Bank Iowa Brings Three Video Awards

Video series highlights some of Bank Iowa’s most exciting customers and volunteers

Within three days of starting his position at Bank Iowa, Vice President and Marketing Director Josh Fleming had already compiled a thick digital file of incredible client and team member stories. Sharing those stories quickly became one of his biggest priorities.

“The bank’s distinctiveness was immediately obvious – it’s the people we employ and the Iowans we serve. They gel like no other community I’ve seen, completely driven to help one another out any way they can,” said Fleming. “I wanted to find a compelling way of showing what everyone was telling me in those first few exploratory days on the job. Because video has become such a great storytelling medium, that’s the direction we went."

Fleming contracted with Sam Fathallah Creative and Lessing-Flynn to create a set of video packages that shared the stories of Bank Iowa team members and Bank Iowa clients. Each lives on the bank’s YouTube channel and has been shared across several social media channels, sparking a number of online conversations about what it means to be part of an Iowa community.

The feedback inspired Fleming and his team to enter the videos into the international Telly Awards competition. This week, the team learned two of their videos had received three Bronze honors in the 40-year-old competition, which received more than 50,000 entries from the world’s biggest and best-known brands.

Community members are encouraged to watch and share the videos online at the following links:

• Bank Iowa Client Story, Chick-Fil-A: When David Grimm, owner / operator of Chick-fil-A in West Des Moines, Iowa, and his family arrived in the city, they had a short list of must-have relationships, and a community bank was near the top. After meeting Bank Iowa’s Bill Fry at a West Des Moines chamber meeting, the Grimms chose to become customers of the bank. What’s more, David and Bill became friends, having both recently been through a family uprooting to Des Moines.
• Bank Iowa Community Matters, Mario Flores: Hailing from Mexico, Bank Iowa Loan Officer Mario Flores experienced first-hand the difficulties of navigating the U.S. immigration system. Despite the complexities, Mario achieved his dream of becoming an American citizen. Today, as a community banker in Denison, an Iowa city with a large and growing Latino population, Mario devotes hundreds of hours to preparing and teaching a class on obtaining U.S. citizenship.