Many thanks to Glen Urban, Professor of Management, Co-Director of the Center for eBusiness@MIT, and Dean Emeritus at MIT’s Sloan Management School. I recently read his latest book Don’t Just Relate … Advocate!, and this interview discusses advocacy, blogs, and credit unions – and it even includes a Jimmy Buffett reference for any Parrotheads out there.

Trey Reeme: Dr. Urban, it’s been almost a year since the book was released and credit unions keep buzzing about it. It made my reading list after I was asked the same question again and again: “Have you read Don’t Just Relate … Advocate!?” I got tired of feeling ashamed that I hadn’t. Now that I have, I realize I shouldn’t have waited so long.

Page after page, I found myself applying your views on advocacy to business blogging. As business blogs have really taken off since the book was published, I wondered, “If the book came out today, would he discuss blogging?”

Glen Urban: I finished the copy in January 2005 and blogs and RSS were taking off. I should have included material on this emerging trend. Obviously today it would have a major section in the book.

Blogging is real evidence of growing customer power and the need for transparency – there are no secrets. Communities have been around, but the impact of blogs and social networks will be the next evolutionary step in customer information power. Definitely would include blogs and new innovations in friends networks and self governing micro communities.

TR: I just had to mention it because Wells Fargo just launched a blog, and many of the companies you discuss in the book (GM and First Tech Credit Union included) are blogging directly with their customers.

GU: I have been working with GM and First Tech and Tom Sargent (CEO) at First Tech is a real innovator in the CU space. He was the first to try trusted advisors for mortgages supplied by Experion Systems (a firm I co-founded to diffuse this innovation). GM has pockets of innovation (Lutz’s blog and the customer advocacy work I describe in my book), but it is a big ship to turn around especially when they are fighting for survival.

TR: You describe advocacy as a mutual dialogue – a partnership between a company and their customers. And you start the book with a rhetorical question: “What would you do if your customers knew everything about your company?” You explain that customers do know everything about a company because they’re empowered by the Internet. Companies can choose either to advocate for their customers or languish in a world that’s already changed.

You explain that credit unions rate very well on an industry trust scale but that they aren’t ranked high in the areas of transparency and providing product comparisons with their competitors. Since writing Don’t Just Relate … Advocate!, have you noticed any improvements by credit unions in these areas?

GU: Credit unions have many strengths (good levels of trust) and weaknesses (slow to innovate, sometimes antiquated boards that are not quick to respond to threats and opportunities, and lack of scale). I am giving a keynote at the NACUSO conference May 17 which will present a full strategic review of CUs.

They face challenges from aging memberships, flat growth, and increasing competition from many directions (even Wal-Mart and H&R Block), so they will have to innovate in new products for the generation X, Y, and Z and segment services for the aging baby boomers. This will require new marketing strategies especially for your generation – word of mouth, communities, blogs, and real advocacy services for customers (e.g. advice on mortgages and also competitive comparisons and customer ratings).

Credit unions have moved to community charters and have lost their employee affinities so they need to be more nimble, innovative and advocate for their customers. CUs need to innovate or suffer slow decline and death.

TR: You’re right – reaching the elusive young adult market is a traditional marketer’s worst nightmare. Personally, if my email address is on a mailing list, I don’t even know it because it won’t find my inbox. I’m not on the Do-Not-Call list because I cancelled my home phone. (Take that, Dallas Morning News subscription-pushers.) I’ve never set foot in one of my own credit union’s branches. Ever. Not even to become a member.

So, what advice can you offer a credit union struggling to connect with someone like me?

GU: This is a challenge even if you have truly transparent and advocate services. Word of mouth is the best way. They need to get their happy customers to spread the word in blogs and friends networks. Some incentives might help, but they would have to be honest and subtle (tell a friend and earn free services??).

A CEO blog would help and your blog is a good info source. PR might help in the right media, but again you may not be reading them. Perhaps a Google sponsored link with an honest advisory service might work “Sponsored link; Credit Unions can give you all the information you need to find a perfect mortgage – even if it is not from them”.

Take a look at Fidelitylabs.com mortgage advisor which is an advocacy service (they even tell you how to negotiate closing costs and give you reasonable fee levels) that is getting a lot of buzz. And Fidelity does not even sell mortgages. They are doing it to build trust in hope of getting more investment clients.

TR: Speaking of innovations in advocacy, what’s in the works for you right now?

GU: I do my research at MIT and right now I am extending the GM advocacy system to a test with a dealer (to get the showroom experience into a genuine transparent experience that build trust), a broadband advocacy advisor for BT in Great Britain (this one morphs to individual cognitive style to help build trust), and a load advisor for Suruga Bank in Japan to look at how trust cues vary across countries.

TR: Bonus question: what business book sits atop your “must-read” list?

GU: I like Freakonomics because of the stress on learning from data, but I would be sure to add a lot of creativity to interpreting the data and its implications.

The last book I read is Jimmy Buffett’s A Salty Piece of Land just to remind us that spontaneity and whimsy have a place in all this.