I recently met up with a friend who works at a local credit union to get his take on all the changes that CUs have experienced over the last few years. He listened to what I had to say, agreed with some of my observations, and challenged my thinking on others. It was a fun evening and I enjoyed hearing things from his viewpoint and picking his brain. Hopefully someday I can return the favor, because I definitely got the better end of deal, and walked away with more than I gave.

Read more on On ditching RFPs, picking brains, and drawing lines….

At iDiz, we’re all about, well, ideas. So it should be no surprise that we are also interested in finding out where great ideas come from. Interestingly, it seems everyone has their own idea how ideas happen.

Read more on How ideas happen: eureka! or slow hunch?…

Are you investing in high quality marketing or just throwing money away? With creative work (concepts, copy, and design) it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference until you count the results. But creative quality is vitally important — excellent creative multiplies results, while poor quality creative can waste money and seriously damage your brand.

Read more on Are you investing in high quality marketing or just throwing money away?…

I just got a new puppy. Brenda is 8 weeks old. She’s a purebred yellow Lab and she’s a service-dog-in-training. She’s the 10th puppy I’ve raised for Canine Companions for Independence.

Read more on Your marketing needs a puppy…

Which kind of marketing might actually get you to pay attention — a monkey driving a banana car, or fourteen paragraphs of features and benefits?

Yeah, I thought so.

“Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.”
- Mark Twain

I’ve always thought of advertising in any form as a trade. You’re asking the reader or listener for something extremely valuable — a slice of their attention. So what are you going to offer in return?

Read more on Killing the funny frog…

We’re all accustomed to the “race to the bottom.” It’s easy to think of things to give away (free online banking, free bill pay, free overdraft protection, free checks, lower rates), but it’s a lot harder to add a large amount of value. (It’s even harder to actually ask for money.)

Read more on The $50 question…

The other day I was walking in the neighborhood around our office. It’s kind of a funky area – mostly locally-owned retail establishments mixed in with small houses and a gazillion hair salons. Narrow one-way streets, big trees, and some rather colorful local residents. (Our favorite is a gentleman who rides his retro-looking bike everywhere, in any kind of weather, with an adorable little dog happily riding in a basket on the front handlebars.)

Read more on What does your outside say about your inside?…

1. Tighten it up.
Credit union marketers (or maybe it’s just marketers in general) have a particularly hard time knowing when to stop putting words on a page. More words don’t persuade more — they just get in the way of making your point. Edit ruthlessly.

Read more on Five fast ways to punch up copy…

Infographics seem to be everywhere, especially on Pinterest, where images rule. Big, beautiful, graphic eye candy, packed with tons of information, which gives interested readers all kinds of data to absorb.

Read more on Marketing should be snackable…

Of course that’s not a nice thing to hear, especially if your job is coming up with ideas. And maybe even more so when your agency is named iDiz.

But it’s true. Ideas are cheap.

Read more on Ideas are a dime a dozen…

Today there are so many ways to market yourself that the sheer number  can make the whole task feel very overwhelming. Your thought process might go something like this: “How can I maintain an engaging Twitter feed and Facebook page AND keep up with all the day to day marketing decisions I need to make for the CU? Something has to give here…. and it might just be me!”

Read more on Marketing 101…

A few months ago, I was talking shop with a relative who works in management at a large public library. She was lamenting the fact that libraries tend to attract the sort of person who would rather follow safe lists of rules than take a chance on interacting with other people. One of her constant challenges is to chase staff out from behind their desks to talk to patrons — the library’s mission is to connect people with the knowledge they need, not to make safe, orderly stacks of old books.

Read more on Where the wild things aren’t…

Post after post after book have been circulating online these days with one common theme: Steal This. So I stole their headline.

Not that I still don’t have reservations about the whole concept of stealing, well, anything. After all, I was raised as a preacher’s kid, did the whole Eagle Scout thing, and as a father raised two more Eagle Scout sons, so right and wrong have been recurring themes in my life.

Read more on Steal THIS…

Did you ever think someone would tell you to daydream, get sleepy, go on vacation, or have a drink before doing your job? Well, Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, has several suggestions on how to get creative:

Read more on Creativity hacks…

Mail Moment – a bright moment of the day when we collect, sort and open our mail according to individual rules and rituals.

When I was growing up, that meant my Dad always got the mail, got to look at it first, and got to present it to the proper recipients, kind of like a gift. A personal letter, birthday card, college newsletter, a novel from the book-of-the-month club, periodical – there always seemed to be something in the mail that elevated someone’s day.

Read more on The good news about the decline of the USPS…