Diving back in
Posted by Trey Reeme on August 11th, 2008
For the greater part of this last year, I’ve stayed off the grid. It was tough keeping my mouth shut because – well – being quiet for more than three seconds at a time isn’t in my nature.
When I stepped away from Open Source CU in December, my new boss gave me one task: make young adults love our CU.
In January, Tim and I began talking about bringing the Young & Free brand to the US. After seeing the ins and outs of Common Wealth’s campaign, I knew it would translate well to the goal I was given on day one. But for the past eight months, we’ve kept our lips sealed.
Today, Young & Free Texas launched.
Bringing social media into a great big financial institution has given me even more respect for what pioneers like William, Shari, Ed Terpening, Ginny, Matt Davis, et al have accomplished. For starters, I’ve had real meetings with real attorneys. Lordy bagordie.
Beyond that, most of your coworkers don’t get “blog” – but they do get conversation.
I’m as fired up today about Young & Free’s potential for sparking conversation in Texas as I was when I helped introduce Young & Free Alberta at last year’s Symposium with Tim.
One factor in Common Wealth’s success has been the use of traditional marketing (i.e. offline) to support the online side of their campaign. IMHO, it’s where many companies fail, never seeing significant returns on their social media campaigns.
Too many dip their toes in the water and turn away, towel in hand to walk back up the beach and to the car. Backing up social media with a juggernaut of real world media is crucial.
It’s good to be back and, as of today, soaked.
Trey, I have a bit stupid grin on my face over here. Nice to see you back about. Congrats on the Y&F! Looking forward to seeing everything you’re working down there!
Holla, Ferg! Thanks man – we’re launching our new member-facing site in about a month so between this and that, I’m not getting bored!
Congratulations on the launch of the campaign! I hope TDECU can recognize the same stellar results that Common Wealth has seen with their own campaign.
I’ll be interested to see who emerges as the spokesperson and all of the other entrants.
It seemed a bit strange to me that you had left Open Source CU and Trabian to take a job with an actual credit union, but it looks like you are having a great time and loving every minute of it.
Here’s to the success of Y&F’s first foray into the US!
This site looks great. We’ll have to share “war stories” at Finovate or Finance 2.0, one of the two! Hope to meet you soon.
So in those lawyer meetings, you finally got to address the burning question, “What if one person on Young & Free Texas kills another member on Young & Free Texas?”
I like William’s response to this question the best: “That could happen in one of our lobbies.”
Glad you are out of the quiet period, break a leg on Y&F Texas, and I’ll be watching the spokester contest!
Trey;
Congratulations to TDECU and welcome to the ever expanding Young & Free family.
We wish you the same success that we have had at Common Wealth. Our hope is that this might become the best example of CU collaboration across all of North America!
Can wait to see how the search turns out!
Let me know if we can help in anyway with your launch!
Cheers!
Trey, when I first saw the announcement of Y&F Texas, I had to punch up my brain a little to remember which CU had become your post-Trabian home. And then I realized that it had to be TDECU, because this has your fingerprints all over it. :-)
Good luck with the program … I’m sure I speak for a lot of people ‘round these parts when I say “We’ll be watching!”
Can’t wait to see who comes up as the winning spokesperson – I’m betting you’ll get some very interesting applicants from Austin.
Congratulations on a great launch – and welcome back to the world of the talkers!
I have to ask: How can you spend money on Y&F when your credit union’s web site is so lame. I do not even see a good way to contact someone through the site!
Great post Trey. It’s so great to have Young & Free Texas live! Just in time, since you are all over 12seconds.tv these days. I’m sure it was only a matter of time before you let it slip.
Seriously though, TDECU, with you at the head of this project, has been great to work with. Now the fun stuff starts!
First: I’ll echo everyone else and say congrats to Trey and Tim on the launch. I can’t wait to see how it plays out.
And I’m doubly excited to have Trey step back into his OSCU britches. They’re a nice pair of britches.
Second: Loren, I’ll jump in and vouch that Trey is working on a completely revamped website for TDECU. From what I’ve heard, it’s going to be a rock star of a site. We’ll stay tuned.
Thanks ya’ll (I can say ya’ll again now that I’m a Texan)!
Loren, great call actually – we’re definitely fixing that. Have been working on that project as well since day one of my arrival and helped build a brand new ecommerce department here to tackle it.
Hi Trey. Looking at your post of last January, your site looks like an exact lift of the Alberta Y&F site http://www.youngfreealberta.com. all the way down to the layout, graphics and spokesperson contest. Are there any differences between the original Alberta launch and yours and if so, what are they?
One more question for you Trey. You mentioned the importance of traditional media for the Alberta launch. Are you yourself pushing for allocation of traditional media budget to do this for YOUR Texas launch? Correct me if I’m wrong but my sense is this is quite a statement coming from a guy who has pretty consistently lambasted the use of traditional media (often with a “holier than thou” attitude echoed from the “regulars” here) so I’m interested to hear how your attitude, and more importantly, your ACTIONS, may have changed now that it is you that is sitting in the marketing chair making real world decisions! Please, I don’t fault you for it, I’m actually glad to see some (long overdue) acknowledgement as to the continued value of traditional media and the fact that together, traditional and new media can partner to bring marketing success to organizations. What say you?
@edsteenman: Good call noticing the similarities bt YFTX and Alberta. We licensed Young & Free from them. Thus, it’s part of the same larger campaign. Don’t really know how to respond to your second comment, though. I seem to recall always having said that traditional marketing isn’t dead – it just has to remain relevant. And social media + traditional marketing is a killer combination if both are indeed compelling.
Since Trey wrote this post, I’m sure you guys are all very much up to date on this!
But!!!
If you guys haven’t been watching, I’m one of the contestants for the Young and Free Texas competition!
Feel free to mosey on over to http://www.youngfreetexas.com and leave a comment on my video, or one of the other competing videos (if it strikes our fancy)
Right on, DeAndre’
Thank you for your response, Trey.
Good to know that you LICENSED the creative work of another individual or company, and publicly acknowledge them as the creator.
Perhaps my second question got lost in the post – so – here it is again “Are YOU YOURSELF pushing for allocation of traditional media budget to do this for YOUR Texas launch?” In English- “are you planning to buy advertising to support your Y&TF launch?” If so, what?
Friends!
If you have’t had an oppurtunity to keep up with the spokesperson competition, they’ve narrowed down the top three and I made the shortlist!
If you have a few moments, head on over to www.youngfreetexas.com, see what all three of us have to offer, and cast a vote!
DeAndre’, you’re a machine. My vote has been cast.