To Tell a Better Story, Credit Unions Need to Rediscover Who They Are

As I begin my work as Filene Fellow for the Center of Excellence for Differentiation & Storytelling, one question keeps coming back to me. It is a question that has shaped much of my career as a marketing scholar: Why do people choose, trust, stay with, and advocate for one organization over another?

In my own work on customer relationships, organizational purpose, consumer decision-making, and marketing communication, I have become convinced that the answer rarely starts with storytelling or communications alone. It starts further upstream—with identity, value creation, and the experiences that give people a reason to believe an organization is meaningfully different.

That is what makes this center’s challenge so interesting to me. Credit unions clearly have a storytelling challenge, but I believe it goes deeper than finding better words or louder, trendier channels. Before credit unions can tell a better story, they need a clearer, evidence-based answer to who they are today, what truly differentiates them, and why that difference should matter to the people they hope to serve.

I am coming to this work with hypotheses, but not predetermined answers. One reason I was drawn to Filene is its tradition of pairing rigorous research with the realities of credit union practice. To me, that work points to a real opportunity: credit unions may possess meaningful structural and relational advantages, but those advantages do not automatically translate into distinctive market positions, trusted relationships, or compelling stories.

A paradox hiding in plain sight

As I prepared for this role, one Filene study that stayed with me was Andrew Turner’s Who Do Credit Unions Belong To? It found that credit unions are broadly viewed positively, while also raising a provocative possibility: likability can coexist with a weak or indistinct identity.¹

That tension sits at the heart of this center’s work. Credit unions may be liked and trusted without being clearly understood or chosen. As institutions grow and financial services become more digital, traditional identities rooted in communities, employers, or shared affiliations can become less self-evident. Structural difference is not enough if consumers cannot explain why it matters. The question is no longer simply, "What is a credit union?" but "Why this credit union, for this person, at this moment?"

My own research on purpose orientation offers one way to think about this problem. My coauthors and I define purpose orientation around the alignment of organizational logic (why we exist), identity (who we are), and strategy (what we do).² That framework feels especially relevant for credit unions. The cooperative model may provide a distinctive foundation, but differentiation becomes credible only when purpose shows up in real strategic choices, member experiences, products, services, and relationships.

Purpose cannot live only in the story. The story has to emerge from the substance.

When products converge, meaning matters more

Recent Filene work makes the challenge more concrete. In Standing Out in a Crowded Products Landscape, Filene examined hundreds of financial products across digital banks, national banks, and credit unions, and it highlighted several routes to differentiation, including alignment with specific identities or life stages, integration into broader financial ecosystems, and ease of customer experience.³

What I take from this is not that products no longer matter. It is that products alone often cannot carry differentiation.

A savings account can be functionally similar across institutions yet mean something different in each context. For one organization, it may represent financial momentum. For another, household resilience. For a credit union, it might be part of a broader promise to help members navigate important financial transitions.

There is no single credit union—and no single credit union member

Another theme in Filene’s work that closely matches my own research is heterogeneity. Member Pulse research, for example, highlights meaningful differences in trust, financial confidence, desire for advice, use of technology, and preferences across member groups.

The practical implication is important: people who may look similar demographically can want very different relationships with their financial institution.

There is no single "younger consumer," just as there is no single "credit union member." Some people want a trusted financial guide. Others prioritize speed, control, and convenience. Some value community connection. Others may appreciate the cooperative model but will not sacrifice a strong digital experience.

The same is true of credit unions themselves. One institution may struggle primarily with awareness. Another may be well-known but insufficiently distinctive. Another may have a powerful legacy identity that does not translate easily to younger audiences. Another may have compelling products and member experiences but lack a coherent story connecting them.

For that reason, I do not envision the center producing a one-size-fits-all answer. I see the opportunity as building shared frameworks and evidence that help individual institutions identify and strengthen the sources of differentiation they can most credibly own.

Storytelling, then, should not be the final layer of polish applied to an undifferentiated offering. It should connect what the institution believes and does, what members experience, and what audiences value.

Trust is moving, but it is not disappearing

This is especially important when we consider where people now seek information and whom they trust.

Two recent Filene studies make this shift tangible. An analysis of more than 270,000 social media posts shows younger consumers seeking financial guidance in spaces where institutions compete with creators and online communities. Filene’s FiLab Finfluencer test extended that insight, with thirteen credit unions finding that authenticity, local relevance, and messenger–audience fit matter more than simply adopting the newest platform or format.⁴

This connects directly with my own research on influencer marketing. My coauthors and I have found that communication effectiveness depends on the interactions among the sender, the receiver, and the message itself. The largest influencer is not automatically the best influencer, nor is the most polished content always the most effective. Fit, context, originality, and balance matter.⁵

For credit unions, I do not think the takeaway is simply to “use influencers.” The more interesting lesson is that trust is increasingly distributed across people, platforms, experiences, and moments. A frontline employee may be the most credible messenger in one context, while a member story, community partner, or digital creator may be more persuasive in another.

That leaves us with a more useful set of questions: What story should be told? By whom? Through which channel? To which audience? At what moment? And, critically, is the story true to the experience people will actually have?

My research approach: combine methods to understand the whole system

My research spans several interconnected areas: organizational purpose and identity, trust and relationship development, customer dynamics and how customers evolve over time, and communication and touchpoint effectiveness.⁶

Methodologically, I have always been comfortable moving across approaches.

Much of my research uses large-scale longitudinal data to understand how customer relationships evolve. Still, many of the questions at the heart of this center cannot be answered with numbers alone.

Understanding identity requires listening to executives, employees, members, and prospective members. Qualitative research can help us discover the right questions and surface ideas we did not know to ask about.

For me, the power comes from combining methods rather than choosing among them. I see qualitative and quantitative research as complementary tools in a sequence: discovery, measurement, testing, and action.

This is also how I think about differentiation itself—not as a slogan or a static attribute, but as a dynamic system.

Identity is the starting point, but it only matters if it shapes the value proposition and shows up in products, services, and experiences. Those experiences can build—or erode—trust, which in turn affects how member relationships develop over time. Storytelling communicates and reinforces what the institution stands for, while data helps us learn what is working, for whom, and why.

When those pieces reinforce one another, the story becomes much more credible—and much more powerful.

A four-part research approach

The exact research approach will evolve through collaboration with Filene and the sponsoring credit unions. I see four connected areas as a useful starting point.

1. Rediscover and clarify identity.
   
   The first task is to take a fresh look at the credit union industry’s credible identity today—and how that identity varies across institutions. The aim is not to invent an identity from the outside, but to help institutions articulate what is authentic, what is distinctive, what should be preserved, and what may need to evolve.
   
   Which traditional refrains still carry meaning? Which have become diluted or generic? Where do executives, employees, and members agree—or disagree—about what an institution stands for? What tensions exist between cooperative purpose, growth, scale, and modernization?
   
   
2. Understand how audiences actually perceive credit unions.
   
   Internal identity is only half of the equation. We also need the outside-in view: where institutional identity and market perception align—and where they do not.
   
   How do current members, potential members, and different audience segments perceive credit unions relative to banks and fintechs? What creates trust? What creates friction? How do people weigh convenience, technology, rates, mission, advice, belonging, and community impact?
   
   
3. Connect differentiation to trust, loyalty, and long-term member value.
   
   A differentiator matters strategically only if it changes something that matters. That means understanding how trust and loyalty develop over time rather than treating them as static outcomes.
   
   Rather than treating loyalty as static, I want us to think dynamically: How does a new member become a deeply engaged member? What signals indicate that a relationship is strengthening or weakening? Which interventions work at different stages?
   
   
4. Translate authentic differentiation into effective storytelling.
   
   Once identity and differentiation are clearer, we can ask how best to communicate them—and whether the stories being told actually strengthen consideration, behavior, relationships, and value.
   
   When is a member story more persuasive than an institutional claim? Which messengers and channels build the most credibility? How should storytelling vary across audiences and moments? And how can we tell whether communication is generating more than superficial engagement?
   
   

These four areas are a starting point, not a fixed blueprint. I am especially looking forward to learning directly from the center’s sponsoring organizations.

I expect to hear common themes, but also meaningful differences. Each sponsor brings its own history, membership, geography, competitive environment, capabilities, and growth priorities. That heterogeneity is not a complication to work around; it is a research opportunity.

One important question for the center is identifying which principles generalize across credit unions and which depend on context. We may find common dimensions of credit union identity but different institutional archetypes. Certain trust drivers may matter broadly but need to be expressed differently across segments. Some stories may scale across the movement; others may be powerful precisely because they are local and specific.

My first responsibility is, therefore, to listen. The sponsor onboarding conversations will help me understand what leaders believe makes their institutions distinctive, where they see gaps between identity and perception, which audiences matter most, where trust is built or lost, and what questions they wish the industry could answer with better evidence.

I want this research approach to be ambitious, but also collaborative, flexible, and genuinely useful.

What I hope we can build together

Over the life of this center, I hope we can move the credit union conversation beyond general claims of difference and toward evidence about what meaningful differentiation actually looks like.

That might mean clearer maps of industry and institutional identity; a deeper understanding of how different audiences perceive credit unions; evidence about which forms of differentiation build trust and deepen relationships; frameworks for identifying the moments that matter in a member’s journey; and storytelling playbooks grounded not in generic best practices, but in what each institution can credibly own and what its audiences genuinely value.

For me, the most important outcome would be a stronger connection between internal clarity and external relevance.

The point is not to tell credit unions what they should pretend to be. It is to help them rediscover what is most meaningful about who they already are, decide what needs to evolve, and use multiple forms of evidence to better align identity, strategy, member experience, and communication.

Credit unions were built around a different institutional logic than most financial institutions. But in a crowded, digital-first marketplace, structural difference by itself is not enough. People need to understand the difference, experience it in ways that matter to them, and hear it communicated in language they recognize and believe.

Before credit unions can tell a better story, they need a clearer answer to who they are.

My hope for the Center of Excellence for Differentiation & Storytelling is that, together, we can help find that answer—and turn it into something members can see, feel, trust, and choose.

Endnotes

1. Turner, A. (2019). Who Do Credit Unions Belong To? (Report No. 470). Filene Research Institute.
2. Blocker, C. P., Cannon, J. P., & Zhang, J. Z. (2025a). Purpose orientation: An emerging theory transforming business for a better world. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 53(2), 367–393; Blocker, C. P., Cannon, J. P., & Zhang, J. Z. (2025b). Are your company’s purpose initiatives working? Harvard Business Review, February. 
3. Palacio, Y. (2026, June 8). Standing Out in a Crowded Products Landscape. Filene Research Institute.
4. Smith, D., Seaman, S., & Adamov, Y. (2026). Engaging the Next Generation: A Strategic Imperative for Credit Unions in the Social Media Era (Report No. 657). Filene Research Institute; Black, M., Scott, B., Gamache, J., Brown, K., Shapiro, J., & Lear, K. (2026). 2025 FiLab Results: Finfluencer (Report No. 658). Filene Research Institute. 
5. Leung, F. F., Gu, F. F., Li, Y., Zhang, J. Z., & Palmatier, R. W. (2022). Influencer marketing effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 86(6), 93–115. 
6. Zhang, J. Z., Watson, G. F., IV, Palmatier, R. W., & Dant, R. P. (2016). Dynamic relationship marketing. Journal of Marketing, 80(5), 53–75; Zhang, J. Z., Watson, G. F., IV, & Palmatier, R. W. (2018). Customer relationships evolve—so must your CRM strategy. MIT Sloan Management Review, 59(3), 1–7; Zhang, J. Z., & Chang, C. W. (2021). Consumer dynamics: Theories, methods, and emerging directions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49(1), 166–196; Zhang, J. Z., Chang, C. W., & Neslin, S. A. (2022). How physical stores enhance customer value: The importance of product inspection depth. Journal of Marketing, 86(2), 166–185.