Should we be wearing our members’ badges instead?

Young & Free AlbertaI had lunch this week with Tim McAlpine and Gregory Krysa, and we got to talking about the amazing Young & Free Alberta campaign. It occurred to me that they broke a cardinal rule of branding – a broken rule that led to what seems to be a successful campaign.

Normally marketers want consumers to wear their brand as a badge, a la Apple or Volkswagen. Commonwealth Credit Union, who paid for and launched Young & Free “should” have created this as Young & Free Commonwealth, conveying their brand to the youth market in Northern Alberta. But they did the almost unthinkably brilliant – they took on and wore the badge of their consumers instead. By adopting the Young & Free brand, with little mention of the main credit union (and even using youngfreealberta@gmail.com as their email address, and not youngfreealberta@commonwealthcu.net) they let their main CU brand take a back seat to something with a much stronger appeal to the young people they were trying to attract. It’s hard to imagine most companies not putting their brands front and centre, and trying to shoehorn their relevance to their target.

It will be interesting to see if the Commonwealth brand appeals to those young people in Alberta who are signing up for this new product. The follow-up work will be starting to expose these new members to the Commonwealth brand, and show that they can be relevant to them moving forward.

Obviously for most campaigns our brands need to play a leading role, but here’s an example where a company let it play a more subdued role, and it may well pay off for them.

Looking forward to the Partnership Sympiosium.

Partnership Symposium 2008Last October I was unable to attend the Partnership Symposium, a credit union conference sponsored jointly by FORUM Solutions and Trabian. I was greatly disappointed because my peers who were there said it was a highlight of their year.

So I’m very excited to announce that I have been invited to deliver a keynote at this year’s Partnership Symposium. Some of the other amazing speakers already announced include some of my favourite CU peers and thought leaders: Tim McAlpine, Morriss Partee, Robbie Wright and Gene Blishen (with more to follow I’m sure).

I have proposed the following as my topic, and I’d love feedback from you on this. Does it sound interesting? Am I missing anything at a high level?

Engaging with the Social Economy
A growing segment of the economy is being driven by social decision-making. Credit unions play a natural key role in this shift, both as community-focused organizations and as holders of significant consumer assets. This presentation will include examples of the emerging social economy, as well as a case study of ChangeEverything.ca, a social network created by Vancity which speaks to the values the largest credit union in Canada shares with the community it serves.

UPDATE (Feb 4, 2008): Ron Shevlin was just added to the lineup in a very interesting way:

Ron Shevlin will serve as the host for the 2008 Partnership Symposium. He will spend time with each presenter following their session to ask a couple of questions and engage the audience in asking their questions. This is an interactive conference and Ron will help ensure that everyone takes part!

I’m nervous and excited to work with Ron in this way. He’s tough, but all in search of making us better, more rigourous marketers.

An interview with me in CU Management Magazine.

One Credit Union's Web 2.0 StrategyI was interviewed by Diane Franklin several weeks back for an article in CU Management Magazine’s upcoming issue. The article, entitled Web 2.0: High Tech, High Touch focuses on what a credit union board should know about social media.

We had a great interview, addressing many different topics, and I guess it was enough material for a whole other piece, titled One Credit Union’s Web 2.0 Strategy. It’s a good take on Vancity and why we launched ChangeEverything.ca.

Take a look…