Small is Beautiful

How and why credit unions should remain small and successful. This presentation contains insights and advice that every small, regional financial institution should take to heart (not just credit unions). 104 very interesting slides from Tim McAlpine, Currency Marketing. If you like what you see, check out either of these two bonus presentations: Bonus 1, Bonus 2

Ten Characteristics Of Next Generation Financial Services Websites

Let’s face it…most financial institutions have pretty dull websites. Many look like they haven’t evolved in over a decade. This presentation — full of good ideas — is two years old and still not much has changed. 20 slides by Tim van Tongeren.

Private Banking Business Models

Many differentiated business models and interesting ideas for high-net worth individuals. You may not serve the wealthy, but this presentation offers some great advice and tips on how to innovate a differentiated business model. If you think about it, you realize you can’t differentiate your brand without addressing your business model. Check it out, you won’t regret it. 81 fully-narrated slides by Alexander Osterwalder.

Gen-Y Financial Services

Facts, insights, examples and ideas concerning Gen-Y financial marketing in this presentation by one of the financial industry’s most successful 20-something CEOs. 88 slides narrated by Bryan Sims, CEO of brass|MEDIA.

What’s Next For The Branch Network

This four-part presentation includes an introduction about the importance of branches today and three case studies from three different sized financial institutions (Citizens Bank, MidSouth Bank and Coastal FCU). 48 slides by David Kerstein with Peak Performance.

Just How Special & Different Are Financial Brands?

You have to listen to the narration in this presentation to truly appreciate what’s going on, but it’s worth it. It’s really a great speech. Only 11 slides with just under 10 minutes of narration by Justin Basini.

Financial Institutions Respond to Bloggers

There are bloggers who say some pretty nasty things about financial institutions…maybe even yours. How should you respond? This presentation is the single best piece on the subject you’ll find anywhere on the web. 46 slides from William Azaroff, Vancity Credit Union.

Promoting Thrift in an Age of Excess

This presentation is one part wake-up call and one part call-to-arms, extolling credit unions to embrace their mission of thrift. 61 slides by Filene’s Matt Davis (formerly with Members Credit Union).

Secure Branch Design

An item by item presentation detailing the myriad of factors contributing to the design of secure branches. 28 slides from Brand Partners.

Social Media for Bank Investor Relations

You almost never hear anyone talking about using social media to help manage shareholder relations. This presentation makes a good, solid case. 38 slides by Dave Hogan.

Katrina. Haiti. Floods. Tornados. Are you worried about how prepared your financial institution for a disaster? In a recent survey, an alarming number of financial institutions lack a thorough disaster plan.

Do you struggle to create and maintain a detailed plan for disaster situations? Do you do the minimum just to get through audits? In this free webinar playback, “Disaster Planning for Financial Facilities: Beyond IT and Business Continuity,” you will get the tools and direction you need to sleep better at night.

• 5 Tips for Developing the Right Disaster Plan
• 5 Pitfalls to Avoid

Who should watch this free webinar playback: CEOs, COOs, facilities personnel, and IT executives at banks and Credit Unions of all asset sizes.

About the Presenters

David J. Mistick, Strategic Consultant
Circumspex
David J. Mistick has more than 25 years of experience in property management, construction, disaster planning and recovery. Co-author of “Before Disaster Strikes – Developing the Emergency Procedures Plan.” David has managed and consulted on disasters throughout the United States, and is an accredited Continuing Education instructor in five states.

Bob Saunders, Principal & EVP Construction
Momentum
With 25 years of planning, designing, and managing construction projects for financial facilities, Bob is fluent in the how’s and why’s of design and building. Bob is a Credit Union Times Facilities Forum Board Member, Member of U.S. Green Building Council and a LEED Accredited Professional.

There is little doubt that social media is here to stay. As the list of organizations jumping on the bandwagon grows every second, the same business questions continue to arise:

• How do we execute it effectively?
• How do we justify the time and personnel expense (ROI)?
• How do we use it to support other initiatives?

To answer these questions, Callahan & Associates Internet Strategy Consortium conducted a social media survey involving over 11,000 credit union members.

Key Fact: This is the most comprehensive social media study ever conducted in the credit union industry.

The study measured members’ use of social media, including visited sites and online activities, communication preferences and desired topics on social media sites. Among the findings:

• More than 82% of credit union members ages 18-60+ use Facebook.
• About half of all members surveyed said they would read a credit union’s Facebook page periodically.
• Among credit unions with a Facebook presence, only 5-16% of their members were aware their credit union had a fan page. Most members reported learning of Facebook pages through credit union websites.
• Of Twitter users, 34% use it to follow companies with which they do business.
• Twitter’s overall familiarity among members was 14%, but only 2-7% reported being “very familiar” with the service.
• Members using Twitter expect their credit union to provide information such as fraud alerts (71%), special offers (60%), financial tips (58%), and rate specials (57%).
• Nine-in-ten online members are interested in receiving email from their credit union.
  

  

  The Callahan & Associate study including 11,000 credit union members revealed interesting differences between age groups and usage of certain social media channels.

Readers of The Financial Brand are invited to enjoy a special webinar, “Engaging Members through Social Media Challenges & Opportunities,” hosted by Callahan & Associates that presents the study’s conclusions and recommendations.

$50 Off the playback of this webinar!

Just type the promo code FinancialBrand in the
highlighted area of your shopping cart.

The webinar should provide you with a clear picture of what your organization can expect from this growing trend:

• Critical considerations as you plan your social media initiative
• How to use social media to monitor the health and stature of your brand
• Where different audiences should be engaged differently
• Who you should (or could!) be targeting
• Examples of how credit unions are leveraging social media

Are You Killing Your Brand?

There are 7 different ways you could be killing your bank or credit union brand. If you’re like most financial institutions, you’re guilty of at least 3… right now! But how do you know? What if you are committing all 7 of these deadly branding sins?

Almost every financial institution says they have a brand. But most have only fooled themselves into believing they have a “rock-solid brand strategy” when really they don’t have anything close.

“The 7 Deadliest Branding Sins
Financial Institutions Make and How to Avoid Them”

Tuesday, September 29

A Webinar Hosted By Bankerstuff.com

Elevate your organization’s branding I.Q. to new levels with this thought-provoking webinar by Jeffry Pilcher, president of financial branding consultancy ICONiQ, and publisher of TheFinancialBrand.com.

In this session, Pilcher will reveal what he’s discovered by working with hundreds of financial brands over the last 15 years. Warning: All your assumptions may be challenged while you learn the secrets to avoiding the 7 most common – and most deadly – branding mistakes financial institutions make.

If you’re tired of being forced to compete on rates, fees and locations… If you’re ready to find out what’s holding your organization’s brand back… And if you want to know what it takes to build a truly branded financial institution… Then you won’t want to miss this webinar on breakthrough branding.

One Day Only!

Hurry, space is limited, so register now and don’t miss out.

[Note: There is a slide show embedded in this article.]

“The Future of Branches” is another presentation by Jeffry Pilcher, Publisher of The Financial Brand and President/ICONiQ. It takes a look at trends in retail BRANCH DESIGN, and examines the best practices for engineering a branded financial environment. The presentation features 50 photos and dozens of examples. Here’s a summary of the main points.

• With your next branch, be deliberate, strategic and intentional.
  Don’t just do “what you’ve always done.”
• You need to build your branch around interactions, not transactions.
• Think like a retailer. Move from “fortresses” to “stores.”
• Cross-sell your financial products and services.
• Think in terms of retail zones. Create retail destinations.
• Create brand theater.
• Have a retail street presence.
• You can create a secure environment without compromising your retail focus…
  and without turning into Fort Knox.
• Make it enjoyable.
• Make it memorable.
• Differentiate.

“The Future of Branches” is one of four presentations available from ICONiQ that have been built specifically for financial institutions. The other three presentations include “The 7 Deadly Branding Sins,” “Results 2.0,” and “The 11 Cs of Breakthrough Brands.”

Thanks to CUES for hosting the 2009 debut of this presentation.

Recently, a bank sent this request out over Twitter: “Help us figure out what our new blog should be about. Please send suggestions.”

More often than not, when financial institutions deploy Web 2.0 tools, it feels like a tactic searching for an excuse/strategy. They assume they need online social media before they even know what for. What are the goals? How does it fit the business model? What does success look like? What are they saying? To whom?

This is why most social media experiments are duds. In fact, one expert with Gartner research says that 50% of all Fortune 1000 companies trying some kind of online social networking initiative will fail. And out of 16,000 financial institutions, there are only a handful of real success stories.

So why do social media gurus run around the country imploring financial institutions to adopt social media strategies? It seems like everywhere you turn, there’s someone preaching the gospel of blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Yeah okay, we get it…

But for all these recommendations to create “engagement,” transparency” and “authenticity,” you don’t often hear about the underlying business case supporting Web 2.0 tools, nor how to go about building an effective strategy.

This presentation — created by Jeffry Pilcher, publisher of The Financial Brand — that picks up where all those impassioned, touchy-feely recommendations to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon stop short. The presentation outlines what you need to know to implement Web 2.0 tools that accomplish real business objectives:

• The hardcore realities behind all the Web 2.0 hoopla
• The right- and wrong way to build a Web 2.0 strategy
• How to link Web 2.0 tools with your brand and products
• How to get your management team on board with a Web 2.0 initiative

Results 2.0
The myths, facts and hardcore realities of social media marketing for financial institutions.

The presentation tackles 9 myths of social media and includes 10 strategies for building an effective Web 2.0 program. There are a lot of examples included, but unfortunately you need to hear the presentation to know how they fit within the presentation’s overall context. The meat of the presentation is 62 slides.

Here are a couple other presentations by The Financial Brand’s Jeffry Pilcher:

• The 11 Cs of Breakthrough Brands
• The 7 Deadly Branding Sins

Both of these were just given at CSCU’s annual conference this past weekend. Plus, there’s another presentation, “The Future of Branching,” that will be given as a webinar on May 14 at 3:45 EDT.

If you’d like to see Jeffry Pilcher present one of these four topics at your upcoming event, just send an email.

Here’s a special offer for readers of The Financial Brand: Discount tickets to Finance 2.0. This conference is shaping up to be one of the premier conferences of 2009.

The speaker line-up is a veritable who’s who of online social media talking about the latest trends and topics:

• “Are You a Spider or a Fly? Defining Your Relationship with the Web” – Trey Reeme
• “Why Are We Talking About Finance 2.0 When We Haven’t Figured Out Finance 1.0?” – Ron Shevlin
• “Young & Free Alberta: Integrating Marketing & Social Media to Connect with Consumers” – Tim McAlpine
• “Crashing the Party: Are Financial Institutions Welcomed on the Social Media Scene?” – Ed Terpening
• “Best Practices in Blogging: How to Maximize the Benefits of This New Medium” – Shari Storm
• “Perfecting Your Palette: Recipes for a Successful Social Marketing Campaign” – Morriss Partee
• “Using Social Media to Connect with Your Community” – William Azaroff

Don’t wait! Thing is going to sell out. There are 10 tickets with a 15% discount – a savings of $314.25. Plus, the first two people to request a discount code from The Financial Brand get their tickets at 35% off — saving you $733.20! If you want a discount code, shoot an email to The Financial Brand. If you want them all, you’ll save $4,608.90.

Note: Jeffry Pilcher, publisher of The Financial Brand, will also be presenting “Results 2.0: Using Web 2.0 tools to Achieve Real Business Objectives” at the Finanace 2.0 conference.

I just gave another webinar through CUES titled “The 7 Deadly Branding Sins.” These are the 7 biggest strategic errors financial institutions make. They are broad generalized observations based on my first-hand experience evaluating 75 financial brands over an 8-year period.

Here is the executive summary:

1. DELUSIONS OF BRANDEUR
   Thinking you have a brand strategy when you really don’t.
2. TOXIC SAMENESS
   Looking, acting and sounding like everyone else.
3. LCD SYNDROME
   Trying to appeal to everyone (e.g., the Lowest Common Denominator).
4. CRIMINAL NEGLECT
   A failure to commit. Not supporting the brand with time, energy and money.
5. CULTURAL AUTISM
   Staff don’t know what the brand is or understand how to live it out.
6. BRANDING SCHIZOPHRENIA
   Delivering an inconsistent look-and-feel and/or experience.
7. COSMETIC FIXATION
   Undue significance or attention placed on the brand’s identity (it’s look and feel).

Tip of the Hat: To Ron Shevlin, for his coining of the phrase “Delusions of Brandeur.”

Today, I gave the following presentation, “The 11 Cs of Breakthrough Brands,” in a CUES webinar.

It’s a fairly visual presentation, so not everything will make sense without hearing the script, but you should get the general idea.

Also, check out the critical 9-point branding self-exam you can take over at CUES Skybox. It’s a follow-up to the presentation.

If you missed today’s presentation, don’t sweat… I’ll be giving this presentation a few more times in upcoming months, starting with the DOXIM Industry Focus – Forum 2008: Financial Services, Thursday, September 18th, in Vancouver, B.C. There’s a PDF of the DOXIM forum’s agenda here.

If you’re interested, you can also have me present “The 11 Cs of Breakthrough Brands” at your next event. Just shoot me an email. There’s a version specifically for credit unions, and another version that applies to all financial institutions.

That’s the title of an upcoming webinar I’ll be presenting through CUES next Thursday, August 14 from 8:00-9:30 a.m. Pacific time.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

• How to build a breakthrough brand by putting 11 distinct, power-proven principles to work for your organization.
• The steps that must be taken to create, execute and maintain a healthy, vibrant and growing brand.
• The five biggest—and most common—branding mistakes.
• How to align your entire organization around a clear, strong brand.
• How to engage constituencies on all sides of the conversation.

The deadline for online registration is next Monday, August 11, so hurry if you want to catch it.