Financial Center

BRAND STRATEGY & COMMUNICATIONS

Before stepping into full-time leadership of Artifactual, Jake spent four years at Financial Center, a fast-growing Indiana credit union, where he had the chance to touch nearly every part of the brand.

As AVP of Brand, Communications, and Strategy, he helped rethink how the organization looked and sounded, studied what people wanted from their financial lives, and launched new products and campaigns. Along the way, there were branches to open, mergers to navigate, major technology conversions to explain, commercials to make and plenty of complicated financial topics to make easier to understand.

A few of the major projects Jake worked on along the way:

  • A full rebrand that went well beyond a new look. Jake helped reshape the brand around Financial Center’s financial wellness model, including its approach to one-on-one financial coaching. The work connected positioning, voice, visual identity, advertising and member experience around a bigger idea of what a credit union could do for its members.

  • Jake spent six months studying the financial lives of young, high-earning consumers, including 20 in-depth interviews. The findings became a book for executives and eventually informed conversations around staffing, products and new ways to serve the market.

  • Jake helped build a new lending strategy around three types of offers – evergreen products, new-member offers, and limited-time campaigns. Together, they gave Financial Center a more intentional way to drive lending throughout the year and contributed to exciting lending growth in 2026.

  • Mergers, new markets, branch openings and major technology conversions all came with one challenge: making change make sense to members. Jake led communications across each, including the strategy behind a digital banking conversion that moved 60% of members to the new platform in its first week.

  • Jake helped Financial Center figure out how generative AI could actually be useful at work, eventually building a custom tool trained around the brand and its voice. Employees used it for more than 1,000 prompts a month.

Jake’s work at Financial Center also gave him opportunities to speak and write about brand, marketing and financial services nationally. He presented at industry conferences, became a regular financial education guest on FOX59/CBS4’s Indy Now, and contributed to industry publications. Along the way, he was named one of Indianapolis Business Journal’s Twenty in Their Twenties and a Credit Union Times Rising Star.

A quick note: The work featured here was completed by Jake during his four years as a full-time Financial Center employee. It wasn’t Artifactual client work, yet we’ve included it because it reflects the experience and perspective Jake brings to Artifactual today.

  • Reimagined Brand Tagline

  • Presenting at The Financial Brand Forum in Las Vegas

  • Presenting at the Digital Marketing in Financial Services Conference in San Francisco

  • The Quiet Weight of Doing Well - A Research Book on HENRYs

  • Brand Lifestyle Photography

  • Monthly Featured Guest on Indy Now on Fox59 and CBS4

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