Posts by Brian Wringer
The CU vault of horrors
Stuck trying to come up with a costume idea for the credit union office party? Here are a few grisly ghouls you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark and lonely branch hallway. Grumpy Gertie the Zombie Member She’s not a ghost just yet, but she is often seen shuffling through the branch, making horrible…
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Are you an Amazonian or a Walmartian?
It’s always interesting to compare credit unions to well-known “disruption” companies to see if there’s anything we can learn from their examples. Walmart and Amazon have massively disrupted retail, along with entire industries and communities. Love them or hate them (or both), their effect on the world has been huge. In addition, they are direct competitors…
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Helping the not-so-ideal credit union marketer
In my last article, I outlined the attributes of the Ideal Credit Union Marketer — an empowered, invaluable, brand-savvy communication dynamo coordinating a turbocharged marketing engine that powers record growth. Let’s face it — that kind of perfection could be kind of annoying. And out here in the real world, the Ideal CU Marketer doesn’t…
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Fitting in is the future of financial tech
Pardon me just a moment while I don my wizard hat and polish the ol’ crystal ball… yes, the swirling images are getting clearer, the clouds of possibility coalesce… I see… an average, mild-mannered credit union member. She glances at the flexible holo-phone wrapped around her wrist, smiles, taps twice, and continues with what she was doing.…
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Where’s your Master Plan?
Elon Musk, best known as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has a very interesting document on his company’s blog — the second half of his “Master Plan”. He’s achieved or is close to achieving the goals he laid out in the first half of his Master Plan, and he’s now working on the rest.…
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Disruption tattletales
You generally see one of two reactions to any disruption: people who want to find out more and maybe get on board, and what I call “tattletales” — people who want to find any reason the disruption violates some principle or law, and they just want it to go away.
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Widgets, wearables, watches, and things
We’re only in the very early stages of a flood of interesting and cool capabilities enabled by “IoT” devices. Credit unions can be a vital part of the IoT revolution and develop even closer connections to members by making smart choices and sticking to their core principles.
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Drop your pants and dance
After the MAC conference in Las Vegas, my wife and I decided to stay an extra day and see the sights. Among many other weird and wonderful things and people, one of the sights we saw on Fremont Street was this magnificent rendition of cupid. Some people just sit there with a sign and beg, but this…
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What happened in Vegas
Last week, I attended the 2015 MAC Conference in Las Vegas. As always, it was an incredible experience, as you would expect from gathering the best and brightest of the CU marketing field under one roof. The highlight, of course, was collecting two MAC Awards for logos we designed for Park View Federal Credit Union in Harrisonburg,…
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Stop making things so gosh-darn hard
Why were these tasks so onerous? Last night (and early this morning) I helped my wife activate a new cell phone. A couple of weeks ago, I finally signed up for BlueIndy, an electric car sharing service. Last year, we refinanced our mortgage to take advantage of a lower rate. I tried to order a pizza…
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