Cat and dog marketing: Don’t do it!

by: Bo McDonald

Quick! Think fast—what is the first word that comes to mind when you see the following?

Yes—

Black—

Hot—

Salt—

Cat—

For 99.9% of you, your answers were No, White, Cold, Pepper, and Dog. What else could you choose?

That’s the problem…associations such as our cat and your dog are often how credit union marketing (and, really, marketing in general) goes today. We take the most obvious angle for one of two reasons: It’s either safe or it’s easy. Or it is both. There’s really nothing wrong with either path; they’re just obvious, common and predictable.

We can do cat & dog marketing in our sleep. It doesn’t cost much and it feels safe but it won’t make any waves.

We need auto loans. So we whip out the stock photo of the lady with the pretty smile, dangling a set of keys out of a car window and we wait.

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