As I was preparing for a presentation I’m giving this week to the Bank CEO Network, I came across a video posted by The Financial Brand a few months back, called “What is a Brand?”

If you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend watching it. Perhaps more importantly, I’d recommend having your entire bank/credit union’s staff and fellow managers watch the video. It provides a great framework for what a brand is (everything!) and why it’s so important. In other words, it explains CBC’s concept of Proving the Story in a slightly different way.

Why have your staff watch it? Because in my experience, bank and credit union staff members do not understand clearly that the brand is built by everything they do. Instead, they think of the brand as a thematic cosmetic layer over their company. You know, something the marketing department worries about. If this is your staff’s mentality or understanding, you’ve got a problem…no matter how well YOU understand brands, if they don’t, your brand is going nowhere.

Last week, we published our case study on our work rebranding Enterprise Cascadia to Craft3. The work, as usual, was based on CBC’s process and philosophy of Finding, Telling and Proving the Story, and the process took the better part of the entire 2011 year. A couple months into the work, I realized something was special and different about this experience; something that made it better, more enjoyable, and gave me a higher level of confidence that the client was going to be able to truly get the most out of their rebranding experience. Today, as I reflect, I want to share with you the things that I feel were key to the successful partnership Craft3 and CBC developed:

Making CBC a Complete Part of the Team
We’ve been blessed with lots of great clients and relationships over the years, but I have never felt more completely “on the inside” with a client as I did with Craft3. We were invited and asked to participate in internal events, employee retreats, all executive management meetings, board meetings, borrower meetings, and more. I had a login to the Intranet. I developed a personal relationship with several people. When I ran into a Craft3 employee, I knew they saw me as a colleague/co-worker, not an outsider or a consultant.

A Willingness to be Guided Through a Journey
Many companies want help from consultants and agencies so they don’t have to do the things they don’t want to do, or don’t have the skills or bandwidth to do. It’s rarer that a client wants help being guided through a scary and unclear process. Yet brand development (at least the way we do it) is indeed a transformational journey full of both epiphanies and moments of fear. Our job is to shepherd and lead.  Craft3 had faith–even during the scary, uncertain moments–that it had placed itself in good hands and trusted in the process.

Bold Decision Making
There are often two schools of thought and approaches to brand decision making among financial institutions: single-leader decision making or democratic committee-oriented decision making. Craft3 had already developed the leadership and management culture to balance these two extremes well. Everyone–from the newest staff member to the most senior board member–had input and influenced the brand strategy. Everyone’s feedback and opinions were gathered and respected, but ultimately, the leadership team made the tough decisions. And you know what happened? They earned a high level of team buy-in because of the leadership culture they worked so hard to develop.

Understanding that Brand and Culture are Two Sides of the Same Coin
I truly believe that brand and culture are basically the same thing with two different audiences. Because Craft3 was already culture-oriented, it meant that they had laid good groundwork to be more brand-oriented. Plus, Craft3 knew that the brand it was developing wasn’t just about marketing, it had everything to do with how the team conducts itself. In short, Craft3 was pre-wired to understand the importance of BOTH Telling and Proving the Story.

The Bottom Line
At CBC, brand development is an introspective process, and when done right, transforms an organization. It’s about helping our clients get to know themselves better than they ever thought possible and then, better becoming what they truly are. And this can’t happen with an arms-length relationship between client and consultant.

Kudos–and many thanks–to Craft3 for fostering the ideal conditions for an amazing brand.

In a word? Yes. I sure think so. How? Let me explain, in a nutshell:

As you know, branding is more than skin deep. It’s what you stand for. It’s everything you do, from the way your back-office operations work, to the colors you put in your marketing, and everything in between. In other words, it’s your entire business.  If you really want to be innovative in branding, you must go waaaaaay beyond the cosmetic surface, and consider your entire business. And if you want to bring a fresh perspective to analyzing your entire business, you will benefit greatly from having an entrepreneurial mindset.

I believe up-and-coming credit union and bank leaders must learn to think like entrepreneurs.

If you agree with this, or are at least intrigued by it, I offer you two resources…which will then lead you to several more resources!

Credit Union Times Guest Opinion Article:  ”Think Like a Business Owner”
I was recently asked by the Credit Union Times to offer my thoughts on what credit union marketers and business develop professionals should focus on today. My answer: thinking like an entrepreneur. I think you might enjoy the article: check it out –  Guest Opinion: Think Like a Business Owner.

Marketing Association of Credit Unions 2012 Conference Presentation
This topic is also the basis for the keynote presentation I will deliver on June 1 at the 2012 MAC Conference in Seattle.  My “Think Like an Entrepreneur” presentation will explain entrepreneurship and 10 secrets to success thinking like an entrepreneur. You can register for the MAC conference here – 2012 MAC Conference.

I love talking entrepreneurship and financial services innovation, so let me know if you have any thoughts, comments, questions and ideas we can explore.

People who know me personally, know I have an interest in real estate. I think it’s a fascinating game and business. And I can’t help but see parallels between planning the branding for banks and credit unions and planning for the purchase of a piece of real estate.

When you look at real estate for purchase, most buildings have shortcomings that fall into one of two categories: structural or cosmetic. Structural issues are a lot of work–and money–to take care of: fixing a bad foundation, adding supports for an upper story, etc.  Furthermore, they don’t add any value to the property…they just return it to the condition owners and tenants expect it to be in. Cosmetic repairs, though, are great–they are relatively cheap and easy, and make a big difference in the perceived value of the property.

Not many people want to do structural repairs. They’d rather do cosmetic repairs. Why? Because they’re more fun, take less effort, and make you feel good when you’re done.

The problem comes when you have a property that needs BOTH structural and cosmetic repairs. It’s tempting to ignore the costly, un-fun structural repairs and just do the cosmetic work.

But here’s the lesson: the cosmetic repairs are largely irrelevant if the foundation is cracked.  The structural issues must be addressed first, before the cosmetic ones.

The same is true with bank and credit union branding. Many banks and credit unions want a new marketing strategy, brand strategy, or even just a new name, identity or ad campaign (largely cosmetic)…when in reality what they need is to overhaul their foundation (structural).  More literally, a fresh new marketing campaign will have limited impact if the company being marketed does not have a strong, compelling value proposition, or a brand worth engaging in. Such a campaign may create a short-term boost, but it won’t sustain. The foundation (the business strategy, value proposition, etc.) is broken, and since everything is literally built upon that strategy, nothing else matters much until that foundation is fixed.

Take Bank of America, for instance. Shocker: it’s facing serious image problems. See the Advertising Age article I was quoted in from February 5, 2012 (“What Does Bank of America Want From It’s New Agency? A Silver Bullet“ ) and The Financial Brand’s article “Can Advertising Save BofA’s Battered Brand?“ ). The answer to the question in that headline is, emphatically, no way. They have foundational issues first and foremost.

So: are you trying to paint the walls when what you really need is a repaired foundation?

Have you seen the movie Moneyball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah HIll? Or maybe you read the original book by Michael Lewis. If you know the story, then you have experienced a great lesson that applies perfectly to bank and credit union branding…and you probably didn’t even know it.  Here it is, in a nutshell:

Focus on a singular strategy, and care about nothing else. Even when that singular strategy is contrarian.

Remember the scene in the movie, right after Brad Pitt (“Billy Beane”) hires Jonah Hill (“Peter Brand”) and they are sitting in the Oakland A’s conference room with the scouts? The scouts in the room (metaphorically representing the banking industry at large) are focused on the traditional approach to scouting and recruiting: which available players are great at their defensive positions and get lots of runs? Billy introduces a new concept to the scouts, created by Peter: on-base percentage.  Bill proceeds to manage the rest of the meeting by focusing ONLY on that one, singular idea, as they evaluate every player. The only question that matters to Billy and Peter is, “how often does that guy get on base?” The more he gets on base, the more they want him. They could care less about how good he is at his defensive position, how many home runs he hits, etc. Their filter is simple and clear: does he get to first base?

This, of course, angers the traditionally minded, best practices-oriented scouts to no end. They think Billy has lost his mind. But Billy stands his ground and stays true to his commitment to this singular focus. And if you’ve seen the movie or read the book, you know their strategy produces some pretty darn good results.

As a bank or credit union branding and marketing leader, you need to have your singular, focused brand concept tattooed on your brain, to the point where nothing else matters.  When you’re building a brand around being “the _[insert brand concept here]___ bank,” all that matters is finding every possible way to make yourself that _[insert brand concept here]_____ bank. Trying to accomplish other ideals is just a distraction that dilutes your efforts.

This rarely happens in banking, though. Some banks and credit unions successfully determine a brand concept, but it’s just one of several things they are focused on. They want to accomplish their brand position while also being competitive in pricing, convenient, and offer a wide variety of products.  In baseball, the corollary is that the team wants to have great defensive players, who also get lots of runs…and have great stats in every category, too.

Don’t fall into that trap. Pick your one brand concept, and then actively ignore everything else.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association recently released a great info graphic called The Word and the World of Customers:  Word of Mouth Marketing Offline and Online.  Embedded in this nicely designed infographic is a wealth of interesting tidbits that bank and credit union branding and marketing folks will find useful.

For many years, you have heard us at CBC talk about our principles of bank branding. You’ve seen us evangelize word of mouth marketing, highly targeted brand strategies, and unique thinking about a bank’s business model. In other words, we’ve always been a coach, helping our clients implement innovative strategies.

Today, we become not only the coach, but the client as well.

We are really excited to share with you something we’ve been working on for a while. We decided it was time to complement our bank consulting work by demonstrating how a bank could truly use all of the advice and brand strategies we believe so strongly in.

We are pleased to introduce you to Tribed: Banking Experiences for Niche Communities.  Tribed plans to develop an extensive series of small, highly targeted online-only ‘direct’ banks. Why? Because we want to make financial services more relevant to consumers. Our plan is to do this by providing banking member experiences that are tailored to extremely narrowly defined member segments, who share in a particular passion (“tribes”).

As the first example of this concept, today we’ve also launched Wag, a new website aimed at the most avid dog fanatics, at www.dog-bank.com. The website is currently an online publication providing unique content about how personal finance topics intersect with and impact the lifestyle of the fanatical dog lover, and facilitating discussion with community members about these topics.  Ultimately, we plan for Wag’s website to offer complete direct banking services to community members.

I hope you’ll take a few moments to poke around our sites and learn more about our concept. If you have questions, comments, etc., please be sure to share them. You can drop Jeff a line at j@niche-banking.com.

In the world of marketing folks, the phrase “brand consistency” is tossed around. A lot. And as you likely know, it’s usually used to describe things like making sure the PMS colors are the same on all materials. Telling people not to reshape the logo file, and to use the right type faces on certain documents. Making sure people don’t create rogue materials at their branches, that don’t match with what the corporate marketing department churned out.

That’s all well and good. But I’d like to see the conversation shift to a more important and meaningful focus: brand congruency.

Here’s my definition of “brand congruency“: when all the elements and touch points of your brand feel like they were cut from the same cloth.

So how are brand consistency and brand congruency related?

Brand consistency can assist in brand congruency…but cannot achieve brand congruency alone. Brand congruency happens when everything–EVERYTHING–is “on-brand.” When every touch point has been crafted lovingly from a strong, committed bank or credit union brand strategy. When everything you experience from the brand, whether it was created at a branch, by corporate, or an agency, shares the same voice.

Brand consistency is overly simplistic; it’s cosmetic. It says “as long as you followed the graphic standards manual, that’s all that matters,” rather than saying “what’s most important is making sure everything we do feels like it came from the same family.”

Congruency builds strong, experiential financial brands that people can connect with. Consistency alone creates uniform-but-shallow brand marketings.

If you missed the webinar, Brand Engagement: The Holy Grail for Banks and Credit Unions from March 30, 2011, there’s good news: the webinar is available for you to play on-demand thanks to Slideshare. You can listen and watch complete audio and video of the webinar right here.

In “Brand Engagement: The Holy Grail for Banks and Credit Unions” you’ll learn:

• What defines brand engagement
• How it impacts customers, members and employees alike
• Why it is so important
• The benefits it delivers
• How you begin creating it (overview)

Be sure to keep an eye on our Webinars page to learn about upcoming events you can register for.

Apathy = low brand engagement. And apathy about banking brands (including credit unions, of course) is everywhere. All the time. It’s rampant. Find 20 people and I’ll show you 17 who are absolutely indifferent about their financial services provider.

[They may say "yes I'd recommend my bank to a friend," but of course what they mean is "if my friend asked me where I bank, I'd tell them," not "I'd proactively try to recruit my friend to my bank." (More on proactive bank/credit union word of mouth here)]

Why are people apathetic about banking brands? People are apathetic about any brand–whether in the banking industry or not–that is not a tool for helping them shape their identity. As we once discussed at The Financial Brand, brands are tools for consumers to use to define themselves.  In other words, a brand is of no use to me unless it helps me:

• demonstrate what I stand for
• show what I stand against
• reflect my personality
• and otherwise tell you how I want you to think of me

Apathy happens when someone can tell a friend “I am an Acme Community Bank person,” and the statement is met with a blank, expressionless face, as if to say “um, okay, what’s your point?”

Take a strong brand by comparison. When a friend says “I’m an Apple girl,” that tells you something about her. When your new neighbor says “I’m a Harley guy,” that tells you a lot about him. When they say “I’m a Whole Foods kinda person,” that too tells you much about them.

The Conclusion: YOUR strong brand should THEM say a lot about themselves.

What are you gonna do about that?

Does it?