What’s in a Name?

Group Health Credit Union announced today that they are changing their name to Salal CU. Salal is a plant indigenous to the Northwest and has been used for medicinal purposes. It’s a hearty little shrub that can grow in almost any conditions. By definition I can see why they would choose this name – but it’s hard to say, even for a native Northwesterner. It’s not very melodic. And after a couple of martinis, fuhgettaboutit.

I heard somewhere that when you name a child or a pet you should test it by yelling it from your front porch. “Here Muffin Head!” “Cleatus, time for dinner!” Are you okay with yelling that out loud? Does it feel silly? Is it too long? Is it hard to spit out?  I think CU namers should adopt this practice.

“I’m going to Salal to deposit my paycheck!” Hmmmm……

Salal CU logo  (on left)

Real Salal (below)

Happy New Year!

I just woke up. Last night I partied like it was the 20th anniversary of 1999. Oh wait, it was. Welcome to the year 2020.

Time to make my new year’s resolutions. I’ll be 58 this year. That weird age when you’re not quite “old” but certainly showing many signs of knocking on that door. Let’s see what’s going on in the world. Grab my iPhone off the night stand and because of my blurry old vision I point it at the ceiling to reveal my 3-D iKnow panel. The menu displays the categories I’ve set up.

Forecasts:

My Financial – Mark signed us up for this one. It not only shows us the broad view of the US economy – national debt, strength of the dollar, etc. But it also shows – and I hate this – our own personal worth on that given day based on previous years’ expenditures, my spending habits, seasonal changes in utility usage, etc. Yuk. It’s a subtle reminder that I need to turn off lights when I leave the room. Sure, he put in those motion detector halogen lights, but you can’t dim them without clapping your hands – so they had to go.

My Hood– This channel shows me everything that you can do, see, eat, attempt in the Columbia River Gorge this week-end. Festivals, wine events, hiking conditions. My favorite channel. It’s good to have goals.

So enough about me.

Now I need to see how my people are doing. So I click on….

My Community – When I first signed up for this, it was like Google Alert on steroids. But like Pandora, this program logged my preferences and started to refine the searches – I’m clearly only interested in things that pertain to loyalty economics and overall reputation of the credit union industry. I’ve created my own funny little symbol for the overall health of the movement. It’s a wine glass – red of course – and today it’s half full!

My Diversion – I’ve heard that there are still a handful of people living in the country that have giant satellite dishes that bring them classic old television from countries like Germany and Canada. That Coca Cola and GM still pay agencies to develop commercials that interrupt the shows. These are the same people that still had rotary dial phones in the 90s.  American network television completely shut down last year.

Everything now is literally “pay per view.” I am in control. In fact, I’m going to submit my script for Modern Family tonight and see if I can get on the iPhone voting for next week. There’s a group of writers that formed on InYourFace-Book recently that has stayed on top for a month! That’s okay – cuz the show is still fantastic. The best thing yet on my iWatch pad.