Monthly Archives: May 2014

CUES School of Strategic Marketing

Effective strategic marketing communicates your credit union’s value, sets your brand apart, improves the member experience, and drives bottom line growth and profitability. It’s time to dial it up.

Join the Credit Union Executives Society (CUES) in Seattle on July 14th for the School of Strategic Marketing, led by Mark Weber, CEO of Weber Marketing Group. This high level two-year program is designed for senior leaders and credit union marketing executives who want to learn the keys to strategy-focused marketing, culture, channel design and branding. Space is absolutely limited and last year’s class filled quickly.

5 Tips for Your Next Branch Transformation Project

The new wave of mobile, social and online banking is reshaping how consumers bank. Their preferences and patterns are shifting forever. Financial institutions are scrambling to define how their traditional teller-focused transactional model will shift – or fade away. But what can you do to set your brand apart from competitors in meaningful and relevant ways to evolve technology and connect with consumers and business audiences?

How ALF increases safety for Delta Airlines

I’m a reasonably nice, somewhat affable, yet often curmudgeonly cynic. 

Yet, I must admit, I laughed out loud during a Delta in-flight safety video. Ridiculous. More surprising than that: I paid attention to all five-minute-and-twenty-two seconds of the FAA mandated content. (Spoiler alert, there are floatation devices stored under your seats!!! I had no idea.)

Photo tour: BECU’s High-Advisory, Teller-Free Banking Branch

Not far from Microsoft, amid Bellevue Washington’s affluent high-tech community, BECU built a flagship branch engineered for advisory, investment, mortgage, and business services.

Beginning early 2013, Weber Marketing Group and architectural partners EHS Design, sat down with one of the country’s leading credit unions, BECU. Together, we searched for answers to some challenging questions: How do we build a facility for the affluent Eastside community? How do we make transactions more efficient while boosting our advisory services? How do we make a statement to the Eastside that this credit union is as sophisticated in its business offerings as any local bank?

10 Months later, we had the answer. This is a photo tour of BECU’s Eastside Financial Center. Together, we’ll take a careful look at the spaces that make this facility so special.

Harnessing our inner child to think more creatively

When my daughter was three I caught her jumping on her bed. When I asked her to stop jumping she replied “Dad, I’m not jumping on the bed! I’m smashing the mattress with my feet.” This was an answer I was not expecting, but I couldn’t argue with her logic. She had a different perspective, one that was arguably more creative than mine.

Everyday, Weber Marketing works with many different financial institutions with unique brands, cultures, and target markets throughout North America. Many of them have similar questions. How do we attract new customers/members? How can we better service our market? What are we not doing that we should be doing? Tackling these challenges creatively requires looking at them from a different perspective.

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Evolution takes courage

Sometimes relying on our history can hinder our best efforts to evolve an established brand. When things aren’t going as well as we’d hoped, when we feel unsure about what to do next, we long for the days when we had momentum working in our favor. It may be tempting to emulate past successes, even though the market has changed. Even though we’ve changed. Evolution takes courage.

Watching JCPenney revert to its pre-2011 logo is like watching an old friend get sucked back into a relationship with the high school quarterback, the guy who still pulls up VHS tapes of past touchdowns when you drop in to say hello. This is obviously a company struggling to find a safe landing, and one that is unsure about its future.

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