Credit Union Branding
I’d rather have the dirt shower
If you’re a motorcycle enthusiast, MotoGP weekend is a great time to be in Indy. In case you didn’t know, MotoGP is the premier international motorcycle race series, similar to Formula 1 for cars. MotoGP means the absolute best riders in the world and the absolute latest and greatest in motorcycle technology. And since 2008, one of…
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Marketing is too important to be left to Marketers
Marketing has traditionally been the domain of a few creative people in your organization, whose work is sometimes appreciated (and sometimes tolerated) by the rest of the staff who tend to have no idea what marketing really does all day. Well, nothing against your Marketing Department, but marketing is too important to be left up to just them. And, by the…
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Your brand deserves more than Not Horrible.
As a Creative, you brainstorm, write, rewrite, design, rework, and generally put your heart and soul into your work. You fixate on building your brand to be one-of-a-kind, and have probably spent the last several years telling people how different you are from your competition. You’ve likely spent hours and hours searching for just the right stock photos, and in the end…
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Maybe it’s time to ditch the RFP
Let’s say you have a big, important project, like a website redesign or a brand refresh, and you need to hire a vendor partner. So the thing to do is send out a Request For Proposals (RFP) to every company that you can find, then just sit back, wait for the responses, and pick the…
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Name Change Step #1: Getting the CEO on Board
Whenever an organization thinks about a name change, there are lots of emotions and memories that surface. Sometimes those emotions and memories can even become obstacles. Some are relatively minor and are easy to get around, but others can turn out to be insurmountable — especially when they occur at the highest levels. That’s why one of the first questions we ask our clients…
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Invisible excellence
Last week, I spent a few days motorcycling with some good friends in the beautiful hills of southern Missouri. The Ozarks contain some of the finest riding on the planet — this area is absolutely stuffed with thousands of deliciously sinuous roads. If you’re not a rider, this next bit may seem odd… What impressed us above all else…
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No more lousy CU names
Too many credit union names sound like they were decided by a committee of accountants a long, long, long time ago. In fact, that’s exactly how most of them got their names. Add in the fact that every credit union name has to drag along the words “Credit Union” or “Federal Credit Union”, and you’ll start…
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Can you taste the local difference?
Last week, I noticed a cool new package in the freezer at the grocery store. No-nonsense, retro-yet-high-tech, and irresistible next to the generic plastic bags. Priced only a little bit higher than the generic sweet corn from who-knows-where. What it contained was sweet corn. Indiana bicolor sweet corn. I visited the company’s web site (huskfoods.com),…
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Are my brand colors special enough to trademark?
This weekend my wife asked me to pick up some Excedrin when I went to the store. As I was putting the package in my cart, I realized that the package I picked up didn’t actually say Excedrin on it. It had the exact same color scheme and layout, but a different name. That’s when…
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Brand Loyalists are wimps. Build a Legion of Brand Fanatics.
Sure, Brand Loyalists boost your bottom line, talk about your brand, recommend it to their friends, use it on a daily basis, even teach their kids how to use it. And most companies would be happy to have them. Not me. I think you can do better. I think you can build your own legion of…
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