IOWA CITY, Iowa — Though the $575 million University of Iowa Community Credit Union will know better next time how to conduct a name change, management can only look back now on "Optiva" as a $100,000 gaffe.
Indeed, that's how much the Iowa City CU spent on the aborted marketing venture last February on everything from signage and T-shirts to design fees and TV ads.
"Having a year's worth of work stopped six hours before launch has taught us all a lot of lessons about the name-change process in Iowa," lamented Jim Kelly, senior vice president of marketing, in recounting the ill-fated plan to adopt the "Optiva" name.
At a special Feb. 28 meeting, members in a repeat ballot voted down the name in favor of retaining the existing moniker. "The fact is, we took a process that had worked for countless other credit unions and assumed that it would work for us here. It didn't."
The materials that were junked included staff clothing, premium items, brochures, posters, plastics, banners, letterhead and the signage, said Kelly.
"Some of the costs related to design of the Web site and brochures was salvaged by updating our old logo and placing it into the Optiva-designed brand," recalled Kelly. However, clothing bearing the Optiva name and logo "was sent off to charities far away from here," said Kelly.
In a post mortem, the CU also took aim at local Iowa City newspapers that UICCU contends misconstrued Optiva facts.
"They were not so friendly," said Kelly referring to their coverage of the boisterous meetings and distortion of the CU's rationale for the name change.
In fact, UICCU has cut back ads in the papers to recoup the $100,000 Optiva lost even though the CU has done quite well earning back its money and then some on a highly profitable personal direct loan promotion called Live Check.
"The same newspapers that were not so friendly to us during this process by not fact-checking before printing are now noticing that I'm spending about $10,000 less in advertising each month with them," said Kelly. "So in a way, I'll get them to pay for it."
He said among the reporting errors were errors related to statements by groups protesting the change and a claim "we were trying to convert to a bank."
That, said Kelly, was "was simply untrue and based on the rants of a conspiracy theorist" quoted in articles.
Moreover, "they printed that the member vote was illegal whereas the member vote was completely legal," There were also false claims that the ballot box "had been stuffed."
In addition, "they printed that we did not own the Optiva name" and that a San Diego mortgage firm, Optiva Mortgage, "was coming after us for trademark violation. One simple call and we could have shown that we owned Optiva."
UICCU officials and California lawyers trying to contact Optiva discovered more recently that the company "had no trademark and is an unlicensed broker."
All in all, "if we go down this road again, we'll take a different approach and make sure that all parties are on board with the initiative, and we will work harder to include more members in the process," said Kelly.
–jrubenscut@aol.com
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