In 1988, a small sporting goods company in the Northwest started thinking carefully about the nature of its business. Through a rebranding initiative, Nike asked itself tough questions like, “What is our value?” “What do we want to mean to the public?” “We’re an athletic shoe company, right?”

With the introduction of a new tagline—Just Do It—Nike turned itself inside-out and changed our understanding of consumer behavior forever. Today, Nike sells its brand, not shoes—and every consumer is invited to create their own meaning of the Nike brand. The result is that their products, commodities much like checking or credit cards, sell themselves. As Nike illustrates, the sales process is counter-intuitive. Sell Your Brand! reveals why selling products is not the most effective path to long-term growth.

Sell Your Brand! participants will be able to:

• Understand the meaning of brand-based business strategies.
• Explore the unique power of brand-based strategies in cooperative business structures.
• Consider the effects of this strategy on:
  • Employee engagement and morale.
  • Organizational focus and cohesiveness.
  • Public understanding and investment in the brand.

Today, even award-winning marketing strategies fail to deliver PFI members when the retail experience doesn’t amplify the credit union’s brand identity, marketing messages and campaign tactics. Marketing Innovators provides a step-by-step process to address these blind spots and align the members’ experience with our mission, messages and promotions. Spearheaded by marketing team, the project teams’ work will strengthen the organizations’ understanding of their brand and deliver immediate “sales” results. Through Marketing Innovators, each credit union will ensure that their growth strategies are leveraged throughout the organization and deliver objective, bottom-line results.

Marketing Innovators participants will be able to:

• Identify, assemble and manage the credit union’s key, cross-functional stakeholders to bridge gaps between brand, marketing campaigns and member experience.
• Speed institutional knowledge and skill using our modern and practical understanding of brand to deliver dramatically stronger marketing ROI.
• Create systems to track and report financial results of these integrated marketing initiatives.
• Celebrate and share success and ensure that the stakeholders understand the source of their success.

Credit unions promise to work for the best interest of their members. At the same time, many are implementing “sales cultures.” As a result, front-line staff is caught in a paradox—sales or relationships? Sales Animation™ resolves this tension by honoring the industry mission, distilling and demonstrating each credit union’s brand, and by rebuilding the intrinsic motivation of credit union staff to do right by the member. Together, these three components make good on our public mission, amplify each credit union’s brand promise and deliver healthy, sustainable growth.

Sales Animation™ participants will be able to:

• Identify the gaps between the “brand promise” and member experience at their organization.
• Explore brand-based, intrinsic motivation and grow this under-utilized source of staff energy and success.
• Develop Brand Behavior™ to capture the essence of the credit unions’ identity.
• Deliver brand-based experiences that meaningfully differentiate their credit union from their competitors.

One of the ground truths of Brand Animation™ is that brand can transform public awareness, understanding and appreciation of credit unions. Accomplishing these objectives fully requires organizations to internalize their brand throughout their operation. Treating your brand this way, as more than public communications, positioning or spin, means building an organization devoted to animating the qualities and values that your organization espouses. Suddenly, the brand is not simply a lofty public promise: your brand can—and should—become an “operating principle” for the entire organization.

Brand in the Back Office participants will be able to:

• Leverage the role of intrinsic motivation among back office staff and maximize this under-utilized source of energy and focus.
• Create Brand Behavior™ to animate the work of back-office staff.
• Build tighter, partner relationships between back office and front-line staff.
• Focus “organizational development” on the precise qualities that define and differentiate your credit union from all other financial retailers.

If the meaning of our brands is largely defined by consumers’ retail experiences, then human resource teams have an indispensable role in helping shape the modern credit union brand! Hiring for Animation™ is a silo buster leveraging the skill and expertise of cross-functional credit union teams for extraordinary retail experiences.

Hiring for Animation™ participants will be able to:

• Expand their understanding and appreciation of our practical definition of brand.
• Raise awareness of the implications of brand on hiring and training practices.
• Initiate industry conversations about the role of human resource teams in building a better differentiated credit union industry.

* Hiring for Animation is currently in development

Motivation, Incentive & Cooperation (MIC) reviews the latest research on the nature of motivation, forms and effects of incentive systems, and the relationship between motivation, incentive and relationship sales. MIC challenges the reflexive tendency of many credit unions to deploy traditional “extrinsic” incentive systems without first maximizing powerful “intrinsic” motivation mechanisms. Over use of extrinsic incentive systems is especially concerning for our industry as it weakens mission-based motivation, undermining the character that can differentiate our unique, cooperative businesses.

Motivation, Incentive & Cooperation participants will be able to:

• Understand the nature and sources of intrinsic motivation.
• Recognize the unique synergy of intrinsic motivation on mission-based organizations.
• Re-evaluate the strategic fit of extrinsic motivation systems.
• Explore the potential of a balanced approach to motivation featuring both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation systems.

The credit union industry deserves wider understanding, appreciation and respect. Charismatic Branding™ applies the lessons of Brand Animation™ to the wider industry, simultaneously shedding light on how individual credit unions can create distinctive, meaningful brand experiences that appeal in these times of distrust. Tailored for a broader audience, Charismatic Branding™ is designed to bring together credit union volunteers and executives of all disciplines around a more effective understanding of brand as “organizing principle.” That means treating our own brands as more than art projects and public communication. Used as a decision-making tool, credit union brands have the power to reveal a vibrant industry, well differentiated organizations and produce passionate member-advocates. Developing the potential of credit unions and the credit union industry means building cooperative-wide understanding of brand as “organizing principle.”

Charismatic Branding™ participants will be able to:

• Understand the limitations of the “art project of brand.”
• Explore the role of physical behavior in differentiating financial retailers in a commodity-based industry.
• Leverage our cooperative structure as a compelling foundation for charismatic brands.
• Address a consumer paradox—dissatisfaction with large financial retailers and lack of understanding of America’s credit union alternative.

Many credit unions are understandably reluctant to take on legislative or regulatory issues. These issues are complicated, fraught with conflict and come wrapped in political partisanship. Wading into the murky waters of “politics” seems unwise. In fact, many of us are raised to avoid political issues at all costs. Politics just isn’t polite conversation! Politics, Policy and the Credit Union Industry (PPCUI) works to break through these biases and reset our understanding of the legislative process and the importance of grass-root credit union advocacy to the future of the industry. Drawing on best practices from active, engaged credit unions, PPCUI removes mystery and fear from the political and legislative process and provides clear steps to build more engaged, involved credit unions.

Politics, Policy and the Credit Union Industry participants will be able to:

• Differentiate between public policy and politics. PPCUI explains how to keep these distinctions clear.
• Steer clear of partisanship and still have the option to endorse candidate for political office.
• Manage these sensitive issues and still advance policy and legislation critical to the health of America’s credit union movement.
• Understand that to win, we have to engage in the process. “Democracy is worst form of government except all the others that have been tried,” Winston Churchill.