Inspiration from the middle
Posted by Brent Dixon on January 25th, 2009
Last week I was in Madison judging CUES’ 2009 Golden Mirror Awards. During the judging, several major trends jumped out. Among them, this:
Across all categories, a lot of small to mid-sized credit unions (less than $700 million in assets) are doing creative work that is head-and-shoulders above that of the big boys.
Why do you think that is?
(PS: Later this week, I’m writing a more in-depth piece for the NEXUS blog about the trends we noticed. Stay tuned.)
The bigger you get the safer you get. Too many cooks have to put their seal of approval on everything which ultimately waters it down.
What Tim said.
If you ask 50 proofreaders to look over a written work, you are going to have 50 different reasons why your work stinks, may be offensive, is hard to understand, etc. It’s sort of the same way with marketing creative. The more people who try to put their hands in it, the less likely it will be unique, memorable, and suitable to meeting your desired objectives. I’m guessing marketers at larger CU’s simply have too many masters to serve…and perhaps a more heterogeneous field of membership.
Bang on Brent.
But to me here is the key with creative work. NO time limit. I know this drives some people nuts but creativity does not do to well in the stopwatch and calendar world. An original idea can move through many variations. You will know when you arrive. The good ideas and creative last a long, long time.
The other point is who knows your business best? Your or an outsider? Others can give you a view from a broader perspective and give you a shot of reality when you are delusional but the lens you view your business from is a key component. Sometimes outsiders discount that component and you end up with the cold porridge look.
I think the key here is that marketing the traditional way can be expensive. billboards, commercials, and promotions can cost an arm and leg and the returns are greatly diminished to where they were a few years ago.
Thus smaller credit unions are forced to look elsewhere for ways to make an impact in the market. These under the radar opportunities are oftentimes cheaper than traditional methods.
CU Warrior has an excellent point about the membership make up. It is much easier to tap into one group of folks that make up your membership.
This could be one huge set back that CUs with community charters would need to think about??
Brent, I think you might this to be true not just in the Credit Union business, but in many businesses. Whether an outside professional brought in to help, or an in-house creative person, there is something about being able to sit directly with the owner of a business, or the president of a CU, and explaining, debating, defending, discussing the marketing goals and ideas and ultimately all walking out of the meeting(s) with unity and support, not compromise and consensus. It’s a lot harder to champion an idea through a maze of meetings and layers of people who then have to channel it through more meetings and layers. So the question, for any organization becomes, “how do we get our best ideas out of people and still maintain some sort of organization structure?” In my view, advertising and marketing should have the same channel to the top that the CFO does.
Creative design is subjective, if that’s what you are judging. ROI is another matter. What’s the market, who is the competition?
Thanks for being a GMA judge, Brent, AND for blogging!
Small can be nimble, eh? Focus helps, too.
Thanks for all of your comments and perspectives. I quoted some of you in my post on the NEXUS blog, which should go live sometime today.
It sounds like the summary of your points are:
Has anyone seen examples of large credit unions that have done a good job of fighting those two potential bumps in the road to growth?
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Tony,
That is a great call. Fortunately, we judged on several criteria: Creativity, production quality, planning, and results. The success of any given campaign or piece played a major role in how many points it received.
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Lisa,
My pleasure! We all had a great time. Thanks for having me.
Brent, You are not the Brent Dixon who went to Purdue University in the 1960s are you? If so, did you live at Chauncey House? Ray Poehlein