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Case study
Veritex Community Bank
A consumer brand franchise, built from zero.
Sector
MARKETS
Duration
Practices
Veritex Community Bank had built a $12 billion institution on commercial strength and had almost no consumer deposit presence to show for it.
When rates hit two-decade highs and cost of funds became banking’s defining problem, Veritex needed retail deposits fast, in the two most competitive markets in Texas, and beyond a branch footprint it had no plans to expand.
The default playbook (post a top rate on a national aggregator and buy volume) was exactly what leadership didn’t want. Rate-shopper money is expensive, disloyal, and volatile. Veritex wanted deposits that behaved like relationships. The bank had MANTL’s account origination platform. It didn’t have a consumer brand, an audience strategy, a media engine, or the measurement to connect them. That became the engagement: build the entire consumer franchise, brand to bottom line, from zero.
Every media dollar would land on a name Texans knew, if at all, as a commercial bank.
Competing purely on APY means renting deposits. The message and mix had to attract balances that stay.
Out-of-footprint prospects had no branch to walk into and every reason to wonder if Veritex was a credible consumer banking partner.
Deposit acquisition is a cost-of-funds problem. The program would be measured in basis points per dollar raised.
In a market flooded with faceless national digital banks dangling APYs, being from Texas was the one asset no fintech could copy. Our custom campaign, “A Better State of Banking,” carried the double meaning the whole program lived inside: a better state of mind about your money, and the better state itself.
BRAND & IDENTITY
Make Texas the moat no fintech can copy.
“A Better State of Banking” launched as a complete system (consumer manifesto, display, print, paid social, pre-roll) in three deliberate stages: a contained-market test, expansion with custom pre-roll, then brand TV as the franchise scaled. Veritex never spent big-market dollars on unproven creative. Type-only and single-image executions expanded the message matrix while containing licensing costs.
CUSTOM-MADE IN TEXAS
Look unmistakably local, because trust is the conversion problem.
Stock photography reads as stock, especially to Texans. We shot custom photography across Veritex’s key markets so the brand’s Texas claim was visibly true: real landscapes, real light, bluebonnets nobody licensed from a national library. In a category where out-of-footprint prospects called the bank to verify it was real, looking unmistakably local wasn’t decoration, but the key to conversion.
GROWTH & PERFORMANCE — THE MEDIA ENGINE
Optimize against funded deposits, not clicks.
PPC, programmatic, paid social, native, and streaming ran as one program, directly into MANTL’s real-time origination data. Funded accounts, balances, and product mix were visible by channel and market within days, not quarters. Small A/B tests launched early and scaled fast; budget moved to hyperlocal performance pockets as the data surfaced them. Multitouch attribution, fraud prevention, and monthly reporting kept the optimization loop honest.
PARTNERSHIPS
Influence deployed with deposit discipline.
Veritex’s golf partnerships, including its relationship with world #1 Scottie Scheffler, gave an unknown consumer brand instant, credible familiarity. We integrated the partnership directly into the acquisition program: Scheffler creative ran alongside brand and product executions across display, social, and streaming, giving rate offers a face Texans already trusted. Influencer equity, deployed with deposit-acquisition discipline.
DIGITAL PRODUCT & EXPERIENCE
Media only earns its cost if the journey converts.
We designed the landing page UX and content, interstitial pages, and the recovery layer for abandoned applications (e.g. smart remarketing emails coordinated with a call-center touchpoint). Onboarding and retention emails extended the system past the funded account, protecting the balances media had paid for.
Eighteen months after the first test market, Veritex had a consumer deposit franchise with its own brand, its own audience, and its own economics.
in 1 month via the digital channel
in key markets and cut two to three times over 6 months
average balances for digitally acquired customers
in-branch openings up YoY
After launching MANTL Growth Engine with HIFI, there was a noticeable increase in foot traffic to our branches, and we have raised over $340M in core deposits across all of our banking channels.
