Members of the film crew work and shoot in various locations around Medicine Hat.--PHOTOS COURTESY CONNECTFIRST CREDIT UNION
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
A credit union looking to expand its presence across Alberta picked Medicine Hat as the centre of a stylish new ad campaign.
“It represents Alberta so well, so many of Alberta’s aspects and layers,” said Dennis Lenarduzzi, the creative director behind the project of connectFirst Credit Union.
“But we didn’t want it to be ‘Anytown, Alta.’ We wanted Medicine Hat.”
Three ads, filmed last month in the Hat, don’t explicitly mention the location, but provide unmistakable glimpses of local landmarks and even streets and locales that had Hatters hunting for local content when they were released online this week.
It’s that mix of tree-lined streets, brick heritage homes, industrial sites, and prairie that Lenarduzzi says made the city the obvious backdrop of choice.
“It’s a cool city, and maybe people don’t realize that but it’s perfect blend of modern and rural, retained heritage buildings and lends itself to what we wanted to say,” he said.
The theme of the commercials is connection, he added, the key advantage of credit unions in general, and specifically connectFirst.
It is the new name for the amalgamation of First Calgary Financial, Chinook Financial and Mountain View Financial. The latter firm was founded in Brooks and several years ago set up a local branch to handle commercial, farm and mortgage banking.
Now, connectFirst is promoting itself a choice for all Albertans looking for modern banking offered by a community credit union.
“We look at a place like Medicine Hat and see a lot of opportunity while a lot of other financial institutions are closing branches,” said Wellington Holbrook, connectFirst’s chief operating officer. “We’re taking the view that were bringing a different kind of experience.”
The commercials, shot by Alberta-based Crowsnest Films, involved 15 locations in Medicine Hat last month. Lenarduzzi said the crew of 36 spent three days in the city, not including advanced scouting, while adhering to strict pandemic protocols.
In one, boys ride their bikes on an unknown mission across the Southwest Hill, past the CP railyard and to the Saamis Tepee.
In another, homeowners on an unnamed street, obviously Belfast Street, prepare for stargazing parties. It ends with a drone shot panning above a lit balcony of the Dairy Building to the night time cityscape beyond.
The third shows a grizzled but noble rancher driving his dually pickup into town for a backyard birthday party.
Not much of it has anything explicitly to do with banking.
“The last thing the world needs is another bank commercial about a couch or a savings plan,” said Holbrook. “Our view is that banking has become cold. People don’t feel very connected to their financial institutions.”
More recently, connectFirst joined with a number of remaining employee credit unions, such as Legacy Credit Union, which served City of Calgary, Encana and Canadian Pacific employees among others, and the Shell employees credit union.
The entity is considered the second largest credit union operating in Alberta, with 755 employees, 128,000 members and almost $6 billion in assets and $5 billion in loans to members at the end of 2020.
But, said Lenarduzzi, “people don’t dream about mortgages, they dream about owning a home.”
That makes up another theme, the night sky and the nearby landscape, ranch land and coulees were captured in the same cinematic fashion used for Westerns.
“The commercials are all about light, so the skies were really important,” he said. “We’re all under the same sky and we all belong to something, something tangible that maybe you can’t name about being an Albertan.”
