What women should you watch in 2012 – I mean other than Heidi Klum, Demi Moore, and as always, Angelina Jolie?? Me! I was named one of the Women to Watch in 2012 by CU Times!
I have to admit it really means a lot to me. For several reasons.
#1 – I turn 50 on March 8th.
#2 – I celebrate 32 years in the credit union industry on June 16th
#3 – It says I’m not done…..
This is the kind of achievement you want to show your parents. And as most of you know, both my mom and my dad are gone. So I’m sharing it with you – my credit union family. I’m putting it on my fridge with a gold star! (aka posting it on my blog).
Thank you to those that nominated me and to CU Times’ Myriam DiGiovanni for being so enthusiastic in the interview process.
Here’s the actual photo that was submitted and sadly chopped up for the web page – I was really proud of my hair in this one – so I wanted you to see it all.
Love you guys.
D.
I love it when I hear a company that has had some fun with business titles. No more Marketing Coordinator for CU SWAG (for example) how about Cultivator of Brands.
Then I remembered how YOU can create a new title for yourself that’s fun and easy.
1. Tell me what your favorite Halloween costume was when you were a kid. (This reveals a lot about yourself).
2. What is your current title (your adult costume)?
3. Put the two together.
For example. For Halloween I always dressed up like a Gypsy because I wanted to wear all of my mom’s costume jewelry at one time. Today I am the VP Marketing.
In 2006 Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth wrote:
CEOs regularly announce ambitious growth targets, then fail to achieve them. The reason? Their growing addiction to bad profits. These corporate steroids boost short-term earnings but alienate customers. They undermine growth by creating legions of detractors – customers who complain loudly about the company and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity.
Now that I’m back in marketing as a full-time employee, there’s pressure on me to come up with a snappy tagline for the credit union. It’s a fact that there have been taglines so clever they have boosted sales, enhanced reputations, and found their way into popular culture.
According to that fount of knolwedge Wikipedia “A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and promise of a brand.”
So a tagline is a promise or a rallying cry of sorts.
You remember these gems:
Got Milk?
Just do it.
It’s the Real Thing.
Or how about these classics?
Delta: We’re ready when YOU are.
United Airlines: Fly the Friendly Skies….(insert sound of needle sliding across a record album). What? Wait a minute.
A clever tagline cannot help a bad company? A clever tagline could actually piss people off and be used against you? Hell yes. And that’s why I eschew taglines for credit unions.
This year I had to admit I was pretty impressed with the new Best Buy ads. In fact, if I saw one zipping by as I was TiVoing past these intrusions, I’d stop and back up.
It showed a mom shopping at Best Buy and being so impressed with their seleciton and prices – the clerk made the remark “Santa Claus better watch out.”
Cut to Christmas Eve, Santa’s come down the chimney with his paltry little presents and the smug mom nodding at the Best Buy bounty under the tree would say “Game on Santa.” That’s right – cuz Best Buy is better than you old fat man in your red sweatty suit.
Best Buy ruined Christmas and what little reputation they had left when they advertised free shipping on Black Friday and later said “Oops, we can’t fill most of those orders because the response was so overwhelming, so you’re screwed. Merry Christmas.”
Game Over Best Buy.
Time to review your credit union’s promise. Here are just a few I found:
“Invested in Your Financial Health”
“We’re here for you!” (found at least six examples with one Google search)
“Everything we do, we do for you.”
Are you fulfilling the promise? Or could it be used as a weapon?
I will end with my personal favorite credit union tagline. And yes, they paid an agency to come up with this.
DON’T leave me a cold call email message with your pitch asking ME to call YOU back.
DO – woo me. Send me something fun in the mail.
DON’T schedule a WebEx meeting with me and then bore me with your slides with phrases like “Drive results with highly targeted campaigns that work together seamlessly”
DO get to the point. Speak to me like I’m a friend. Let your guard down a bit. Get off the script.
DON’T call me on your cell phone when you’re making a presentation.
DO call me from your home phone and let me hear your dog barking in the background. Cuz we could bond over that.
I heard of a “policy” today at a credit union (not mine) and it got me thinking about how these crazy rules come to fruition.
Is it a cost savings driving the insanity? Or a lack of trust? Just plain mean? Here are the top five that come to mind as kinda dumb. Feel free to add yours.
1. Not buying a new employee the corporate logo shirt until after they have completed their 90 day (we’re not allowed to call it probationary anymore) waiting period.
2. Not allowing tellers to receive emails except internally. Everyone else in the CU can get external emails.
3. Making new employees wait a year until they can take any paid vacation.
4. Giving more vacation the longer you stay. Here’s why I hate this one. You are usually upper management by the time you earn your 5 weeks and two things happen: 1. you don’t feel like you can take that much time off – nor should you in those positions and 2. you end up forfeiting (losing) many weeks and it makes you bitter.
5. My personal favorite. If a teller is out of balance more than three times in a 30 day period they are fired. That was the policy at my first job.
Credit union marketers are notorious for R & D. Rip off and Duplicate. And I’m proud to say I have done just that in my new job.
Here are the events leading up to my crime. First, a dear friend of mine, one Miss Charlotte Nemec of Spokane Federal Credit Union shared her credit union calendar with me a few years back. I admired it for the entire year. Not knowing I was going to steal the idea someday.
Secondly – I was fortunate to land the most coveted position as VP Marketing for Del Norte CU in Santa Fe freaking New Mexico. Land of Enchantment. 300 days of sunshine a year.
Finally – Dexter. My little puppy, the joy in my life. My child. My boy. And the cutest damn dog on the planet came into my life. I know all pet parents think that – but seriously – have you seen my boy?
And so it happened. And I’m not going to lie to you – the idea came to me when one of my employees said “Members keep asking if we’re ever going to produce a calendar.” We have to do the same calendar that Spokane Fed put out. And I mean we duplicated it to the letter.
We have 110 FTEs. Why do we refer to people as Full Time Equivalents? We need to really re-think that label. I blame accounting. Anyway – I sent an email to all FTEs asking them to submit a photo of their pet. Within a few hours I had over 20 submissions. In two days we had 45 pictures! Each pet owner was then asked to answer the following:
Your pet likes:
Your pet dislikes:
Your pet’s person is: Insert FTE name and title.
We put it to a vote. The top twelve pets made the individual months – and because we wanted to make sure everyone felt like a winner – a collage of all the pets made the cover.
The first annual Del Norte Credit Union Employee Pet Calendar is a huge success. Members are snatching them up by the handful – local businesses want them – it was such a simple and fun idea.
Now here are the rules of R & D:
1. You may only rip off an idea that comes from a credit union that is not in your territory. Spokane and Santa Fe are 1346 miles apart.
2. You must fully acknowledge the creator of the piece you are stealing. Thank you Charlotte Nemec
3. You must share your finished product with the original creator and remind them that “Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.”
The opinions expressed here are not those of Del Norte Credit Union, its management, board or staff. They are solely the thoughts, musings, opinions and occasional rants of Denise Wymore, credit union evangelist and cheerleader for passion and commitment.
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