A crisis isn't a bad thing when you've got strategic press on your side
From crisis comes catalyst
Borrowers wanted access to better credit rates, investors sought higher-performing ventures and the national economy suffered from a gloomy outlook in general. The timing was right for a new approach to consumer lending, but how could a start-up build trust and traction in an environment skeptical of all things finance?
Analysis
When this client came to Antenna Group, the social lending or peer-to-peer lending space was a category still being defined. And while frontrunners did exist, this company had the opportunity to establish itself as the trusted facilitator for quality loans by focusing on solid value: Better rates, better returns.
Defining and driving the category
Our message: Using this platform, everyone’s a banker. Making consumers comfortable and emboldened with this new control was fundamental to building a user-base. The first step; develop a communications framework that coupled established banking terms with language that demonstrated innovation and the need for reform. Next, convey this company's competitive differentiator—a proprietary affinity model where people can make transactions based on shared social connections—and show that this back-to-basics approach of people helping people will create critical mass.
By telling members’ stories in an array of consumer press, including broadcast, radio, women’s and men’s magazine and financial columnists from national dailies, we could capture the human element of the social lending platform, while simultaneously building awareness for an alternative to credit cards and bank loans. To gain the support of both borrower and lender press targets, we showed that it’s all in the numbers and that this social lending site’s loans out-perform other common investments.
Website breaking results
With so much media-driven interest, the site had to temporarily shut down during an early announcement. Mainstream hits included USA Today, CBS News broadcast, Parade, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Christian Science Monitor and many more. Antenna also worked to secure the Harvard Business Review’s prestigious “20 Breakthrough Ideas of 2009” and a 2008 Webby Award.
Twenty-one months from its start with Antenna, this company grew loan volume of only 1,000,000 to a total of 36,000,000. The company has received SEC approval, and can demonstrate a lower default rate than most commercial banks. With only angel funding when we began working with them, the company received both Series A and B funding for a total of $30million during its Antenna tenure.
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