Embrace the poop!

Posted by Tony

December 6, 2007

I haven’t been sleeping much lately. My whole family has a cold, my daughter has a fever and my new son is having a hard time breathing from the congestion. So my daughter wakes up every hour, the boy wakes up every half hour and I never wake up because I never fall asleep. So, this means that my mind tends to wander.

One of the things that popped into my head was when did the color brown get replaced by “Chocolate”? You can’t buy a brown Labrador but you can get chocolate labs by the truckload. No one wants to buy a brown diamond (even though they can spend a ton on pink or black diamonds) but prepare to empty your wallet for a chocolate diamond.

I understand why, some things are so associated with a word that you have to find another way to describe it. Brown has always had a scatological association. I even remember old 2Live Crew lyrics that referenced it in that capacity.

But why do some embrace it and others run from it? What can brown do for you? That’s what UPS asks. UPS put up with all the poop jokes because as long as people were joking about them – they were talking about them. UPS turned a negative into a positive.

Sometimes I get frustrated with euphemisms even though I am forced to use them myself. Sometimes they even seem childish. But it is part of the common lexicon.

So, how does this all come back around to credit unions or marketing or anything even relevant? Mostly this is just an incoherent rant but I will take a shot.

Embrace the poop.

What is going wrong in the CU industry? People are losing their houses, running up credit cards, filing BK and not saving. Today, our President is supposed to let everyone know that they aren’t going to lose their houses to rate hikes (He is instituting a rate freeze or something) and the Fed is saying that they might drop another .25 point. This means people will be refinancing and the investors may jump back into the market.

Now is the time to go hard on re-fis and mortgages. Help those who have bad credit get their financial lives back in order. Hold credit repair classes in your branches. Explain how to use debt consolidation loans and equity loan to repair credit. Get your members (and new potential members) in line to refinance their houses with your credit union. This doesn’t have to be in branch either. You can do 5 o 10-minute video blogs RIGHT ON YOUR HOME PAGE! How about a simple 5-minute video on the 10 ways to repair your credit score? How about “Refinance your home in 6 months with a lower payment”?

The CU/Member relationship goes both ways. Good rates aren’t your only responsibility. Help your members be smarter with their money. You will reap the rewards of their financial growth. It is easy to walk away and say “BAH! What can we do about it? We just need more members!” I would venture to say that it is better to have 5,000 financially strong members who work with their credit union than 10,000 deadbeat, single-service members.

Coming from a family of farmers, I can respect and appreciate the saying “When you are knee deep in poop, grab a shovel and go into the manure business.” I hope this helps a little and I hope to be back to my regular posts soon.