Photo courtesy of UniBank
Keith Lippert
Vice President of Marketing, UniBank
Age: 57
Industry experience: 35 years
UniBank has been making waves with a unique approach to marketing.
The Whitinsville-based bank gave away free gas in December 2025, and to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, it has been flying branded banners behind light airplanes in the vicinity of Foxborough during the World Cup.
These efforts join traditional display advertising and the bank’s developing digital channels. These new avenues optimize marketing efforts, but the bank still looks to make human connections with how it markets itself, Lippert says.
Over Lippert’s decades in banking, he has seen consumer needs change and hopes the bank’s unconventional marketing tactics can strike a balance as it is entering a new era. Former state housing secretary and Worcester city manager Ed Agustus became the bank’s CEO in March 2026.
Q: What was the strategy behind having a plane fly a banner near Foxborough and how valuable is it in terms of bringing in new customers?
A: I incorporated this idea up here a couple of years ago. We’re one of the original founding sponsors of the Worcester Red Sox for the last five or six years. There’s a lot of signage [at the WooSox Polar Park stadium]. When I was attending a game, I just looked up and saw this beautiful blue canvas with no signage in it, and just figured that would be a unique place to do it.
Obviously, I know that plane banners are popular down at beaches, and usually they feature either car dealerships or alcohol or something like that, but I thought it would be a unique idea to incorporate it into Central Mass., because you’re not expecting to see a plane banner outside of a beach location.
So, I located a local pilot who does this and have hired him, and he and I work well together, identifying mass population events, sporting events, concerts, festivals, fairs, country clubs, water parks – anything where there’s just a mass gathering of people, and then I have him also fly over highways.
Q: Is it simply for brand visibility? Is the idea that there’ll be some people who might be in the vicinity of Foxborough, attending a World Cup game, and think about UniBank being their bank?
A: With World Cup and Patriot games, the answer is pretty much the same: yes, for branding, a unique branding experience. I can have my pilot up in the air for a couple hours and reach tens of thousands of eyes, as opposed to any other marketing channel. Over the last few years, obviously digital banking is much more popular. We are not reliant only on the customers within a town to go physically visit a branch to do banking. That’s long gone. People can be in non-branch towns and bank with us as they do. We have many customers who are in non-branch towns, because you can go through the digital experience just as fine.
My thinking was, I don’t have to just brand in the same towns that we have a physical location. I can brand anywhere, and that opens up a whole new customer subset. So, that was one of the tie-ins on a strategic level to reach out to the non-branch locations to access customers, prospects that may not have heard of us because they haven’t seen us physically, but now that opens up a digital experience for them.
Q: UniBank did a gas giveaway twice in the last few years. How valuable is that in terms of getting more brand recognition and potentially gaining customers?
A: We did that two years in a row, 2024 and 2025, in December. In 2024 we opened up a physical branch in in Worcester, in the Canal District [near Polar Park], and it was more of an introduction from us to the community. There hadn’t been a physical bank there in many years. That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to put a physical location in there, and because of the absence of a physical bank, we also wanted to do a goodwill gesture.
That’s where we came up with the gas idea. Whether it’s gas or groceries, or just a human staple, we thought that was an appropriate welcoming gesture because of the economy right now, and everyone needing a little financial support. Also, what can we do that’s actually going to serve a purpose in people’s lives? Hence, helping out with economic issues.
There’s no guarantee. We weren’t looking to get money back, or anything like that. It was more, “We’re here, we’re doing this for you, we’re here with open arms, and if you’re looking for a local financial institution, we’re here for you.”
Q: How do you weigh the shift to a more digital experience while also using marketing to make a lasting impact on a prospective customer?
A: Our bank has 14 branches, and we’re located in Central Massachusetts: Worcester County/the Blackstone Valley. Each of our markets are distinct, so the way I market in Douglas, Massachusetts, may be slightly different than the way I market in Worcester.
There’s not one channel that fits everybody, and that’s why, when we look at our customer and prospect demographics, I try to incorporate at least one channel that may trigger that demographic. We invest time and money into our digital platforms to make that experience great, since that’s where people are leaning. The traditional marketing, I still do that for those customers who absorb the information that way while incorporating new ideas.
The gas campaign was a good one. The banners are something different. There’s a service that shows videos at gas station pumps – we incorporated some of our TV commercials and put them on the gas pump videos as well. My goal is, during the course of a day, if I can follow the journey of a customer. They wake up, they have coffee, they have a UniBank mug. Maybe they are watching TV in the morning, and they see our commercial. They get in the car to go to work, they hear my radio commercial. They are driving to work, they see my billboard, and so on. And then there’s my video at the gas station. I can get three to seven touch points of UniBank branding in front of them, maybe one of those seven touch points will cause a trigger.
Lippert’s Five Favorite Books
- “Using Behavioral Science in Marketing” by Nancy Harhut
- “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marketing Leaders” by Sebastian Pistritto
- “The CMO’s Marketing Masterplan” by InfowaveMRV
- “The CMO Manifesto” by John Ellett
- ‘Chief Marketing Officers at Work” by Josh Steimle
