Tinker's Buck the Norm is great and so is this video!

By Tim McAlpine

I have been following Oklahoma's Tinker Federal Credit Union and its Buck the Norm Generation Y promotion for awhile now and I am very impressed.

The good

• Awesome name and URL. Anything that makes you giggle because it almost sounds like a swear word gets the thumbs up.
• Speaking of thumbs, I love the thumb characters and the spirit and energy throughout.
• The look and feel is top notch.
• The Buck the Norm videos are very high quality. They have a cool vibe and a memorable point of view.
• The site is packed with useful financial resources. The depth and variety of financial content and tools is the best that I have seen.
• The Buckie and Knuckles comic strip is fun and on theme.
• The use of seasonal, themed challenge contests is great. Tinker is currently running a "My Money Mistake" $2,000 scholarship video challenge. The great part is how tightly defined the challenge is right down to what props must be used. From an applicant's point of view, this really makes it easy to get involved and also improves the quality and relevance of the applications.

Question marks for me

• No Tinker logo. There is only a subtle link near the bottom of the page to the sponsor credit union. I am all for creating a separate destination site, but the lack of any corporate tie in is confusing to me.
• I couldn't find any links on the corporate website to Buck the Norm. Tinker is missing a big opportunity to drive traffic and interest to this initiative.
• There is a blog-like section on the home page, but you can only get to older posts by subscribing in a blog reader (at least I couldn't figure it out).
• Although there is a great contest going on, I couldn't find any of the entries or any commentary on how it is going on the Buck the Norm site. After some poking around, I found a bunch of great video entries on YouTube. It's too bad there is nothing on the Buck the Norm site. This may change when the contest enters the public voting phase, but in the meantime, this seems like a missed opportunity.
• Tinker is potentially missing out on product sales and attracting new members through Buck the Norm. Although there is a product page, it only includes descriptions of typical products young people should consider, but there are no specific offers or even links back to products on the corporate site.

My criticisms are very minor. Overall, I give Buck the Norm very high marks. It is great to see another credit union stepping up and doing its part to become relevant to the next generation of members.

And finally, this YouTube video contest entry is ridiculous

And by ridiculous, I mean outrageously phenomenal.

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Comments

1) lori newton @ Feb 05, 2009
http://ljnewton.wordpress.com/

Your comments are dead on, but I do really love the concept and the video is really, really good in an oddly geeky cool way. What a laugh.

2) Kristyn Moore @ Feb 19, 2009
http://kristynmoore.com

Please check out my video and vote. I may be biased, but I think it's one of the best... :)

http://www.loser.com (redirect)

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