With the wheels coming off the proverbial Wells Fargo Bank stagecoach after its massive fraud fiasco surfaced, does it open marketing opportunities for credit unions?
That’s a key question marketers are debating.
Some say credit unions should go for it. Others say stay far away from it.
A few marketers, however, contend the Wells Fargo sham can also serve as a wake-up call for credit unions to stop selling like banks do and build a demonstrable brand around the industry’s roots of its people helping people culture.
“I view Wells Fargo as a wake-up call to what is wrong with the financial services industry as a whole, credit unions included,” James Robert Lay, CEO of the Austin, Texas-based marketing firm CU Grow, said. “I might sound like a heretic saying it, but I call it like it is.”
Lay and other marketing professionals have personally met and worked with credit unions that have operated a bit more like Wells Fargo.
“I’ll never forget this,” Lay said. “When we were doing an assessment with one credit union I was sitting across the table from the CEO who felt the path to growth was to, in his words, push products down people’s throats.”
Randomly select any credit union website and one will find its home page primarily dominated by product promotions, gimmicks and superlative marketing clichés, which signal to consumers that cooperatives are not different than commercial banks.
It’s simply not enough to talk about the credit union difference, Matt Purvis, a brand expert based in Eugene, Ore., explained – it must be demonstrated in all interactions with members and nonmembers.
“The single most defining activity to consumers is the sales process,” Purvis said. “If you don’t do that differently, people will sensibly conclude that you’re just another bank.”
Some credit unions, nevertheless, are not selling but helping their members through their financial journey.
Find out who they are and read insights about the great debate over whether the Wells Fargo fiasco opens marketing opportunities for credit unions in the Sept. 28, 2016 print edition of CU Times.
