No one wants to be seen as the bearer of bad news, even if it’s part of their job description. Experian plc, one of three major credit reporting agencies, is no exception.
That’s why the Dublin, Ireland-based company—which keeps its North American headquarters in Costa Mesa—is out to shake the stereotype that goes with its territory.
The new image Experian hopes to establish with a rebranding: an ally to consumers, available to help them understand and take control of their credit scores.
“We are not just data providers—not just an arbiter that stands over to the side and serves up a credit report to a lender for them to render a decision,” said Kristen Simmons, chief marketing officer of Experian’s Consumer Services division. “We are actually here to help you to improve your credit health in any way that we can.”
Simmons came on board in late 2014 as Consumer Services was wrapping up a fiscal year that saw a 14% dip in revenue to $717 million for the North American market. It has recently been on an upswing, recording a 3% gain in revenue in its most recent quarter.
Consumer Services is one of four Experian divisions in Costa Mesa. It represented nearly 30% of the company’s $2.46 billion in revenue in North America in fiscal 2015. The other three divisions are Credit Services, which garnered 46% of its revenue; Marketing Services, with 17%; Decision Analytics, with 8%.
Consumer Services’ growth in the December quarter was “ahead of expectations,” Experian Chief Financial Officer Lloyd Pitchford said during an earnings call in January. It included a one-time “onboarding” fee from CSID, a competitor based in Austin that has partnered with Experian on a contract for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
An effort to direct Web traffic to experian.com from its sites frequented by consumers looking to get free credit reports also bore fruit. The company offers a free, seven-day trial period to explore experian.com, after which it charges consumers $21.95 per month for continuous access to their credit reports and FICO scores from all three reporting agencies, or $15.95 per month for credit monitoring, Internet “ID scanning,” and fraud resolution support.
“Obviously, these are still early days, but the upsell from [freecreditreport.com] is actually very strong,” added Experian Chief Executive Brian Cassin. “It is proving to be a very effective acquisition channel for us, and we continue to expect to see benefit from that.”
Putting consumers in “completely distinct membership products” has been discontinued in favor of “bringing people into the Experian fold,” Simmons said. “Instead of, ‘Hey, you came to freecreditreport.com, I am going to give you a free credit report,’ and you walk away, you are getting your Experian free credit report, and since this may be your first time you had any relationship with us whatsoever, you may want to do some things with that credit report—you may want to get your score, you may want to understand what can be improved, you may have a problem and you want to dispute something on your report.”
“Credit Swagger”—the company’s “creative, new, highly successful advertising strategy,” as Experian Chairman Don Robert described it in the 2015 annual report—supported the upsell effort by portraying credit tracking as an empowering experience.
It featured consumers who, backed by their FICO scores from Experian’s Credit Tracker app, negotiated for better terms on their loans. Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., created the campaign, as well as a more recent set of ads that have a slightly different brand-focused feel.
“Credit Swagger worked really well for us on a direct response level and elicited a lot of positive response, but it wasn’t making a strong emotional connection, and it wasn’t linking with Experian as strongly from a branding standpoint as we wanted it to,” Simmons said. “We recently made some changes there, and our new ads are focused more on helping real people with real problems and just kind of being there for them. We are continuing to evolve our creative, and … I’m super excited about the stuff that’s coming out in the next few months.”
New Features
Simmons declined to divulge much about products and campaigns that are in the works, but said, “it’s really about knowing customers better and better, and being more targeted—what are you here for, what are you going through now, and how do we give you something that meets your need, whether it’s a consultation or tool-related, or a different kind of score.”
Cassin said during the January earnings call that Experian is pursuing a lead generation business model “to monetize [the customer base that only gets free credit reports] through a variety of different ways.”
His words echoed Experian’s plans to “introduce new features beyond credit reports and scores, to offer consumers still greater value,” as stated in the company’s 2015 annual report.
It currently directs its freecreditreport.com site visitors to “resources” that can help them “secure a better rate” on credit cards or loans offered by Experian’s partners, including Flagship Credit Acceptance LLC, a Chadds Ford, Pa.-based subprime auto lender that merged with CarFinance Capital LLC in Irvine in 2014.
Competition
One of the “underserved” consumer groups Experian is looking to target in the near future is younger millennials who are mostly “gun-shy about credit because they have seen people burned by it,” said Senior Director of Public Relations Greg Young, adding that “they also need to understand how it can help you to have that positive credit profile when you actually want to buy a car or start a family.”
Millennials are also generally “uninhibited about where they put their personal information,” and thus are more prone to ID theft.
Experian isn’t the only choice for the group—competitor CSID recently launched Social Media Monitoring, a service that alerts Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram users when they are sharing personal information that can put them at risk for identity theft. It also can alert a subscriber of “content that was found in their social network profiles that may damage their reputation, like foul language, sexual content, and drug and alcohol references,” according to the company.
Experian also competes with Credit Karma Inc. in San Francisco and Equifax Inc. in Atlanta, Ga., among others.
TransUnion in Chicago, whose recent market value was about $4.81 billion in January, refreshed its logo and introduced new brand platform “Information for Good” with “one goal in mind: to better reflect our mission of empowering smarter decisions and creating better lives … The new branding marks the culmination of an expansion in which the company moved beyond its traditional consumer credit data reporting role and has begun using data and analytics to provide powerful insights to consumers, businesses and a variety of new vertical markets.”
