University Federal Credit Union is a full-service financial co‑operative serving the needs of more than 100,000 member-owners and their communities in the Salt Lake valley area in Utah. The credit union has nearly 20 branches and 6,000 co-op shared branches across the United States.
In October 2020, the credit union opened its first branch in St. George, about four hours southwest of Salt Lake City. Facilities Construction & Planning Consultant Daniel Slaughter knew the branch would need signage that would draw attention to the new location, boost brand awareness, and allow the branch manager to easily customize messages for this region.
University Federal Credit Union tapped Freedom LED Signs of North Salt Lake to design two pole signs that are installed in two locations along the length of the property. Carston McCullough, president of Freedom LED, specified prominent back-to-back digital displays from Watchfire Signs for each of the signs.
“Watchfire Signs manufactures digital signage that’s reliable and great looking, which is even more important for installations that are hours away,” said McCullough. “I know I don’t have to worry about frequent service calls.”
The signs are built with the pole at a diagonal. The 5-feet-5-inches-by-11-feet-3-inches full-color digital display is located above a custom logo cabinet with the logo letters in red. The logo and a red strip along the corner length of the pole are lit by thousands of LED lights.
“We essentially got two marquee signs for this location, which gives us a lot of visibility,” said Jenny Kurtz, branch manager, who uses the digital displays to advertise products and well as time-sensitive promotions. “We have had members come in to open accounts after seeing our promotional messages, so we know the digital signs are working.”
Content for the digital signs is produced and scheduled in-house by the credit union marketing team using Watchfire’s Ignite OPx content management software. The cloud-based software allows content to be uploaded and scheduled from any location.
“We use a few different platforms to program some of our other branch signage, and Watchfire has the best user interface,” said Sarah Kelso, digital instructional designer for University Federal Credit Union. “Content management and scheduling are simple and intuitive.”
