CUHype.com makes it to the “Top”!
I just found out yesterday that CUHype.com was given a spot on the Alltop Marketing Blog!
For those of you who do not know, Alltop is the newest project from serial entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.
Ok, you might not know Guy Kawasaki. He started with Apple way back before LCD monitors and iPods. Then he grew into a small business kingpin with books like “The art of the start” and blogs like “How to change the world“. Now he is a Venture Capitalist who gives start-ups the funding to get smart projects off and running. So, now he has a project called Alltop.
Alltop is a list of the “Best of the web” in a variety of subjects. That’s why we are honored to be included in the ranks! We appreciate the vote of confidence and hope that the folks, who stop by here, throw some support to Alltop. It is a very cool site to find the best stuff out there on the web.
It also wouldn’t hurt to check out Guy’s personal blog and read up on him, he is a smart guy and really has something to offer those of you with an entrepreneurial spirit and drive.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Why is your credit union website so ugly?
You know who you are. You had your site designed 5, 6 or 7 years ago. It was designed for an 800 pixel wide screen, or even worse, 640×480.You may not even know that your “drop-down” menu systems (if you even have one) don’t work on the new browsers because your IT department won’t let you upgrade your browser past Internet Explorer 6.0.
Now IE is on the way out as the primary browser platform. With the popularity of Apple, Safari and Firefox have new life as prominent web browsers (Internet Explorer makes up less than 40% of my site visitors). Do you even know what your site looks like in different browsers?I am not going to point out any particular credit union as having a bad web site – but here is a checklist to find out how bad your site may be and if you need a redesign:
- You do not have drop down or a hierarchical menu system.
- Your NCUA logo is big enough for you to read the small type in the logo – or – the NCUA logo is almost as big as your credit union logo.
- 25% of the text on your home page is disclosures or disclaimers.
- Your home page content is comprised of only graphics or banners
- You have a flash animated “Intro Page”
- Your site has “Frames”
- If the main window of your credit union’s home page is a few bullet points of copy with no real message, valuable information or marketing purpose.
- You have a “What’s Hot” button in your primary navigation.
- You have less than 3 designated marketing areas on your web site.
- You have a “Portal” site
- You have a clock, weather conditions or hit counter on your site.
- You have animated dancing animals on your credit union website.
- Your site has no analytic software running to capture user activity.
- Your design is more than 7 years old.
- Your web site graphics consists of “Bright and Shiny People” (Thanks Denise)
- You have to scroll (vertically or horizontally) - (Thanks Denise)
- You do not show up on a Google search, anywhere, even under your for your credit union name! (Thanks Denise)
- Your Site is not achieving its objectives (or you have none to begin with - Thanks Ron)
If you have more than 2 of these things, you need to bring it up to the CEO or board at the next meeting. If you have 4 or more, then you need to get your site into emergency care STAT!
But why is this important? A website is a website right?
Popularity: 12% [?]
Friday Fun - Is all press good press?
I know I have been out of the fray a little. Between preparing for MAC and Twitter and a bunch of new projects, I am afraid the blog has been neglected. Hopefully this story will bring a little smile and like a dozen roses, allow you to forgive me for my absence. A few weeks ago the Office of Government Commerce in England unveiled their new logo.
Clean, simple and easily recognized in a FBI or IRS fashion. They printed the logo on everything for their big reveal. Mugs, pens, shirts and mousepads.
Ahhhh the mousepads. Some got ahold of a mousepad (I presume) and tossed it on the desk allowing them to see the logo from a new perspective.
Wait, what the heck is that? Yep, the logo that the British government just spent 14,000 Pounds on, when looked at from the side, appears to be a person… well…. I will let you see.
This reminds me of the WTF Credit Union name change a little while ago (wish I had a shirt - maybe I will make one for kicks.) It also reminds me of being in high school when it was the thing to do to get an “THE IN AND OUT BURGER” bumper sticker and take a razor to it to make it say “THE IN AND OUT URGE”
Now don’t hold this against me.I am not the first to notice this. Ok, maybe it was a little much to draw in the face, I will give you that. But this story is making the rounds in the UK.
I just thought it would be a fun way to end the week and to make sure you know how your logo may be represented when you arent looking. Dont forget to get a good look at that new logo. Spin it around. Show it to your kids and see if they giggle. You never know when you might end up with one of these looking at you in the news —–>.
Popularity: 16% [?]
Free content for your credit union blog!
The Federal Trade Commission has released three videos to illustrate how folks try to phish you for your personal information.
While they aren’t passing around the videos for use, please feel free to use the graphic I clipped
from their site (I think that’s legal right?). Just drag thisgraphic to your desktop or click the image with your right mouse button and select “Save image to desktop” and there you go.
Then link the image to http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/multimedia/video/ogol/phishing/index.shtml and you are done. This information may seem a little goofy but people are still
falling for these phishing scams.
Popularity: 31% [?]
Enough already! Credit union blogging is not for everbody!
Anyone who reads credit union blogs, likely reads OpenSourceCU. Yesterday they had a comment that said:
If I hear one more vendor referring to their social media clique members using terms like “cool kids” or “big brains”, I am going to puke. Just take a look around at some of the posts on this site and the sites of active contributors to see what I am talking about.
Instead of talking about results, folks here seem to like to feed each others egos about how “cool”, “innovative”, “creative” and “smart” they obviously are. Of course, only these “big brains” get it and do not need validation of some payback and getting together to pontificate is more than enough.
Please, please, please quit breaking your arms patting each other on the backs and focus on the results that can and has been achieved by credit unions using social media. It’s really not about any of you; it’s about making credit unions more competitive and able to differentiate themselves in a very competitive market.
This post is not really about the barcamps, which may be very cool and worthwhile, and is more about accountability and getting real stuff done.
Wow, so I wont bore you with my response. You can read it here.
As I was driving home from the agency, I tried to wrap my noodle around the three big questions that are constantly asked pertaining to getting a blog started at the CU level.
- Has a CU blog ever been effective in creating membership?
- What is the typical CU blog ROI?
- How does a CU protect itself from exposure?
So, lets tackle some of these big bad questions.
Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 48% [?]
What makes a great credit union logo?
There are five critical elements that can be seen in every great logo design:
- It must be describable
- It must be memorable
- It must be effective in black and white (and at low resolutions – say on a fax)
- It must be scalable (this means it will work well on pens or other swag)
- It should never include a photo or raster image (yes, never)
The first elements points are a little obvious, because if you can’t describe what a logo looks like then how will you be able to remember it?
Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 51% [?]
How To: What to do when your CU gets Blogjacked
Look, I am no lawyer, and if you get blogjacked, a lawyer is likely to be your sidekick in your blog crime-fighting adventure. I am merely an assistant, a learned advisor, even a friendly guy at the gas station offering you directions.
Consider me Q to your James Bond. Maybe even the Obi Wan to your Luke Skywalker.
So, young Jedi, your credit union blog has been hijacked, spoofed, phished or blogjacked. Whatever the term du jour, the fact is, someone is pretending to be you and it is trashing your brand and putting your members in jeopardy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 61% [?]
Friday Fun - Marketing in a foreign tongue
Cracking an international market or non-english speaking demographic is a goal of most growing corporations (and credit unions). It shouldn’t be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example…
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” came out as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”
Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “eat your fingers off.”
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, “Salem - Feeling Free,” got translated in the Japanese market into “Whensmoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty.”
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that “no va” means “it won’t go.” After the company figured out why it wasn’t selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.
Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for”tiny male genitals”. Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse.
When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” However, the company’s mistakenly thought the spanish word “embarazar” meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that “It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of the desired “I Saw the Pope” in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed “I Saw the Potato.”
Chicken-man Frank Perdue’s slogan, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained “It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused.”
Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”
Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick,” a curling iron, into German only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the “manure stick”.
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.
When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read English.
Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means “big breasts.” In this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.
Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno mag.
In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.
Japan’s second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it entered English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name.
and finally…
In an effort to boost orange juice sales in predominantly continental breakfast eating England, a campaign was devised to extoll the drink’s eye-opening, pick-me-up qualities. Hence, the slogan, “Orange juice. It gets your pecker up.”
Popularity: 51% [?]
Another credit union blogjacking victim
At first I thought that Arizona Federal Credit Union had decided to “Go Blog” in the worst possible way. What the heck was I looking at? What credit union in their right mind would put google ads on their blog?
Ahhh, yeah. I looked at the URL.
While the blog was called the Arizona Federal Credit Union Blog – it was not. It was a focusfinal.com spoofed or “Blogjacked” blog with Arizona Federal’s name slapped across the top.
Now, some may not understand why someone would go through the trouble to set this up. Simple. It’s for the dough baby.
See, the site is flooded with Google ads. The content (text) of the blog itself is full is scraped from PR websites and newspaper websites all about AFCU. Now I won’t bore you with how this is accomplished technically, but it is relatively simple. It is full of keywords and phrases because of this and in the search strings I have tried – ranks right below the CU’s banking site.
I tried:
- “Arizona IDSafeChoice Plus “ and it came up as the 3rd site. Two positions below the AFCU site.
- “AZFCU Rates “ and it came up as the 3rd site. Two positions below the AFCU site.
- “AZFCU credit union “ and it came up as the 4th site. Three positions below the AFCU site.
See how much this can hurt your brand?
Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 71% [?]
A credit union member who gives until it hurts.
You may have heard this story. But, in case you haven’t in Bremerton, Washington, a credit union member was making a deposit into her local ATM and gave until it hurt.
A female member “allegedly” dropped an envelope containing her deposit and a bag of meth at a Kitsap Credit Union. She was arrested and charged with drug possession later on.
Now here is an interesting part of the story. The AP, when reporting this story wrote the following; “A bank employee reported the deposit to police, who contacted the 18- year-old customer. Officers said she might have mistakenly included the bag when she got money out of her pocket for the deposit.”
The “Bank”? The “Customer”?
See, I have been saying that most outside of the CU world don’t know the difference between a bank and a CU. Not even the educated staff at the Associate Press. So much for proofing and verifying facts.
Popularity: 58% [?]
