financial services

FirstBank Uses Seniors To Motivate Wannabes

A unique video campaign for FirstBank features three accomplished senior citizens who urge hesitant entrepreneur wannabes to make the leap, or to embolden those who have just done so.

The full-length videos run 2 to 3 minutes. One is also available in a 30-second version.

The accomplished seniors deliver a message to an audience half their age: Life is short, they say. Do it now. The content marketing campaign is aimed at potential customers of Lakewood, Colo.-based FirstBank's small business services.

Tagged “Start and Grow Today,” it was created by advertising agency TDA_Boulder, and is based on the idea that career advice might carry more weight coming from someone in the December of a rich, full life than coming from a bank.

All interviews are on the FirstBank microsite. In addition, “Eugene” runs as paid advertising on Hulu, and 30-second cutdowns and banner ads run on Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com, FastCompany.com, and also Pandora and streaming local news sites.

Eugene Bass, 83, began playing drums at 12 and made it his lifelong, if difficult, profession. “Doing what you want to do is hard,” he says in the video. “But it is easier to do what you like than to have to do something that you don’t like.” Then comes the shove: “If you don’t do what you want to do now, you could get run over by a car... be layin’ up somewhere, you know [clutches chest, feigning a stroke]... ‘I sure wish I’d a done that.’”

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Another video features Libby Bortz, 79, an independent psychiatric social worker and an activist. Raised to conform to small-town “female” roles, Libby sued for women’s access to medical school, and defied death threats to become a county commissioner.

“Doesn’t everybody get scared at times in life?” she asks. “And you just do what you need to do... If I had listened to what I was told I ought to be, I would have had a less interesting life. On my headstone I want it to say, ‘She made a difference.’“

“Lucky” Highfill, 80 (who was 79 in the video) is a serial entrepreneur, having started or helped start five companies, for-profit and non-, in life insurance, stock trading, real estate and child services. And he wastes no time.

“I feel that I’ve got 10 good years of my life left,” he says. “If you’ve got a dream or an idea, you don’t say, ‘well, I’ll do it tomorrow.’ You do it today... Don’t say, ‘I’d like to try.’ Do it.”

TDA_Boulder was both agency and production company. The creative director was Jeremy Seibold; and the directors were Buck Ross and Jamie Kripke.

FirstBank is Colorado’s largest locally owned bank, with additional locations in California and Arizona.

1 comment about "FirstBank Uses Seniors To Motivate Wannabes".
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  1. Erin Read from Creating Results, Inc., December 2, 2013 at 9:47 a.m.

    As the average age of an entrepreneur is 40, and 2x as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 vs. under 25, these businessfolk are not likely delivering a message "to an audience half their age."

    They're talking to people just like them: mature.

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