How Your CU Can Use the 'Little Guy'

Most of you saw the Little Guy cut-out at the League annual meeting. This is a unique marketing device that CUNA is successfully using to promote how credit unions are different from banks. You might be interested in other ways that the “Little Guy” icon is being used, as referenced in the article below. You can now go online at CUNA and download images of the Little Guy. He is now dressed as fireman and a few other occupations. Also, the Little Guy often appears in NEWS Watch for you to cut out and laminate. You can also purchase “little guys” – 9 inches tall for about $8.50 for 25 (see the links below).

The big 4 foot cut-out that the League had at the annual meeting costs about $400 with shipping. The League would be willing to let your CU borrow the cut-out for an annual meeting or member appreciation day under the following cautions:

1)  You must pick up and return the cut-out to the League office.
2)  If the cut-out becomes damaged, your credit union is responsible for replacing it.
3)  You might want to consider some way that you could generate maybe a $1 per person to go to CULAC. However, you would need to track the individual contributions. Our goal goes up every year, so anything individual credit unions can do to help reach this goal is appreciated.

Call me if you have any additional questions.
Alice Smith

WASHINGTON (4/25/07)—Credit unions' "Little Guy," the iconic figure meant to represent those served by America's credit unions, made a big splash in a new Capitol Hill publication, The Politico, this week.

In an April 24 issue of the newspaper —and appearing a day earlier in electronic form—a new "Little Guy" video created by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) specifically for YouTube.com was said to "have potential to be a cult hit."

The video was designed by CUNA as a means to cut through the muddle of information targeted at lawmakers and the members of their staffs. CUNA studied demographic information regarding Capitol Hill staffers only to find that most are in their 20s and stay in their staff positions for just a few years.

"We had been thinking of different ways to break through the clutter," CUNA President/CEO Dan Mica says in the article. "It's a new day, a new age. We're using YouTube and the 'Little Guy' and every resource we can to deliver our message."

The three-minute, 21-second video features a cardboard-cutout flat Little Guy in pursuit of a small business loan. After being turned down summarily by a live-action banker—rejected because he is "just...a little guy"—the CUNA character finds help at a credit union—only to learn that federal law inhibits credit unions' ability to help members with such credit.

The video ends by urging viewers to contact federal lawmakers and ask them to give "credit union more flexibility to help the little guy."

The Little Guy resembles "Flat Stanley," the kids' book character who was flattened by a bulletin board and decided to make the best of the situation by mailing himself to a friend.

CUNA's Little Guy campaign debuted on the first day of the 110th Congress, when CUNA distributed 16,000 commemorative buttons to congressional offices, photographed more than 150 members of Congress, staffers and Hill visitors standing beside four-foot-tall cutouts of the Little Guy, and launched ads on local radio and presented as political cartoons in Hill publications.

The Politico article also took note of the "Mica Minute" that the CUNA leader has been posting on YouTube to comment on such issues as banks' record profits and banker hypocrisy on credit union issues such as service to low-income areas.

Mica is urging credit union representatives to email the Little Guy video link to lawmakers.

"Remind them that credit unions stand up for the Little Guy--the 89 million hard working Americans who belong to credit unions," he said. "Tell them that to help the Little Guy, Congress should stand up for credit unions."

Use the resource link below to read the full article in The Politico.

Resource Links
The Politico Article
Meet the Little Guy
The Mica Minute