consider. They signed Milwaukee’s star athlete, Christian Yelich, one of the most recognizable names in professional baseball, to represent the brand through in-person, social, video and print media channels.

Key takeaways: Fox Communities Credit Union took a thoughtful, strategic, and realistic approach to deciding and acting on their bold idea. And nearly every part of what they did is something you can run yourself, at your size, without a stadium budget.

Here is how they did it, and the questions you should be asking yourself at each step.

Be Opportunistic in the Best Sense of the Word

Fox Communities Credit Union did not sit in a conference room, decided they wanted a famous athlete, then went shopping for one. The opening came through a real relationship, a connection that opened the door.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Athletes are selective about how they engage with brands. When the door appeared, Fox Communities Credit Union had the nerve to walk through it.

“Anyone could go find an athlete and put them on a billboard, but that’s not your brand,” Melanie Draheim, Fox Communities Credit Union’s Chief Marketing Officer, told me. An authentic connection is built by combining the quality of two brands. The approach to working with athletes and sports marketing is no different than partnering with a non-profit in your community. There are differences in process and scale, but the alignment for both parties needs to exist first.

The lesson is not “go find a celebrity or high-profile sports partner.” The openings you need are often already inside your walls or one relationship away from your team. Thinking creatively and critically about these relationships can help you unlock new opportunities. Endorsement opportunities are unfamiliar to most community financials, but not to athletes. Engaging in these opportunities simply starts with outreach. Plus, these questions and concepts can also apply to local celebrities, influencers, and unique or new relationships that can complement your brand.

Three questions to ask:

1. What relationships already exist inside your walls or your team’s networks that you have never thought to put to work?
2. Who aligns with your culture and brand and who do you think customers or members and prospects would respond well too?
3. Are you being opportunistic in the disciplined sense, seeing a real opening others miss, or just chasing something because it looks exciting?

Pressure Test Before You Fall in Love

The process to determine a fit and sign a contract was not an overnight decision. Several months went into planning, discussing, and assessing the partnership fit. And this was in addition to time spent building a relationship and creating a mutually beneficial plan with Yelich. Star athletes are not looking for endorsement deals from community financial institutions, which means their desire for a relationship fit is just as important as yours.

Fox Communities Credit Union pressure-tested the obvious risks first. What happens if he gets traded? What happens if he’s in a headline you never wanted? What happens if the public sours on his reputation? These are important questions, even when negative outcomes seem unlikely with a well-established and well-liked player like Yelich.

Then came the harder internal questions. How will this fit into our strategic plan? Does this make good business sense? Does it fit our brand and the values, or does it just fit somebody’s fandom?

Key insight: “No one is going to wake up and think, ooh, I need a new checking account today,” as Draheim put it. “When they’re finally ready to switch, we want to have built up enough positive brand awareness that it’s a no-brainer for someone to choose us. Will this athlete relationship help us gain greater awareness and provide enough push to get the prospect to choose us versus the competitor down the street?”

Their process forced them to think critically about how this relationship could be additive to prospects paying attention to Fox Communities Credit Union and ultimately switching their accounts.

On budget, Fox Communities Credit Union was smart about sequencing. Strategy first, then a real dollar investment proposal early enough to protect everyone’s time. Draheim used her experience with past partnerships to anchor a range she considered reasonable. Cost is scalable and varies based on the engagement. Simply using a name is a foundational cost, but adding a production shoot, social posts, and a live appearance creates important discussion points and pricing. Understanding your strategic objectives allows you to build a proposal that is more on target from the beginning.

Key insight: They also discussed the opportunity with the board, an important part of truly understanding the strategic, relationship, and cultural fit. A move this public deserves to be stress-tested by the people accountable for the institution.

Three questions to ask:

1. What are specific KPIs you can directly and indirectly tie to the engagement?
2. Do you have a defensible investment in mind before you walk into the room, so you protect everyone’s time?
3. Do you have the culture and appetite to try something you cannot fully prove in advance and will you be comfortable accepting “fuzzy” ROI knowing your strategy and culture are directionally supported?

Measure What You Can, and Make Peace with the Rest

One of the most credible things about Fox Communities Credit Union’s approach is that it refused to pretend. Before spending a dollar, the team ran a brand study measuring aided and unaided awareness. Do people name you without a prompt? Give them a list, do they recognize you? They ran it in the established Fox Valley market and in Milwaukee, fully expecting the Milwaukee number to start near the floor. That was the point. You cannot prove movement without a baseline.

Then they created goals that matter for an expansion into a new market: deposits, loans, and new membership. Directly attributing growth to a campaign like this is difficult. Draheim noted the credit union was clear and accepting of the limitations of attribution: “Let’s measure what we can measure. We had to make peace with knowing how we measure results will not be perfect. We have to trust our professional experience to understand the impact on big picture results like deposits and loans, while thinking critically about the impact of impressions and engagements.”

It is the honest posture of a marketer who knows the difference between attribution and faith and is willing to make a strategic bet and reevaluate over time.

Three more questions to ask:

1. What is your honest baseline today so you can tell whether anything moved?
2. Which outcomes can you tie directly to this, and which will you have to accept on faith?
3. Have you set a date to step back and decide whether to continue, rather than letting it run on autopilot?

Activation Is Where the Real Impact Happens

Signing the athlete is the easy part, creating real results is the hard part. They created a campaign branded the Summer of Yeli. Open any new account or loan and you are entered to win, with weekly prizes all summer and a meet and greet with Yelich as the grand prize. Every touch is tied to an action that grows the institution and creates a memorable interaction.

Attention is the game you can win when finding an endorsement partner, but you need to be smart and creative with this approach. Fox Communities Credit Union tied CD rate specials to their partnership with Christian Yelich to create a distinctive promotion that attracted interest beyond traditional rate shoppers. “Not everyone pays attention to rates,” Draheim said. “This gets someone to pay attention to us who never would have before.” The attention is what earns you the chance to make it work in a crowded marketplace.