Experian Rebrands With FreeCreditScore.com Band Search

Situation: It’s stuck in your head. You’re humming it to yourself over and over. It just won’t go away. It’s the theme song to the ad campaign for Freecreditreport.com and since 2007 it’s been unavoidable. Created by The Martin Agency for parent company Experian the ads featured a young man singing about his life troubles thanks to bad credit, pushing consumers towards the site and service with its catchy, highly infectious jingle. The spots and fictional band presented within became very popular, inciting a period of online viral success in the form of Facebook fans, YouTube parodies, and many pop culture references. The only problem: the service wasn’t free. You were given a free trial but had to pay there after. Experian was sued by the FTC for deceptive marketing, and inspired the 2009 Credit Card Act, which forced credit report advertisers to state that their product is “not the free credit report provided by Federal Law.” (That can be found at AnnualCreditReport.com) The service was also identified as a scam by several consumer reports. Forced to rebrand,  Experian is now launching FreeCreditScore.com, a sister site to their notorious originator.

Solution: In order to launch this new brand while building upon the success of the previous campaign, The Martin Agency launched the Free Credit Score Band Search. The idea was for real local garage bands to submit themselves to a contest to replace the fictional band from the old commercials. Chris Moloney, senior VP/chief marketing officer at Experian explained to Billboard, “there were people who were tired of the band,” a high-profile search for a new act could engage both those who loved the originals but wanted new blood.  In a quest that spanned three cities and the web, four bands were chosen and tasked with creating a jingle for the new site. A series of spots for web and TV highlighting each band were created, as was a branded YouTube page. The competition was then put to a vote. The winner would become the new artists to be featured in FreeCreditScore commercials, receive $10,000 and a full set of gear. On August 10th, Detroit rockers, The Victorious Secrets were announced as the winners.

“One of the major goals of this campaign was to get the public directly engaged,” said Chris Moloney, svp and CMO of Experian’s U.S. consumer direct unit. “Therefore, it’s so right that The Victorious Secrets are the new freecreditscore.com band . . . We think America will embrace them just as the voters have.” Also, lining themselves up with the proper channels – Experian’s push both on the web and TV has been aggressive. The four finalists were announced during the MLB All Star game and the new commercials featuring The Victorious Secrets will debut during the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12th.

Results: If Moloney’s goal was to get the public directly engaged it was a huge success. The campaign was structured around user generated content, from the local bands to the online submissions. The branded YouTube pages sports 139 uploads ranging from 1,000 views to 50,000 views. Those thousands also turned out to vote. The campaign got a hefty deal of press as well, popping up on sites from MTV to Billboard to Yahoo. The campaign has built up FreeCreditScore.com and Experian as not only hip and culturally aware, but in tune with what the general public and youth culture wants. Consider the rebrand a success as well, introducing folks to the new but vaguely familiar service. Unfortunately, for those aware that it’s not really free even a flashy band search campaign can era the stigma of those deceptive marketing tactics.