The Polls Are Open!

Voting is underway for the guest speaker opening at the Trabian/Forum Partnership Symposium. While I am one of the candidates for the spot, I encourage you to view all of the entrants and vote for the one that you would most like to see at this event.

As Ginny Brady and Andy LaFlamme are close blogosphere friends of mine, I would love to see either of them voted as guest speaker royalty. Just view the vids and vote for your favorite.

http://www.forumsolutions.com/events/auditions

Thanks!

The Savings/Member Ratio

Forum Solutions' Doug True wrote an interesting post on OpenSourceCU today about some credit unions' palpable complacency and unwillingness to take risks in product/service offerings.

"Folks, we can’t offer “free’er” checking. In my opinion, there is too much cookie cutter product offerings that are copied and launched with very little thought on what your members want or how they will see the new offering as relevant. Too many times a credit union simply just buys a new product from a vendor and launches it – differentiation is almost non-existent from the beginning and if it does exist it quickly disappears." - Doug True

When the industry's idea of innovation and collaboration is a "best practices" mentality, it's no wonder many credit unions struggle finding a discernible, relevant role in the financial services marketplace. Fear, reasonable or not, is the major factor here. Fear of regulators. Fear of losing one's job. Fear of rocking the archaic boat that has been too cozy for too long.

As not-for-profit cooperatives, I believe our biggest issue has been our success metrics. If members, assets, net income, number of branches, deposits, loans, capital/assets ratio and number of transactions continue to be our primary measurements, I believe we're doing our charters a huge disservice. "Grow or go away"?!? Says who? Honestly, that bugs the hell out of me.

How's this for an idea? Why don't we define success by the amount of money we save the average member? The savings/member ratio. And by savings, I certainly don't mean deposits. Calculate real value that your credit union is delivering to members. Consider your deposit rates compared to the competition. Look at comparative loan rates. How about fee income? Isn't this what we're in business to do? Aren't we supposed to be saving members money?

Listen, I'll be the first to admit that being responsible stewards of members' assets is an irrevocable charge - and I'm not suggesting we fall anything short of that. What I'm suggesting is that growth for growth's sake is not beneficial to members. I'm suggesting that most of our current metrics are too easy to manipulate to the detriment of our memberships. I'm suggesting that big successes require big risks.

I'm suggesting we start being credit unions again, not bank wanna-be's.

Fun Doesn't Work? My Derrie-Air.

The people of Philadelphia were introduced to a unique addition to the airline industry today with the launch of a one-day Derrie-Air airlines campaign. Shop in the big and tall? This may not be the airline for you. Instead of pricing all coach seats the same, this airline charges by passenger weight: from $1.40/lb. to $2.25/lb., depending on the destination. "The more you weigh, the more you pay," they claim.

While this may seem unfair, the pricing is justified by environmental awareness. The heavier the plane's contents, they reason, the more fossil fuels required to fly from point A to point B. Seeking to be the first carbon-neutral airline, Derrie-Air promises to plant enough trees to justify the carbon footprint of each flight. The variable pricing schedule insists that passengers offset their individual contribution to those carbon emissions.

This ad campaign, featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer and companion site Philly.com, has headlines sure to catch your eye like "Nice Tail!" and "Fly $2.25/lb." According to reports, the campaign has already been a huge hit, generating tons of earned media exposure and hits on the Derrie-Air website.

Aside from its unique approach to pricing and neat ads, my favorite thing about the campaign is that it's completely fake - it's a joke. It's an effort to prove the value of humor, uniqueness, and guts in advertising...and it worked.

Philadelphia Media Holdings and their ad agency, Gyro, wanted to show potential advertisers that newspaper advertising can still create a buzz. Or, according to Philadelphia Media Holdings' Jay Devine, the campaign sought to "demonstrate the power of our brands in generating awareness and generating traffic for our advertisers, and put a smile on people's faces."

What's the lesson? To me, it's that marketers take themselves too seriously, or not seriously enough. "Fun" works and "controversy" works. Look on YouTube or Technorati and tell me what kind of content attracts the most visitors. It's polarized. Either you see the lighthearted, grab your friend be the shirt-sleeve and say "you've got to see this" material or the controversial, from a distinctly different angle, "oh no they just didn't..." content that drives traffic.

Certainly makes one wonder why financial institutions continue to use boring campaigns that are so vanilla, neither the pleasure seeker nor the inside scoop seeker cares about them. Look at the content of most financial services advertisements. Touchy-feely copy, Shiny Happy People stock photography (a Denise Wymore term), "I've seen that before" layouts, and uninspired messages. If the Derrie-Air ad fooled people into believing it was a real ad, guess what it did? It ticked some people off (especially the ones like me that could lose a few pounds). Chances are those people wanted to go to the Derrie-Air website to complain, or see for themselves how such a horribly unfair system of pricing could actually be implemented. If a reader saw the ads for what they were (a joke), chances are very good that they wanted to go to the website to find out who was behind the hysterically funny ads. Either way, traffic was generated.

Does "Fun" work? Does "Controversy" draw attention? You bet your Derrie-Air! Most everything in-between is a waste of your time as a marketer, and my time as an audience-member. I challenge you to examine what your credit union is doing to drive traffic. If it isn't unique, fun, or controversial...go away. Use the marketing dollars you save to lower loan rates or raise dividend rates. Otherwise, you're just wasting your credit union's (read: members') time and money.

To Be Buried in a Pringles Can

You may have never heard of Cincinnati's Fredric J. Baur. I hadn't, anyway. Rest assured, though, you know his work.

An organic chemist and food storage technician for Proctor & Gamble, Baur revolutionized the world of snack food in 1966 with his invention of the Pringles potato chip can. After his death on May 4, his family honored his final request by having his mortal remains buried in - you guessed it - a Pringles can.

While hopefully I'm an eternity away from retirement and death, Baur's story made me wonder what my career accomplishment might be. What will I do/create/accomplish that will leave a lasting impression on the world? What will I be buried in?

I'm sure this will change as the years go by, but I thought of three items that I would love to accomplish in the credit union movement:

1) Discover true, industry-wide economies of scale. I'm amazed at how many processes, expenses, and efforts are duplicated by individual credit unions in a cooperative movement. Imagine an industry in which our core processors, ATM networks, card processors, printing services, and financial literacy programs are wholly, and cooperatively, owned. I want to be a force behind these efforts. Together we stand, divided we fall.

2) Financial literacy standardized tests in schools. We measure student performance in reading, writing, mathematics, science, and more. When it comes to financial literacy, however, young people are left out to dry. They say what gets measured gets managed, and it's obvious to me that the contrapositive is also true. Credit unions need to be behind the effort to get mandatory financial literacy education and testing in American high schools. I think we can make it happen.

3) In-house branches. The power of online banking, online bill pay, direct deposit, and telephone/SMS banking is nothing short of remarkable. Recently, some financial institutions have even released home draft capture scanners that allow remote check deposits. To me, it's time to put this all together. I am suggesting the end of physical branches. Video conferencing, reloadable cash cards, remote draft capture, online banking, online bill pay, direct deposit, electronic signatures, and other technologies can make this all possible. Time will allow it to happen.

When I'm buried, I highly doubt I'll have an invention like the Pringles can to hang my hat on. Quite frankly, I'm much more interested in impacting personal relationships than succeeding in commercial ventures. And that's what draws me to the credit union movement.

What would you like to be buried in?