The Kids Aren’t Alright

Mourning Dandy Doodle
The first credit union I ever worked for had an account and marketing program for kids known as “Dandy Doodle”, with a mascot (a big furry green… thing, like Grimace but without the pleasing pear shape) and a kids section in the monthly newsletter and wooden coins that kids would get when they deposited money into their “doodle” savings accounts and which could be redeemed for some not very spectacular prizes (what kid doesn’t love pencils!).

The credit union doesn’t exist any more (merger), and I’m assuming that Dandy Doodle was downsized or reassigned or works for the collections department now.

I was never entirely clear on the purpose of the Dandy Doodle program: it felt like this weird mix of a savings incentive program, and half-hearted education program, and ill-defined marketing program (Dandy Doodle would hand out candy at local parades, Dandy Doodle would make an appearance at branch openings, etc.). Kids seemed to like Dandy Doodle, and some parents would take the wooden coin-for-deposits exchange very seriously. But I doubt very much that anyone outside of the Doodle family is mourning for Dandy now.

Hide & Seek
I’ve been thinking of Dandy Doodle because a colleague and I were discussing FI youth programs yesterday, and particularly the sense that FIs think they need something for kids but that they’re not sure what. To get some background I looked around a bit online to see what other FIs were doing for kids.

Let me tell you, it’s an exercise in perseverance, imagination and luck just to find kids and youth programs or accounts on a big five website in Canada:

• CIBC puts a link to Kids and Students right on their homepage, and has additional resources for kids (including games) in a kids and students section. Good for them. They’re the only one of the big banks in Canada to have a full section for kids! I liked their allowance calculator, which lets kids calculate how many weeks of allowance they’re going to need to buy things (like a bicycle). The interface maybe needs a wee bit o’work, but the concept works.
• For RBC, ScotiaBank and TD Canada Trust I had to go to the Accounts section to find their Student and Youth accounts. RBC and ScotiaBank have precious names for their youth accounts but with no evidence of brand follow-through; TD Canada Trust calls their youth account the… wait for it… “Youth Account” (and they bury the eligibility requirements in a footnote).
• At BMO I had to… well, this was a complete washout. They have a full student microsite, and a youth “discount” plan for their accounts, which you’ll find when reading about the adult accounts. As far as I can tell, that’s it. I don’t think BMO likes kids very much.

The general tone seems to be that whoever’s looking for kids programs is really looking for accounts (first) and kids (second).

Credit Unions, Don’t Be Smug
I fully admit that my CU doesn’t look especially good in this respect. We have, until recently, run something called the “Youth In Action” program, with some information online. We placed it tellingly within the “community” section of the website, which means there was virtually no cross-over with any youth products and services or accounts we might have.  The program was centered around quarterly contests so we’d add information to our homepage and newsletters as necessary, and that’s about it. We’re retooling the program right now (which is why it’s top o’mind). We also don’t have a kids account per se, and bury youth account info on adult account pages. That’s a mistake that we’ll need to fix.

Other CUs have youth accounts (for the most part), but don’t really run kids programs (or if they do, they don’t put anything about ‘em online). Vancity, in their Vancity-ish way, runs a well-respected kids education program that looks like a component of their community initiatives.

One exception (there might be more): Nelson and District has a full microsite for their ZippityDoDog kids program, which looks like an updated equivalent to the lamented Dandy Doodle program.

Miscellania and Questions

• Most FIs offer youth accounts, of course, usually for 18 and unders, and generally service charge-free (or capped). It’s interesting that little distinction is made between a six year old and a sixteen year old on a product level.
• It’s also interesting that FIs have settled on the term “youth” to describe their programs for people under 18. That word always reminds me of earnest community activists (“we need more facilities for youth!”) and government reports (“youth crime is in decline”). It sounds too… clinical, but I have no clever alternatives to suggest, so I think we’re stuck with “youth”.
• Since we’re talking about words, I’m also surprised by the narrow understanding of the word “student” on FI websites.  When I was in high school I thought of myself as a student (so, uh, did my parents and teachers). But when I click on “student” I find it’s for university and college students. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but at the same time I’m not convinced it’s the right word.
• Some FIs seem a little confused between their “student accounts” and their “youth accounts”, and navigationally lump ‘em all together. If I was still a student (in the FI sense of the word) that would piss me off a bit.
• It appears that Canadian kids are presumed not to be doing their banking online, because there appears to be little or no resources for kids online. No calculators, games, or anything. In the States there appears to be a joint effort between some CUs to develop youth content through CUNA. The Googolplex initiative has finanical literacy sites for kids, pre-teens, and teens. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for Canadian CUs to cooperate in the same sort of way?
• The “Dandy Doodle” type of program seems dated to me, but it isn’t completely dead. It probably doesn’t cost much, doesn’t take up much time, and what’s the harm in keeping it around, right?
• It’s possible that the presence of kids programs is everywhere but online. Fair enough, I’m not walking into every FI branch to do this survey. But, man, basically nothing online? That seems strange to me.
• Kids are presumed to need savings accounts. And that’s it.
• How important is it to satisfy kids, and how important is it to satisfy parents? One minor example: should a “youth” section on a website include information regarding RESPs, which kids won’t care about at all but parents will? Both kids and parents might click on a link that says “kids and teens”, say, but they’ll be looking for two different things.
• When we talk about kids programs, we might be talking about FI-run education-centered initiatives, community-centered initiatives (probably also education focused), savings programs or full-on branding-marketing programs for kids and teen demographics. Is a successful kids program focused on one of those things, or all of those things?
• What would a kid-centered branding initiative look like? I know targeting kids for products or services is… well, maybe not unethical (I think the cereal companies clear-cut that ethical forest a couple of decades ago), but it still makes me a little queasy. Do we want kids to have the same relationship with their FI as their parents do?
• I’ve heard it suggested that the right people to target for kids accounts is grandparents when their grand-kids are aged 12. I’ve not seen any data around that, but that’s what I’ve heard.
• It’s been done to death, I know, but combining kids products with savings plans and savings calculators and “how to save tips” still seems like a good idea to me. As a citizen, I’m concerned about high debt levels. As an FI employee, I know we can help people save. I’m concerned that we may be directly responsible for not only creating a culture of credit but also for killing a culture of saving. I’d like us to get into the “we’ll help you save” business, which is why I like nifty little savings tools like ScotiaBank’s Bank The Rest savings program.
• One of the interesting differences between US and Canadian FIs when it comes to kids and youth: “saving for college” is an entire sub-set of the FI marketing and messaging in the US. Canadian students whine about their tuition (and everything else), but, gosh, it could be much worse.
• For programs to be successful they need to be managed. Day in, day out. Momentum needs to be maintained. Standards need to be enforced. Ideas and options need to be cultivated. My guess is that kids programs die because, once the creative is complete, they’re allowed to float. They get periodically rejuvenated when some young keener decides to overhaul the program and really make it work this time, and then that young keener gets promoted or frustrated and the program just sort of putters into the ground again. Kids programs, like all programs, need to be owned and managed to succeed, and that means attaching its success to someones review and bonus, I think.
• A successful program probably needs some ROI metric, and I doubt very much that anyone wants to attach an ROI metric to a kids program. Not only are we looking at a looooong time horizon, but what will we consider a success? Higher deposit balances into kids accounts? The next thing you know, we’ll be lobbying parents on behalf of kids for cost-of-living increases for allowances and to implement a “living-allowance” minimum for lawn-cutting and bedroom-cleaning.

Update August 29, 2008
Two things that I’ve seen just in the last day about this topic:

• Citizens Bank has launched their HockeyStars program, with a nice looking microsite. It’s not clear to me that this specifically targets kids, although when I poke around a bit it seems to. Still, a nice “value-add” to regular kids stuff from FIs, and I was especially impressed with the built-in incentives to open Citizens Bank accounts (hat tip Currency’s CU Brand Blog)
• CUNA runs a full kids education program in schools (similar, it looks like, to the Vancity program mentioned above).