02/24/2008

Speaking at CUES Execu/Summit and we need your help.

By Tim McAlpine

On Wednesday, March 5, 2008, Larissa Walkiw and myself will be co-presenting a full-day session at the CUES Execu/Summit at Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The session is entitled How to Engage Gen Y on Their Own Terms and here is the official description.

"Currency Marketing is in the middle of a wonderful social media experiment with Alberta's Common Wealth Credit Union. To promote Common Wealth Credit Union's new Young and Free account to Alberta's 17 to 25 crowd, Currency has created an integrated marketing program centered around the www.youngfreealberta.com microsite. The thrust of the program is finding and hiring a spokesperson from Gen Y to represent the product, the credit union and their generation."

Don't tell Christopher Stevenson from CUES, but I have a secret agenda and I need your help brainstorming some ideas. In early January, I was a guest blogger on Open Source CU with the post Who's In Charge of This Stuff? The point I attempted to make is that credit unions will not fully embrace social media unless the ROI can be proven and the top credit union brass can wrap their heads around it by actually participating in it.
 

We will definitely touch on Web 2.0, Generation Y, user-generated content, the idea of letting others be co-authors of your brand and, of course, we'll discuss Young & Free in detail.

But here's the thing: Larissa and I have the top credit union brass captive for four and half hours! I really think we can make some headway and turn some credit union leaders' minds onto social media by actually creating some user-generated content on the fly.

The session is broken into two parts: two hours in the early-morning prior to the attendees skiing and then two and a half hours after they come in from skiing.

Here's what we have at our disposal:

1. Two presenters who will be spelling each other off
2. Two computers
3. Two video cameras
4. An Internet connection (I hope)
5. Six hours between the two sessions (to edit video or...)
6. The assistance of the credit union blog-o-sphere (if you are game)

How should we best use our time? Write your ideas in the comments.

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Comments

1) Jeff Hardin @ Feb 25, 2008
http://www.cucommunicator.wordpress.com

Tim -

From what I've gathered, each phase of the campaign has generated quite a bit of earned media. I think that's one of the quantifiable successes of the early part of the campaign, and one that CEOS would like to hear more about.

When Larissa got six minutes on a morning show to discuss her video, that was simply awesome! I can never remember another CU getting anything close to that in a single segment (unless they were paying for the time).

Seems to me that putting some clips together of the finalists & Larissa's TV and other media appearances would be something a CEO would want to see. It would definitely show the amount of local excitement and "buzz" this has generated.

Also, quantifying the approximate $$ amount of the earned media and the total media impressions that the campaign has made would be a strong element to add.

It amazes me that when you drill this down, we're talking about a checking account that's being pitched by a 19-year-old. Amazing!

Be sure to upload clips of the presentation! :)

2) Andy LaFlamme @ Feb 25, 2008
http://theculoop.blogspot.com

If you are looking to create some media on the fly, why not take some video of the attendees skiing or video from the first session, edit it during the break and post it live to YouTube or some other media site live during the second session. Could be a great demo of how easy it is to create content and quickly get it broadcast to the world.

3) Tony Mannor @ Feb 25, 2008
http://cuhype.com

Tim,

You can draw comparisons on price of a modest Social Media campaign and a brand awareness campaign using direct mail.

With social media, you can track page impressions, unique visitors, returning visitors, profile views, comments and subscriptions to name a few. There is no quantifyable data with direct mail that comes close to that depth. Yet, they will throw $40,000 at postage and printing and will not spend $4,000 on a decent blog.

But, first you have to define the basic subsections of what social media is. I would (and will at MAC this year) start with explaining the myspace and facebook platforms and what they are and do - and their limitations and risks.

Then I would introduce blogging, social news, content driven sites and custom social media backbone applications like Drupal and such. This way they know that is is a small investment and some of the cool things they can do.

I would probably close with specific examples of success stories. I would mention that we have a new NBC show starting this year called Quaterlife that is basically "Lonelygirl15" turned into a tvshow. This will educate the population on blogging (the way Doogie Howser MD educated people on computer journals and being an adorable teenage doctor).

As blogging invades the lexicon, people will become more involved in the proccess. They can step up or step out.

4) Tim McAlpine @ Feb 25, 2008

@Jeff - absolutely. We will be detailing the PR coverage and unpaid value and we have lots of great video to feature. You're right - this is just a checking account for goodness sakes!

@Andy - this is exactly the type of thing that I am thinking about. Ideally, I would love to have mini-interviews happening with the crowd as we present. My ultimate question is what the heck should we ask people to make the video interesting and useful?

@Tony - we will definitely go over social media 101 and thanks for your suggestions.

5) Tony Mannor @ Feb 25, 2008
http://cuhype.com

Tim, after reading Andy's post it made me thing of vlogging using your cell phone.

Ask someone a question, allow them to answer and send it to a vlogging site to post on a microsite/blog for the event. You could also include the twitter app - allow some of your twitter friends access so that they can comment on the videos as they are posted - all live.

I am sure no one here would say anything to hurt you or your presentation.

You could also go through the process of setting up a blog from scratch. Have larrissa or some other helper create the site while you talk and describe all the bits and pieces. I can get a blog up and running with the first post in half an hour - as I am sure that you can. (I would practice this and have all your plugins set up in advance).

Also touch on the Google alerts and analytic information they provide free of charge.

Just some other ideas.

6) Credit Union Warrior @ Feb 25, 2008
http://creditunionwarrior.blogspot.com

One of my favorite things about social media is its ability to humanize an organization (see the Y&F bloopers from Jeff Mulligan and Verity's Our Voices). I think it would be neat show the power of these neat tools by quickly producing two, quick videos. In the first, you can ask 10-15 attendees (privately) to tell their favorite joke on camera (clean, obviously). You can ask the same 10-15 attendees a controversial open-ended question (What is your take on credit union to bank conversions? How does overdraft privilege fit into the credit union philosophy? Something like that.) Produce the two videos, and put them on YouTube and Twitter. We can then Tweet, blog, etc. about what we see in the two videos.

I think the end result will be startling. The joke video will humanize the participating execs by showing their personality. The controversial topic video will display their analytical side. The viewer feedback will show how powerful Web 2.0 really is.

I could see you up there saying, "Mr. Green, Morriss Partee says he thought your joke was hilarious, but possibly a little inappropriate." "Mrs. Swinson, Gene Blishen wonders how you can use the phrase 'grow or go away' in a not-for-profit, service oriented industry. Aside from basic sustainability, quality of service should be our top priority." "Mrs. Swinson, Ron Shevlin says business is business. If you are growing assets and increasing membership, that means you're succeeding. What better metric do you want?"

Maybe a dumb idea, I don't know.

7) Ginny Brady @ Feb 26, 2008
http://www.theboardcast.net

Tim, I don't have much credit union service organization savy. Are CUES and CUNA in direct competition? Interesting that the GAC and the CUES Executive Summit are running at the same time. Anyway, I'll be at GAC and will be using, Twitter, blogging, You Tube and facebook to give regular updates. If you do something with Twitter I'd be glad to be involved - this could show the "on location" aspect of social media.

8) Matt Fagala @ Feb 26, 2008
http://mfagala.blogspot.com

I really like Andy and Warriors ideas on the videos/interviews and using Twitter. A couple interview question ideas:

What is the most disruptive technology/service you see impacting CU's?

What do Credit Unions need to do to survive in today's day and age?

9) Tim McAlpine @ Feb 27, 2008

Thanks so much for putting so much energy into your ideas. I will keep you all posted on Twitter! And if you have other ideas, keep posting them here.

10) Roger Conant @ Feb 27, 2008
http://hermoney.blogspot.com/

Just can’t keep quiet any longer. We’ve been monitoring the Y & F campaign since it first appeared on your blog. And I have to say that it affirms everything we have been thinking and saying for several years now. When I saw the interview with Larissa on Breakfast TV…I just knew she would be “the one”. Let me say it a little louder. Dig deeper into X and Y and I believe you will find that “women” (young) will drive growth in the future. W DOES precede X & Y, you know.

A close look at on-going Internet studies from the Pew Internet & American Life Project seems to affirm this also. Check out the very recent articles at NYTIMES.com titled “Sorry, Boys, This is our domain”. That builds on an article last December about the same study titled Girl Power is in Full Force Online.

And Tim…thanks so much for posting Her Money on your “favourite blogs”. You and Shari Storm are the only ones to do that so far and we appreciate it. I’m looking forward to meeting you some day very soon. Stay tuned!

11) David Inverarity @ Mar 05, 2008
http://del.icio.us.com/s1l0_david

Morning all. This sounds all too perfect an op to not jump in. I have been lurking in the CU blogosphere long-enough and thought I would drop 17 cents on this.

@Tim, we will be meeting in TO in April I hope when I speak with Gene on some of this material, and I am actually basing most of my discussion on how to get internal buy-in with the new tools we all know, love and use (on here!)

The live social 'remix' (if I may be so bold as to tag this experiment) is something that can be a powerful display of immediacy and also control. These two concepts fall at contrasting ends of the continuum sure, but in my experience, it is these two that really confuse the brass. I actually "recommended" for my CEO to post on your "Who owns this stuff?" post that kick-started another round of my rabble-rousing, and more one-on-one sit-downs. I am fortunate that I have resources, time and some senior support, but it is all about timing with us going through some big changes (as you know I am sure)

My one idea that could possibly add to this would be to leverage a 2.0 (blecch!) ap in the video sharing/editing category like jumpcut to show the power of the web as platform, versus solely as a nu-communication medium. The one thing I have a hard time explaining without running into disconnect, is the question of the software as service model, what the "deal" is with open source, and how is the new web a platform and "what do you mean I can have a word processor online?"-crowd.

@roger - look at Morgan Webb, look at Command-N...my fave podcasts have the gals in the seat, and your references added fuel to the fire I knew was being discussed somewhere on this issue.

I will be online, albeit dialed in yes from my "lab" (home office) on the lake today but would love to help. I have finally started to garner acceptance of me getting my big ideas and quick synapses out there...and so it begins. (I set up a twitter account and upset a lot of my Scandinavian crew but Jaiku was wearing on me)

One last idea would be to show how a geographically separated team work and collab on projects in ad-hoc "extreme"-style ways. I introduced basecamp to the marketing folk when I joined the team over a year ago and they never looked back. There are tons of ops to show a rock solid proj. management ap that has a ton of management tools (time tracking stands out for these managerial types like a broken thumb!)

A wiki here, a wiki there...time is the issue now but I will be tweeting as much as possible.

*say hi to Larissa from the Ontarian who had to point out the humour of a certain survey on youngandfree when using an ancient IE in the office (screen cap if you didn't see it) but also a point of how the crowd can come to the rescue of old broken browsers and unexpected css rendering!

**the coup de gras if I was on a fat pipe rather than a thin wire today would be for me to grab out the old iSight, set it up to go show the iphone getting tweeted and tweeting and later showing the video you cut up while I do my dishes or something else productive in the real world.

12) FaySpears35 @ Mar 29, 2010
http://www.lowest-rate-loans.com

If you're in uncomfortable position and have got no money to go out from that, you would require to take the business loans. Just because that would aid you definitely. I get short term loan every single year and feel great because of this.

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