Onsite: Day 1 at CUES 2012 School of Strategic Marketing

I am spending a few days this week at the CUES School of Strategic Marking in Seattle, WA.  This is the first marketing school for CUES facilitated by Mark Weber and Randy Schultz of Weber Marketing Group.  32 marketers, CEOs and COOs from around the country are taking part in this first week from credit unions of all sizes.

Mark Weber kicked off the school discussing the evolving role of strategic marketing.  Moving the marketing officer to the C suite.  The morning session centered on the perception problems credit unions have in their communities and that their brand is more then a logo.  This hit home with the statistic that 84% of non-members said they don’t think they can join a CU.  Mark stated the brand challenge for CU’s is “What’s a credit union?” and “Why would I join?”

Randy Shultz spoke to the class next on the evolving role of marketing.  From old school ways of doing things to the new school way of marketing being involved in all facets of the credit unions decision making process.

Kelly Schrader from OnPoint Community Credit Union addressed the class throughout the day as a real life case study of strategic marketing in practice. Kelly’s discussions focused on the change in perception of OnPoint over the past decade in her CUs transition from Portland Teachers Credit Union to a community credit union with a much larger range of membership.

Neil Goldman of Goldman Consulting & Strategy also addressed the class throughout the day.  Neil focused on the data.  He talked about how to use data to support the credit unions strategic marketing initiative.  Neil highlighted the evolution and engagement of the marketing team.

The mix of Weber’s concept and strategy, Neil’s data and Kelly’s real world implementation flowed well and had the class engaged in discussion and Q&A through out the day.

Day two will be highlighted by a field trip to the Gates Foundation  At the foundation the class will meet with the brand manager and learn how they have build a global philanthropic brand.  Should be an interesting day two.

Stay tuned.

Randy Smith is the co-founder and publisher of CUinsight.com, your one stop place for all things credit union. As the publisher of CUinsight.com Randy looks for new and innovative ways to spread the credit union message and keep the community informed.  Randy works closely with individual credit unions, leagues and associations on a variety of topics including media relations, business development and strategic planning to get new ideas off the ground. Put simply, Randy likes to create and foster new ideas and watch them grow.  In June of 2012 Randy was named a “CU Times Trailblazer 40 Below”.  Randy has been cited and written for many publications and speaks at industry events to further the growth of the credit union movement.  Randy can be reached at rsmith@cuinsight.com or through Twitter www.twitter.com/CUinsight and Facebook www.facebook.com/CUinsight.