YouTube is mostly an entertainment site, but it also can be used by businesses in a number of ways. The best example in financial services is Intuit's viral TurboTax Rap which has now attracted more than 1 million YouTube views, if you count the parodies (previous coverage here).
We've noticed a few financial institution postings on YouTube this year. However, San Jose, CA-based Technology Credit Union is the first we've seen to fully embrace the site, creating its own YouTube page <youtube.com/techcublog>.
The credit union posted four television commercials and another homemade video they called a "podcast."* Total views of the five spots is about 500. While that may not drive much new traffic, it's a smart move considering the minimal time and zero cost to post content to YouTube.
And, for first-movers such as Tech CU, the ability to garner press and blog attention is an added bonus.* While Tech CU hasn't done this yet, embedding YouTube videos into your website is a great way to make your website look more modern and get additional mileage out of your television advertising.
So far, Tech CU has only mentioned the YouTube page is a press release about its new television ads (here). But, I'm sure more integration is coming.
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*Tech CU took a little heat at OpenSource CU about the commercial masquerading as a podcast (see discussion here). However, Tech CU ended the criticism by explaining that the podcast was a test.