The Story

I’m pleased to introduce a new mini-series within The Story, called “Amusing Yet Disturbing.” In this series, I’ll share with you some of the “amusing, yet disturbing” questions, discussions and comments I come across from bank and credit union marketing folks. Why are these items both amusing and disturbing? Because they often show […]

I’m here at MAC with Jeff, promoting experiential brand building and multi-sensory marketing to some pretty cool credit union folks. This is my first trip to MAC, so I’m not sure if it’s the audience or us, but they really seem engaged by what we’re talking about.
Hearing about multi-sensory marketing, they ask, what does […]

If you’ve talked with me for more than about 10 minutes, you’ve discovered I like analogies and metaphors. A speaker here at MAC 2008 today used a metaphor as she talked to credit union marketing people about member satisfaction surveys. She was talking about how little those membership surveys actually mean. To […]

It only took about 10 minutes to get our wrists slapped at MAC this morning. After all, we did kinda hijack the event, taking a lot of the attention…even if just for a few minutes. Oh wait, that was the point. Mission accomplished.
So what was it that garnered so much attention? I […]

The booth is set up. Anticipation is high. And CBC is about to drop some experiential guerrilla marketing on these credit union marketers here at the 2008 Marketing Association of Credit Unions (MAC) conference.
That’s right–it’s go time.
Throughout the day I’ll be live-blogging to give you a taste of what’s up here […]

Good news–after a bit of drama, I’m happy to follow up to my previous post, It’s Hard To Eat Your Own Dogfood, and report that we did the right thing. We’ve separated from a client who was not a good fit. Does it hurt revenue? Yes. Is it frustrating as hell? […]

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a field test on two taglines for a credit union client. What a branding experience indeed. Not only did I get to experience first-hand what their current and potential target market audience responded to (and not to mention what they looked like and sounded like), […]

I’m just waiting to see a bank or credit union use this headline. Hey, I wouldn’t put it past anyone. After all, other businesses are advertising recession specials and economic stimulus sales. I hope my bank doesn’t, because a) it would have nothing to do with their brand, and b) competing on […]

A little while back I was standing in line at my bank and I noticed something that made me grimace. Behind the tellers were large LCD monitors showing the day’s business news. It was being broadcast from some generic source like CNN, so the bank didn’t have control over the content. During […]

Banks all have logos, but having a logo is different from having a personality. Ideally a bank’s logo should be representative of it’s personality, but that’s usually not the case. Bank brands typically do not communicate a strong position or message, and neither do the symbols and imagery they choose to stand for […]