The Story

I love my iPod(s). I wasn’t a super early adopter, but kind of in the middle. It’s great. I have an iPhone, too, and admit I couldn’t live without them.

I was at a bankers conference the other day, and the agenda came to that ever-exciting moment when the vendors stand up, pretend the audience is paying attention, and then announce the winner of their “drawing” for whatever they were giving away at their booth. And, of course, about 2 of every five giveaways was—you guessed it—an iPod (often the Touch these days).

I’m sitting there thinking, “geez, banking vendors are just like bankers—they get stuck in a rut and can’t get out, so they just do what everyone else does.” Heck, I’ve got like 5 iPod’s in my house, so I sat there silently wondering why these vendors are still giving away iPod’s like they’re the newest, coolest thing.

Then something funny happened. A gentleman at my table (a “chairman of the board”) won one of the drawings, so he got up to collect his new iPod. When he returned, he sat down excitedly, turned to his bank’s president, and said “what is this thing?”

Holy shimolies! I thought he was joking….but he wasn’t. He really didn’t know what it was. Sure, he was an older gentlemen, so you may generalize and chalk his lack of tech savvy up to that, but he hasn’t been living a life of solitude out in the woods for the last decade.

I think this little story says a lot about the state of the banking and credit union industry. It shows how we’re 1) stuck in major ruts, and 2) way behind the times.

What are your thoughts?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Bank Branding, Bank Marketing, Credit Union Branding, Credit Union Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.