Monthly Archives: October 2008

Fighting poverty through saving – Vancity’s new TV ad.

Jumpstart High Interest Savings AccountLast week, when I spoke at the Partnership Symposium, I talked a little bit about Vancity’s Jumpstart High Interest Savings account.

It’s a high interest savings account (as of this writing it is paying out a very competitive 3% interest rate) that works like any other. Except for one big difference:

Vancity donates a portion of the proceeds to a not-for-profit partner who runs a program called Future Foundations, which gives a 300% savings rate to eligible people who need help paying for:

  • training or education
  • paying for a child’s education
  • starting or expanding a business
  • purchasing housing

Truly amazing stuff.

This week, we launched a slightly edgy TV ad to promote this product. Take a look and let me know what you think…

Get a discount at Finance 2.0.

The Finance 2.0 SummitIn January, I’ll be speaking at Finance 2.0.

I just found out that I can offer my readers a discount. Ten of my readers can get a 15% discount off the regular registration fee of $2,095.00. I was also offered two discounts of 35% each. Normally I would keep the bigger discounts for colleagues at Vancity, but I want to offer them here to readers of my blog.

So if you want a discount, contact me at william |at| azaroff |dot| com and I’ll shoot you the info.

It should be a great conference, with talented and insightful speakers, including:

  • Trey Reeme – Are You a Spider or a Fly? Defining Your Relationship with the Web
  • Ron Shevlin – Why Are We Talking About Finance 2.0 When We Haven’t Figured Out Finance 1.0?
  • Tim McAlpine – Young & Free Alberta: Integrating Marketing & Social Media to Connect with Consumers
  • Ed Terpening – Crashing the Party: Are Financial Institutions Welcomed on the Social Media Scene?
  • Shari Storm – Best Practices in Blogging: How to Maximize the Benefits of This New Medium
  • Morriss Partee – Perfecting Your Palette: Recipes for a Successful Social Marketing Campaign
  • Jeffry Pilcher – Results 2.0: Using Web 2.0 Tools to Achieve Real Business Objectives

Thanks, see you there.

A look back at the Partnership Symposium.

Partnership SymposiumOkay, I really meant to live blog the Partnership Symposium, but I was too engrossed with what was going on to bother. Sorry ’bout that.

I know Andy and Morriss live-blogged some of the sessions, and lots of it was streamed and archived by Brent.

One of the main things I liked about the conference was that Ron Shevlin played host and moderator of the whole thing. I’d never seen that done before – Ron introduced each speaker and then interviewed them about their presentation and moderated a Q&A with the audience. It gave a continuity to the conference which is often lacking.


photo credit: Gene Blishen

He asked one question in particular to many of the speakers I thought was valuable: What CU would this NOT work for?

That one question made the presenters work harder to define what is the strategic value to their topic by defining who it would not be a good fit for. He kept us honest, while being on our side (with one exception, perhaps).

Ron’s main takeaways from the two days were:

  • There are no easy answers – no definitive answers
  • Knowing what to do means knowing who you are as a CU
  • You can’t understand what members and prospects feel unless you are doing the same thing – which means get on Facebook, read blogs, etc…
  • Nothing is more important than engaging with your members

Morriss live blogged my session, and Brent archived the webcast (below).

It was a great time, and I hope to make it back next year.

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV