Financial branding needs more introspection

March 10, 2011

At CBC, we are known for talking about Finding the Story. Notice the word choice: find. Not “invent” or “create.” For banks and credit unions, the story already exists–it just needs to be uncovered and re-discovered. Many will likely (hopefully) disagree with this, but we strongly believe: Engaging brands are NOT built by conducting market [...]

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CU Times Article on Brand Engagement Features CBC

March 2, 2011

This week, the Credit Union Times published a great article about the important topic of brand engagement, titled Engagement: One Size Doesn’t Fit All. The article featured key insights and commentary by our own Jeff Stephens, as well as Brady Walen of CBC partner firm Market Insights. Author Myriam Digiovanni nicely capturing the key points about [...]

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Free Webinar–Brand Engagement: The Holy Grail for Banks and Credit Unions

February 24, 2011

We’re excited to announce our upcoming webinar, “Brand Engagement: The Holy Grail for Banks and Credit Unions,” scheduled for March 30, 2011 at 10 am Pacific. Overview: Brand engagement is the missing link for most banks and credit unions, preventing them achieving the success they are capable of. While certain companies in other industries have [...]

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How is your business strategy divergent?

February 14, 2011

Grab a group of bank or credit union CEO’s and executives and ask them what they believe makes them different, and you’ll get a lot of impassioned, emphatic (and sincere) rhetoric about customer/member service, great people and commitment to the community.  And what you quickly find is that what makes each of these banks and [...]

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Your brand can’t be engaging…to everyone

February 3, 2011

As a friend of mine likes to give me a hard time about constantly saying, “it’s all about brand engagement.” Yes, we really believe that. As banks and credit unions, we have to give people a reason to care about our brands, or we’re sunk. An important question often arises: “can your brand be engaging [...]

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CBC is looking for great partners

January 31, 2011

As we look back at the last several years in business, and reflect on our best client engagements, most successful results and most fun we’ve had, there’s a common denominator that often arises: great partners. Sure, we’ve done lots of great work without partners, but our work with our partners is always especially fulfilling. With [...]

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Culture: Finding Engaged Employees

January 25, 2011

Finding, developing, and keeping truly engaged employees, of course, is no simple task. You can often hear managers lamenting the challenge, saying things like “some employees just naturally care, and others are just here for the paycheck–we need to find the ones that care about what they do. The real challenge is identifying which category [...]

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How “good customer service” can make you more of a commodity

November 15, 2010

Is providing “good customer service” always good for your brand? Not really–especially as “good customer service” is often defined. I do a good portion of my banking with Umpqua Bank in Portland. In one of my business accounts, I made a stupid mistake and issued a online check to the wrong payee. When I realized [...]

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The “customer experience” is not measurable

October 14, 2010

This post is inspired by my reading of Bank 2.0 by Brett King. Despite the faux-abrasive title of the post, we actually do not disagree with Brett’s points in the book, but rather feel the topic of measuring the customer experience in banking deserves further discussion and clarification. The customer experience is not measurable. But, [...]

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Keeping your specialness all locked up?

October 14, 2010

I was recently reading Inc.com’s article by new columnist Jason Fried of 37Signals, called “Why is Business Writing So Awful?” The main point of the article is to question why so much marketing writing sounds alike from company to company…and why it sounds so darn boring and devoid of meaning. Although Jason wasn’t writing specifically [...]

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