MERIDIAN CREDIT UNION
Around Here: A Values Storytelling Series
Overview
Meridian is Ontario's largest credit union, and they can't outspend Canada's Big Five banks. So under a new CEO and a rebrand rooted in the fundamentals of cooperative banking, they made a different bet. Their real difference lives at the branch: advisors who know members by name, know their dogs and their kids, and who have said yes when others have said no. The strategic question wasn't reach. It was whether real member stories, told with documentary craft, could make people feel that difference before they ever walked into a branch.
Around Here is the program we built together. Each chapter pairs a ten-minute documentary about a member with a shorter companion film, the Meridian Connection, that gets into the financial relationship and how Meridian showed up. The documentary earns festival selections and travels independently. The companion film does the consideration work, and earns the right to do it because the audience already knows and trusts the character. Underneath it all is a story collection engine we built from scratch, surfacing members through the branch advisors who hold the relationships that matter.
Three films are live and three more are in production through 2026. The series runs on Meridian's owned channels and YouTube, where the ten-minute documentaries are pulling completion rates more than double the platform benchmark. It extends into Meridian's first branded content hub on Roku, geo-targeted to Ontario audiences, and into launch screenings that bring members, communities, and mayors into the same room.
The data confirms what the team believed when they started:
people are hungry for stories that earn their time.
High Level Results
+10.1 awareness
+4.8 favourability
+5.4 consideration
all above financial services benchmarks
The Challenge
Ontario's largest credit union can't outspend Canada's Big Five banks. So the question we started with wasn't about reach. It was about what made Meridian unique, and how it could make people feel that the banks structurally cannot.
Their real differentiator lives in the relationships they build, the risks they take on people the banks won't touch, and the community roots that go back decades. Nearly 400,000 members, a cooperative model, and a genuine belief that people come before profit.
Member storytelling doesn't just happen. The system for finding the right people has to be in place before anyone picks up a camera.
Our Approach
We started with research, interviews, and a whole lot of listening. Our discovery process was designed to surface members whose lives had been genuinely shaped by their relationship with Meridian and whose stories would connect with the brand's target audiences.
One thing became clear early: Meridian team members would often go above and beyond to make sure they served their members well.
That insight mattered enormously for how you approach characters and what you ask of them. These weren't testimonials but people whose values were intertwined with the institution, and that changes what a storytelling program can actually reveal about them.
Through dozens of interviews, we learned that finances play a small but pivotal role in people’s lives but it was the work they were doing that would really resonate. So we dug deep with the brand team, and flipped our whole initial approach to create two distinct films with two distinct purposes for each character.
The first is a documentary about who this person is and what they're building in the world. Meridian is present because it's true, and it's treated with the same restraint we'd apply to any element of the story. This is the film that earns festival selections, that travels independently, that someone with no connection to the brand would watch and find worth their time.
The second film tells the financial story specifically: how they found Meridian, what they needed, and how the credit union showed up. It does the consideration work, and it earns that conversation because the audience already knows and trusts the character.
Around Here runs on owned and operated channels including a dedicated YouTube home, and was supported by Meridian's first branded content hub on Roku, geo-targeted to Ontario audiences.
To date, three films are live. Three more are in production, releasing through 2026.
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From Shame to Shine
Cher Obediah is an Indigenous filmmaker, author, and artist who built the courage to leave an abusive relationship through writing poetry. She’s now speaking and creating to inspire hope and change through her work. Make sure to look for her book of poetry, From Shame to Shine.
All Trails Led Here
Joanne Richter and Rob Garrard visited six lenders to fund a craft brewery in Uxbridge and got one yes. The Second Wedge has since survived a pandemic, a tornado, and personal health challenges to become the town's gathering space, farmers' market home, and live music venue.
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04
Dignity at the Table
Cher Obediah is an Indigenous filmmaker, author, and artist who built the courage to leave an abusive relationship through writing poetry. She’s now speaking and creating to inspire hope and change through her work. Make sure to look for her book of poetry, From Shame to Shine.
BTS
The Results
The Around Here series lives first on Meridian's owned channels and YouTube. That's the foundation. The Roku campaign came next, geo-targeted to Ontario audiences, and each are supported by a film festival campaign dependent on the story.
ROKU Campaign Results
Wave 2
+10.1 awareness
+4.8 favourability
+5.4 consideration
all above financial services benchmarks
Festival recognition
From Shame to Shine:
Winner of Best Documentary, Best Inspirational Film, and Best Educational Film at Three Fires International Film Festival.
Official selections at Forest City, RNCI Red Nation, Hamilton, Niagara Canada, and Toronto Lift-Off.
All Trails Led Here:
In-Person Premiere at The Second Wedge
Official Selection:
+7.2
“a brand I can trust”
+10.4
“empowers people financially”
+9.9
“supports through life challenges”
+9.4
“understands real-life financial struggles”
What This Demonstrates
People don't trust financial institutions easily, and they shouldn't have to. Meridian's bet was that real member stories, told with honesty and craft, could lay the foundation for that trust before anyone walked through the door. The data from the Roku campaign confirmed it. The festival selections confirmed it in a different way. And the Around Here series keeps growing, with three more films in production.
Hear the Strategy Behind the Work
Scott Dane, Senior Manager of Brand Marketing at Meridian, joined the Content That Moves podcast to talk through the thinking: how the research behind Meridian's brand shift led to their first large-scale storytelling initiative, and why long-form documentary became their answer to competing with Canada's biggest banks.
Project:
Around Here
Client:
Meridian Credit Union
Distribution:
Roku Branded Hub (Ontario)
Owned Channels
YouTube
Status:
Ongoing — 3 films live, 3 in production
