Compliance that makes sense to Marketing
Marcia Lewis of the Minnesota Credit Union Network is my kind of compliance pro. Simple to understand, uses common sense when deciding what has to be included. I caught some of her presentation:
Read more on Compliance sense, age marketing, Tech Geek / #MBD13…
In order to build a great brand, you have to create stories, according to Jim Stengel, author of Grow and one of the keynote speakers at MBD13, who shared how he created the story for Pampers.
Okay, so the quote doesn’t quite go like that. I just parsed it to get your attention. Here’s what Walt really said:
“Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.”
– Walt Disney
If you didn’t know, the 2013 CUNA Marketing and Business Development Council Conference was held at Disneyland. So I was expecting things like shrubbery meticulously shaped into the full shapes of Mickey, Minnie and Pluto, and even white gloved hands holding up the bathroom lights at my hotel. But after having spent a few days under the Total Disney Indoctrination Program, you start seeing Mickey everywhere — ears in carpet patterns, silhouettes on ceramic tiles when you look at just the right angle, even in the wallpaper patterns. By the time Wednesday morning came around, I was pumped that iDiz was able to sponsor the final keynote speaker, who was from Disney, of course.
Read more on Walt thinks everyone is creative. Or flabby. / #MBD13…
Good news! Mike Schenk, CUNA VP of Economics and Statistics foresees 4% GDP and 5.5% unemployment ahead!
Just kidding. Apparently being in Disneyland affected his judgment there for awhile. Or maybe that was just an example of economist humor.
It’s the first full week of work after the holidays and the beginning of a brand new year. Of course, that probably means expectations will be higher as well. So the last thing you can afford to do is to be stuck in your office, recycling the same old boring themes you’ve tried to re-invent each of the last few years. You need a chance to meet new people, experience new ideas. You need a shot-in-the-arm, pick-me-up-and-shake-me, highly-caffeinated-shot-of-adrenaline. You need to go to a credit union marketing conference…
The Most Important Strategic Decision
CUs Can Make
Ron Shevlin, Senior Analyst at Aite Group.
• The old business model is dead. Few consumers actively manage their finances. Only 20% are actively engaged (32% of gen Y). Return on equity has been going down from 17% in 1985 to nominal amounts today, and CU income has declined in 2011 and 2012. The Debanked are mainstream consumers who have opted out of the banking system, and 15 million people have left or will.
• The death of Checking Accounts. First time checking accounts are no longer a given for someone starting out. GenY just assumes checking account is misnamed. The percentage of monthly payments made by check went from 61% to 30%. One person bought his last 3 cars on ebay.
• Debit card usage is responsible for 41% of overdrafts volume. The average household is paying $341/year in overdraft fees (which means some HH are paying a lot more.) Is it worth switching to prepaid accounts? 8 out of 10 people would lose money, but 18% would save money.
• Movenbank’s concept of “Cred” is about debit worthiness. As your “Cred” score improves, you move from prepaid, to overdraft options, to more benefits, all on the same account. (Too bad they came up with the idea first – CRED Unions has possibilities.)
• Credit unions should consider a separation of production and distribution. Levis are sold at different stores all over the place. Why can’t financial products be branded and sold everywhere?
• CUs have the opportunity to move to foresight/insight instead of oversight. PFM software is about oversight. FPM (Financial Performance Management) is about insight.
• There are 6 pages of finance apps in the Apple store that start with the letter A. Credit unions could direct members to the best of those, and make money off that sale. Any app can tell the consumer what a pair of shoes cost, but not every app can help them decide if they can afford it, whether they should buy it on debit or credit, are there better deals, what did others pay for them? This is where CUs can make money, by providing something they can’t do without, not by collecting overdraft fees.
• The bank of the future will be a supermarket or Nordstroms/Macy’s with variety of products. Credit unions need to switch from managing transactions to expertise, and provide decision support. Stay vendor neutral and just make the sale.
That’s what a speaker asked at last week’s CU Water Cooler Symposium. Of course that speaker was Dr. Keith Leggett, VP and Senior Economist at the American Bankers Association and author of a blog called Keith Leggett’s Credit Union Watch.
At least that’s what Matt Hodson, of Health Care Credit Union told attendees at the 2012 MAC conference in Seattle.
He wasn’t necessarily bad-mouthing anyone, however. His point was simply that anyone can participate, that it isn’t as hard as it looks, and there were several good reasons why you should at least monitor social media channels:
Read more on MAC2012: Most people in Social Media are not rocket scientists…
Even with all the economic turmoil over the last two years, banks are still growing loans faster than credit unions, according to Kevin Stang from Raddon, who stepped in when another speaker couldn’t make it to Seattle. Part of that may simply be that half of the nation uses one of the 5 biggest banks, which one third call their PFI. However, those same bank customers perceive free checking as being discontinued, so that presents an opportunity. Here are his recommendations:
Read more on MAC2012: Banks had more lending growth than credit unions…
Gossip covers all of our conversations about others. That’s why 66-90% of all conversation is gossip, but only 5-7% of gossip is the mean, nasty variety, according to Shawne Duperon, the multi-emmy winning (she’s very proud of them) talking head of ShawneTV, trademarked Gossip Marketing ® expert and Keynote Speaker at MAC.
Read more on MAC2012: Gossip is just social grooming, and discomfort is like a fart…
Neil Goldman, of Goldman Consulting and Strategy, Inc., thinks you should use a stick instead of a carrot for team building. It’s actually an interesting exercise in cooperation – or was that frustration? I don’t know if Neil has ever been tempted to beat someone with those sticks, but I will tell you that it crossed my mind — but I’ll let Neil keep that exercise for his own consulting.
<< NOLA Notes, part 3 >>
At 15, Michael Tasner bought a package of web site layouts on eBay and started selling web sites as fast as he could produce them for $5K each. He was so successful that he started sneaking out of high school to connect with a limo service in order to go to client meetings. He didn’t care about the customer, just the sale. But in 2008 he had an epiphany while visiting his wife and twins in the hospital that changed his life outlook. There, a woman who had just lost her twins helped him realize that he had not really been living, loving, and making a difference. So he changed his business model to focus on the customer and adopted the TOMS shoes model of giving away one free pair for every pair that is purchased.
<< NOLA Notes, part 2 >>
Making Marketing a Strategic Resource: On Your Way to the C-Suite
At the CUNA Marketing and BusDev Conference in New Orleans, Teresa Freeborn shared why she believes that marketers are the next generation of CU CEOs “because the ability to develop business is stronger and more important than those skills on the finance side, whose work is now mostly rote.”
Read more on Hire some weirdos — the cracked ones let in some light…
For all of you who did not attend the CUNA Marketing and BusDev Conference in New Orleans (or spent more of your time on Bourbon Street than I did), here are the highlights I heard:
Next week I begin the credit union conference season with the CUNA Marketing and Business Development Council Conference (I wish they would shorten that name since it’s almost as hard to type out as it is to say) in New Orleans, then on through the MAC Conference in Seattle in May. Both are great organizations, both put on educational conferences well worth attending, and both of them have awards shows where credit union marketers get to strut their stuff.
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