Doing The Right Thing: The New Competitive Advantage for Credit Unions

In the coming months, as we shift from crisis mode to our “new normal,” companies will no doubt be hungry to start selling again. But what about our appetite as consumers?

Becky Smith, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer of SECU Credit Union, joins us to talk about how her team is focusing its marketing efforts during this time of need. She shares what they are doing to help members, employees, and their broader community; why it’s important to pay attention to members’ evolving emotional states; and how focusing on impact and doing the right thing can become the new competitive advantage for credit unions.

Key takeaways

1. Credit unions can break down impact into three buckets: employees (make them feel valued, attuned to their needs, and safe), members (help them deal with uncertainty and let them know that you are there for them), and your community (build community health to help ensure the health of your members and employees).
2. Think beyond loans and bring the cooperative principle of “people helping people” to life. SECU is providing grants to their members in $500 amounts if they can show that they have a significant hardship due to the pandemic. They are also letting their members who have the means contribute to the fund that makes these grants; these member contributions are matched by the credit union.
3. Look at the current crisis in three-month segments. The longer-term future is too hard to forecast.
4. Financial consultations are more important now than ever. The most important thing is to help members get ahead of tough situations and help them to see options that they didn’t know about before.
5. Right now, doing the right thing and making a difference can become a competitive advantage. Marketing today should be more about thanking people than about lead generation.

Read the full transcript:

Cameron:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Remarkable Credit Union podcast. We created our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about community impact, technology, and marketing. Each episode we bring on expert guests from inside and outside of the industry for conversations about innovation. Now more than ever, our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual and provide you with actional takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative, and magnify your positive impact in the community.

Cameron:
Today’s big question. How can credit unions balance the heart and the head so they do the best thing for their members, employees, and community while balancing the short-term and longterm financial health of all parties? Today I’m very excited to welcome Becky Smith, the executive vice president, chief strategy and marketing officer of SECU. SECU is a credit union based in Maryland, which just did a very impressive thing I learned about. They just did a big rebrand and realizing that right now, I always give the dates right now because we’re in the midst of a pandemic, so on April 14th, 2020 just in the last little bit they finished their rebrand and they realized it wasn’t the right time to roll it out externally. So they did a really amazing surprise and delight moment where they redid the entire corporate office and brand over the weekend, and the whole team got to show up and see that. And even more impressively, despite being trapped in doors for the last month with her two and four-year-old small children, Becky has said they are still the big passion and highlight of her personal world. Becky, thanks for joining us.

Becky Smith:
Thanks for having me Cameron.

Cameron:
So we’ve had some good preliminary conversations. And I had a chance to review a lot of the work that you guys have been putting out there. And you guys have stated that you’re focused on three key areas, the three key pillars of your cooperative; supporting members, supporting employees, and supporting the community. Community being broken down into healthcare workers, childcare and education, and nonprofit organizations. So I’d love to know how have you guys in the midst of all the chaos arrived at these specific areas of focus and what you’re going to be doing for each of them?

Becky Smith:
Sure. So those really are three core stakeholders to our business’ success. So we’re really here to create exceptional experiences for our members. We’re constantly thinking of ways, as you mentioned in the intro, to surprise and delight our employees as well. And then as we think about our community, I mean really at the end of the day, this is what makes credit unions maybe different from other financial institutions, is that we’re here to service the communities, and do it with passion. So for us, those three categories really were no brainers. We’ve got a lot of different plans almost, if you will, for those different categories, which we can certainly dig into. But at a very high level for employees right now, it’s all about making them feel valued, making sure that we’re communicating with them, staying in tune with what their needs are, and keeping them safe. For the members, it’s about financial relief. There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. We want to be that trusted advisor. We want to be there for our members in a time when they need us most. So giving them the financial relief options that they’re looking for. But also going above and beyond. And we can talk a little bit later about some of the grant programs we’re putting together for them.

Becky Smith:
And then as it relates to community, our community really is Maryland as a whole. So when we’re thinking about what can we do to give back during this time, we really thought about, okay, there’s three buckets that we want to focus on. Healthcare, because that’s certainly an industry right now that’s being taxed incredibly hard right now. Childcare, because a lot of our members have childcare needs right now that were unexpected. So however we can support that, whether it’s food, meal offerings, or childcare offsetting expenses for those that are essential workers. And then nonprofits are giving back to the community in a big way right now. So those were the three different buckets that we’ve ended up on.

Cameron:
Well, I’d love to hear more. You just alluded to it, to the decision to offer some grants. So I’d love to hear how did you decide how much to give away? How did you decide how to prioritize among the different groups?

Becky Smith:
Yes. So the grants in particular. So we’ve got two different types of grants right now. Right now we’ve got grants that are going to our members to help offset some of their financial burden and some that are going to nonprofits. So the first piece around members, what we were seeing was as this was unfolding, this pandemic, and we were starting to listen into what our members were telling us, what a lot of financial institutions started with is how can we relieve their financial burdens right now? So what can we do from a loan payment deferrals standpoint, or a skip-a-pay for their credit cards? We’ve put all of those functions in place so that we can give some relief to members there. We also added a relief loan option so that members could apply for a loan that had long terms and low interest rates.

Becky Smith:
But what we were seeing was a fair amount of members weren’t qualifying even for the relief loan. So we felt like there was a gap. So what we decided to do was launch some grants to our members. We put an application up for members to apply for, talk to us about what their needs are, then how they were negatively impacted by COVID-19. And we evaluate those. And we’re offering $500 grants. We’ve committed up to $200000 in these grants. And part of that we’re giving up front. So we’ve committed off the bat $100000. And what we’ve said to our member base is we will match up to another $100000 of what they donate. So in total it could be $300000 that we’re giving back to our members in the form of $500 grants.

Becky Smith:
And I think your question around how do we come up with that number. Incredibly lengthy discussions on our end. We had to balance what was a sizable amount to make an impact in somebody’s life. $100 doesn’t feel as significant as 500 does. But we also wanted to balance that with spreading it to as many members as we can. So that’s where we really ended up with $500 so that we hopefully can give up to 600 of those grants over the coming month.

Cameron:
I understand how difficult it is to figure out what the appropriate amount is. How’d you guys balance? Did you have really strict criteria for these grants? Do you have a lot of discretion into individual people in the credit union? Is it based on credit, or length of relationship, or repayment history? How do you balance all the different factors that might go into someone’s state of need right now?

Becky Smith:
Yeah. That’s a great question. And probably the toughest part about launching this grant program is how do you determine one person’s need is more significant than another’s? So what we did really and in conjunction talking with our legal counsel on what’s fair and how can we be as consistent as possible, is we’ve come up with a criteria forum around really weighted towards what impact this particular crisis had on our members’ financial situation. So we’re trying to weed out those that, and rightly or wrongly, but those that may have been in a tough situation prior to this. But for us, this was really about solving for this pandemic that nobody really could see coming and what we can do to help offset some of those unexpected costs that have just popped up that created some unanticipated hardships.

Becky Smith:
So our criteria is really around what are you going to be… how has this pandemic influenced your life in a negative way? What would you be using this money for? And in fact, our application actually has a place to upload the bill, or cost, or invoice, or something that indicates that they do actually have an expense, whether that’s childcare, or their mortgage payment, or some type of utility. We wanted to make sure that there was some kind of proof that there was an outstanding dollar owed somewhere. And certainly, we teased out those that have a CQ loan. So we’re not, we’re not allowing those to use this grant to pay off their CQ mortgage. Certainly we want to avoid any conflicts of interest. So that’s how we’re doing it. It’s really trying to figure out those that were impacted directly as a result of this pandemic and how we can help with that.

Cameron:
It’s so interesting trying to tease out what effective even means because you’ve got first order, second order, and third order of consequences that are all seem to be changing almost everyday.

Becky Smith:
Absolutely. And you know, as a credit union in general, we are here to serve the community. We’re here to serve our members. And so our hearts, like the theme of this podcast is, it’s this balance of our heart and our mind. And trying to figure out how to do as much as we possibly can, but within some constraints because certainly we can’t give grants to every single person in need. But where we find that there’s a significant need and we’re able to help, we’re really trying to. And that’s part of the reason that we’ve engaged our member base to say, “You can help too. If you’re in a position right now to help others,” this is an opportunity for them to do so.

Becky Smith:
And we’ve seen some really great success. We’ve launched the grand program just over a week ago. We have almost $16000 just donated from our membership base and we see that continuing to increase every day. So hopefully we’ll continue to see that upward trajectory and we can continue to give more.

Cameron:
That was exactly my next question. That’s fantastic. You’ve had such strong uptake from your members as far as helping each other. Because I think that’s a really interesting framing of people helping people, which we hear all the time inside of the union space, of course. But I usually hear it from the people helping people and that first people refers to employees and the second people refer to members. And I think facilitating that true cooperative structure is really innovative and really powerful. Now, what would happen if you guys saw that it was oversubscribed, there was so much commitment from your membership base? Would you guys consider expanding the amount of money in your matching fund?

Becky Smith:
Yes. I think we would. And we’ve talked about that too. We were a little apprehensive asking our members for anything during this time just because it’s hard to count other people’s dollars. And we certainly didn’t want to make it feel as though anybody was obligated to do anything. So we were curious to see what the receptivity would be from our membership base. But we were overwhelmed with people wanting to help and everything from a dollar to $1000 we’ve had from a member. And these are… It’s giving to a credit union, not knowing necessarily what member’s pocket is going to fall into. It’s just wanting to help the cooperative, which is really exciting. So as we see those numbers tick up, if we see it get past that $100000-mark, which we agreed to match too, I absolutely think we’ll reevaluate and see if we can stretch our dollars a little bit too. Certainly we don’t want to tamper any giving that we’re getting from our members.

Cameron:
Yeah. Such a great program. It’s definitely one of things I have not heard yet of anyone else doing. And I love the relevance I guess, and the directness of bringing the cooperative model to life. I’m curious about, you talked about stepping a little bit tentatively into something new. And it’s certainly been on my mind as well of we do a lot of company giving here at Pixel Spoke. We actually are deferring our bonus plan. It’s basically an annual bonus plan, but normally we pay out installments throughout each quarter throughout the year. We’ve suspended that. We’ve said we’ll still pay it out at the end of the year, but we’re not going to do short-term payments. But we think we’re still going to do our company giving. And it’s a really interesting similar tension.

Cameron:
And I’m curious to hear… So brief story. Early on in my career, probably four years into my career, we did not work with credit unions at all at that point. So these are mostly small businesses. And I went to some presentation or read a book and heard about moments of delight and the whole idea of someone starts working with you, you should have like a gift basket or some chocolates or something that shows up and it shows that you have that human connection and you care. And it just felt great to me. I loved the idea. And I remember generally people loved it. We still do it.

Cameron:
But I remember this one woman, she came in for the kickoff meeting and she was a little bit dour. And I think at some point the account manager was like, “Hey. So did you get the gift basket? Just wanted to make sure.” And she was like, “Yep, I got to gift basket.” And we’re like, “Okay.” Like normally there’s some excitement, appreciation. And we just said, “Well, we hope you liked it.” And she’s like, she just side and she said, “It’s hard to get excited about a gift basket that I paid for.” And I remember thinking like, “Well, of course you didn’t pay for it.” She just looked at me like maybe a little patronizingly, but maybe completely accurate. And she said, “Cameron, someone’s always paying for the gift basket.” And I was like, “All right.”

Cameron:
So I’m curious, how have you guys thought about this really fine line to walk when you have needs from your employees, from your members, and from your community, and that you don’t want any one party but I would say especially the members to be saying, “Hey, isn’t this neat? You’re doing all this stuff for your employees while I’m in excruciating financial pain.”

Becky Smith:
It is certainly a balancing act. And one could say the same from our employee base too. Certainly they want to make sure that they’re taken care of financially as well when they see all of that we’re doing for our members and our community. So we hear it from every angle. And really just trying to find that right balance of how can we impact everybody in an equal way? But how do we prioritize certain groups? Certainly our members are at the core of everything we do. They are shareholders in the cooperative. So we really started with the members in mind and said, “Okay. Let’s start with what we can do to help them in the short-term and then potentially a little bit longer-term.”

Becky Smith:
So we started with, like I said, those relief loans, the payment deferrals, and do everything we possibly can for our members from a financial perspective. Clearly we can’t get them a job or do other things that they may be impacted by now, like help them with their health care obviously. But where we could have an impact with our members, we started there and the grants et cetera. But then we also recognize our members, if we also hear help our community and we’ve been hearing from our strategic partners, and some of them are large hospitals in the area, and who needs support, who need masks, who need other meals and things for the nurses. And we said if we can help the community as well in turn, that should also help our membership base. In turn, that should also help our employees.

Becky Smith:
So we’re hoping there’s a little bit of overlap. Although we did set aside equal sums of money for our employees and our members in the community, we’re hoping that just by the work that we’re doing in the community will help ultimately both our employees and our members. And the work that we do with our employees will help give the members a better experience. So overlaps a little bit, but certainly there’s no easy answer and we can’t please everybody. Back to the head and heart challenge, it’s we want to do everything for everyone, but we can’t. So what’s the fairest, most pragmatic way we can think about this? And we’re learning as we go.

Cameron:
It’s a good example as well. And I think also in times like these, going back to our purpose and values. Because yeah, as you said, there’s always going to be someone who’s disgruntled and if it’s aligned with our core purpose and our core values, then we can feel good about moving forward with the best as we can in difficult times.

Cameron:
I’d love to hear a little more about some of the specific products. We talked about this a little bit already as far as hardship relief loans and payment deferrals and skip-a-pay. I think I mentioned this too earlier. You know, we have one client, actually a couple of clients I should say several clients who’ve done immediately rolled out things like skip-a-pay and got lots of positive PR on social media or other channels. But they had some degree of concern in that there are things that are good for the short-term financial health of a member, but that might actually increase the total debt load. And some point additional borrowing actually just allows people to avoid really painful cost-cutting that they’re going to have to do, which obviously it can just dig a deeper hole for them when they finally get to that point.

Cameron:
So how are you guys thinking about this? Another very delicate balance between the short-term versus medium or longterm impact on members?

Becky Smith:
It’s interesting because we’re now at five weeks into this new normal-ish of in the first several weeks, almost month really, we’re really focused around what are the immediate needs and the addressing the problems that are right in front of our members right then. That financial anxiety that they have. So the immediate things that we did were very similar, I’m sure to what many other financial institutions did. We did the skip-a-pay program for credit cards. We did offered loan deferments. So deferrals on payments so that they can push those payments out or just skip them. We also offered obviously the relief loan.

Becky Smith:
But now that we are almost five weeks-six weeks into this, now we’re just starting to shift into, what next? If we have a member that we’re deferring a loan payment for three months, when that three months is up, do we really think that they’re going to be in a better financial situation in three months than they are today? Probably not.

Becky Smith:
So right now we’re thinking about how can we… I hate to use the word creative. You don’t typically like the financial world. But how can we think outside the box around what we can do after that three months is up? And so we’re kicking around ideas like could we go three months on, three months off from a payments perspective with our members until they get into a better financial place. We don’t have all of the answers today. But there are certainly live discussions. And also thinking about the benefits of loan payment deferrals versus forbearances. And with forbearances, once the period is over, all that money is owed in one lump sum. And we just don’t necessarily believe that’s the best option. Because if you don’t have the money today, you probably won’t have all of that money in one lump sum at the end of your forbearance period.

Becky Smith:
So we’re really trying to counsel our members on getting ahead of any financial crisis that they’re in. So not to wait until they’re about to be laid on a loan payment or default on a loan. But to get ahead of it and think if you’re going to be in a tough situation, maybe you ought to defer for three months and we can revisit it when that three month period is up and see do we need to modify the loan? Like what can we do? But we’re taking it in these three to six months chunks, if you will. But you’re right. It’s how do you balance the immediate needs versus the longterm? Because if you look or watch the news at any given day, it doesn’t look as though the economy is going to recover overnight. So we’re going to be hearing this anxiety I think for the foreseeable future. And we want to make sure that we’re prepared to help in the long-term, not just the short-term fixes.

Cameron:
Yeah, I agree. It does not look like whatever it is at the bottom of this current public health and economic crisis does not look like a trampoline to me. I think the hopes that everything will just magically shoot back up to the way it was before is a very optimistic perspective on the economy. One of the things I really appreciate is that you guys are really focusing on financial consultation. So the products matter a lot. And product innovation, like the grants, hardship relief loans are incredibly important at times like these. And the nature… I always think there’s this balance between the products that are offered, and the general solutions that are prescribed, and the reality that everyone’s situation is unique and individual and personal.

Cameron:
So I’d love to hear what do your financial consultations look like today? Have you moved to mostly phone or video? And how does helping members today look different than six months ago?

Becky Smith:
I think from a financial consultation standpoint, it’s interesting. Because we do track member sentiment. So when we have conversations with members, when they call into our call center those calls are recorded. And we’re looking at what’s the feeling that we’re getting from those types of calls. And what we’ve seen is this interesting, almost emotional change curve of member consultations that we were having a couple of weeks into this pandemic was really giving us sadness and confusion sentiment, and now we’ve shifted into fear and worry. So we’re looking at what’s the general sentiment of our member, and how can we help to show empathy and work with those distressed members in the best possible way? Most of the time it’s talking through what their options are.

Becky Smith:
So like you said, every situation is unique. A lot of times they’re looking for just what do I have at my disposal right now from a financial standpoint? And that’s what the consultations are looking like right now. I hate to use the word consultation over and over, but it really is less transactional right now and really about what can we do to help them during this time, and maybe making them look at their finances in a slightly different way or more intensely than maybe they have over the past six months or so. We don’t have the ability today at CQ to do video consultations. Although this pandemic has really reinforced the need for us to have that functionality. So that’s something that we are working on feverishly right now to launch that capability.

Becky Smith:
So a lot of our consultations are happening over the phone right now. Sometimes through other channels like chat or email, but we’re trying to avoid as many in-person appointments in the branches as possible just to help with our members safety and also our employee safety as well.

Cameron:
I’m a big believer in every time you have a big challenge that’s actually at the heart of that lies your biggest opportunity. And I mean this obviously holistically, I don’t mean this to be cold-blooded of how do you guys increase fee income or something like that. That’s not what I mean in this case. But I’d love to know what opportunities do you see coming out of this current situation for your members, for your community, from a business model standpoint. What do you see out there?

Becky Smith:
I totally agree with you. I think moments like this, this chaos that we’re in can help sometimes force a little bit of clarity around where your future lies, or where your issues are. Right now what we’re doing is using this as an opportunity to take a hard look at of all of the services that we offer to our members, and which of those services can be done in different channels. So that was a big learning curve for us to say we keep pushing people to digital channels, but our members are still wanting to come into the branches. Why is that? Do we not have the right digital experience for some of these services? Do we just not offer these services in another channel?

Becky Smith:
So I think for us the opportunity is going to be to continue to understand the parts of our members’ digital experience, what works well, what doesn’t. And really find more ways to get our members comfortable using other channels. So in an environment like today, while I know everyone talks about digital transformation in the banking industry that’s been taking place over the last 10 years, there are still a large population of members that like to go in, to a branch. So we’ve got an opportunity here now that that option isn’t really on the table right now to help educate our members more, and also take a hard look at what we’re offering. Maybe we’re not meeting their needs in a digital way.

Becky Smith:
So hopefully coming out of this pandemic, we can start to figure out how we service our members in the most efficient way moving forward. And again, just trying to find additional ways to educate our members to adopt other channels. There’s a reason that they haven’t done it today. So what are those reasons and how can we help them with that change curve?

Cameron:
Building on that, I think digital transformation, yes. It’s been a buzzword for quite awhile and I think it’s… I remember one of our clients who’s a CEO of a credit union here in Portland, Oregon was telling me that… I was like, “What have you been learning?” And he’s like, “Well, members who refuse to do a variety of things like say remote deposit capture or online banking, are learning how and they actually are willing to do it right now.” So I liked that, and that excites me and I see a lot of opportunity there. But I also wonder, this was a question asked on a call I was on just before our podcast, which was if we’re forced to serve people digitally right now, what can we do to serve the most vulnerable of our members who will have all sorts of limitations compared to maybe the median person in your market in Maryland?

Becky Smith:
Yeah. I think that’s a great question. Because when we talk about this digital adoption, it assumes that members have internet access, which isn’t always the case or have a cell phone capabilities that allow you to do mobile banking, which isn’t always the case. So for us it’s really going to be about opening up enough channels to continue to serve, like you said, the most vulnerable members. And if that means through phone conversations, then we’ll do it through phone conversations. We still are providing appointment-only options in our branches for those that really need it. So for seniors we’ve carved out additional hours. We’re opening our branches early every day for senior citizens that are more vulnerable in general from both the health scare, but also are also can be a little bit more limited on their digital usage or understanding. So we are carving out extra time for them in our branches and a safer environment where we can still meet their needs too.

Becky Smith:
So digital while it’s going to be a big part, I think of the new normal of banking. It can’t be the only part. Because as you said, not everybody is tuned into that channel.

Cameron:
Yeah. They got a little bit of egg on their face here in Portland, Oregon. The public schools sent a survey out via email asking people about their IT technology capabilities. And of course missing the obvious point that if you don’t have access to email or you only checked email in libraries, places that are closed, you’re not going to be a very helpful survey.

Becky Smith:
That’s exactly right. In fact, one of the things that we wanted to do originally when we were doing some of our community initiatives was could we donate some iPads to kids that are at home that don’t have a way to learn from home through a computer or an iPad, but have to do the virtual learning? We learn talking to the public school systems is that the iPads only going to help you if you have the internet to support the iPads. And so there is a lot of thinking through this that what might be normal for you and I isn’t the case for everyone. So it’s really trying to keep everybody in our line of sight right now.

Cameron:
That was a great point. I will say a quick plug though, there’s an organization doing this here that Pixel Spoke has been participating in where there is a lot of need from what we’ve heard, at least in Portland, but I imagine it’s throughout the country for people who are trying to do distance learning, students who don’t have technology. And so we donated some old laptops that we had. And I think there’s similar efforts going around, as you said, that may not be the entire piece of the puzzle. But there are some people who may have access, but they don’t have the right technology.

Becky Smith:
That’s great.

Cameron:
I mean, anyway, there’s so many great ideas and so much opportunity. I’d love to know this is such a big and rapidly changing topic. You talked about Becky, that you have been in meetings every day for the last five-plus weeks trying to get your hands around this and making sure that you guys are adapting and staying in front of it. I know I’ve had a similar experience where we’ve switched the company to doing much of our work on like an agile model. And we have daily huddles just for the coronavirus just to make sure that we’re staying ahead of this or at least doing our best.

Cameron:
What do you think that folks are not talking about that we should be talking about? There’s obviously dominant conversations or themes that I see ripple around the credit union space. But do you think there’s like a topic that everyone’s just for whatever reason, avoiding or not giving the priority that it needs?

Becky Smith:
That’s an interesting question. I think there’s still a question mark in my mind around small business support. Certainly the SBA has a paycheck protection program out there right now for small businesses that they’ve recently launched. And that will help. But I think the question around what else can be done for small businesses, and how can financial institutions continue to support them. Because they really are the backbone of the community. That’s the puzzle piece that I think we’ve got to still figure out how it fits. And certainly, again, there’s been a lot of efforts that have been helping from a national level, but at the micro level there’s a lot of smaller initiatives, restaurants helping other restaurants, and people helping other small businesses.

Becky Smith:
But from a financial institution standpoint, I think there needs to be greater discussion around what are we going to do to help our small businesses during this time. Because that’s what really impacts the communities within which we live. So that’s a big piece. I think while your question was what are we not talking about, I think people are talking about it. I just don’t think we have the solutions quite yet for that audience.

Cameron:
Yep. All right. We’re in a serious time and these are serious conversations. But I always like to do some rapid fire questions at the end that are a little bit more lighthearted. And pleasure of meeting you for the first time last Friday.

Becky Smith:
Sure.

Cameron:
But I feel like I can roll with it. All right. I’d love to know to start out, if you could have dinner with one historical person, who would it be?

Becky Smith:
Nelson Mandela. I don’t know if he’s historical because he just passed away fairly recently. But he’s somebody that is one of my idols and I’m pretty fascinated by everything he’s been through.

Cameron:
That’s a great answer. I was actually, believe it or not, in South Africa when he passed away. It was just like a complete societal… I’ve never seen that degree of society-wide love and engagement for obvious reason.

Becky Smith:
That’s pretty incredible.

Cameron:
Yeah. All right. I’d love to know what is the best advice you’ve ever received? Can’t say anything I’ve told you. That’s the only restriction.

Becky Smith:
Oh, this is really a tough one. So it’s rapid fire. I don’t necessarily know if this is the best advice. But one piece of advice that my mom always used to stress us as kids, which I find myself saying to kids too, which is boredom is a choice. And that can be taken in so many different ways in your life. As a small child, of course you complain that you’re bored. But the whole idea that there really isn’t a whole lot of excuses for complaining about things. That you really have a lot of the power within yourself. So I parlay that into a lot of different ways into my life.

Cameron:
All right. What’s your favorite word, Becky?

Becky Smith:
Happy.

Cameron:
Great word. If you could have a different career, different alternate life story, which career would you have?

Becky Smith:
I just like to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Something that deals with how people think and why people think, and what caused people to react certain ways.

Cameron:
All right. And lastly, and most importantly, what is your favorite ice cream?

Becky Smith:
Mint chocolate chip.

Cameron:
All right. So I’d love to do our final take. Just would love to give you a moment. Is there anything that you didn’t get to that you wanted to share or anything you’d like to reiterate for our audience?

Becky Smith:
No. I mean I don’t think anything incredibly substantial in addition to what I’ve already said. I think what will be interesting, I think about this a lot because this is such a unique time for us. But I think what’s going to set companies apart during this time is that doing the right thing and making the right choices is going to become a competitive advantage. And I think credit unions over the past, however many years credit unions have been around, have traded on this idea of helping people and serving the community and doing the right thing. So I’m hoping that this is really our chance to shine and prove, live up to our own values. So it’ll be interesting to see. And I see other businesses following suit as well. It will just be really interesting to see what companies really shine through this type of crisis by just doing the right thing.

Cameron:
Well, let me ask you a follow-on question then. It was literally the first time I’ve ever asked a question after the final take. And not the final take. I thought it was really interesting hearing that you guys have basically completed a rebrand and now is probably not going to go forth and say, “Look at all the [crosstalk 00:33:34]. Look at our brand new logo.” We had a really interesting client round-table we did last week with marketers. And one of the sentiments that came up was, what do I do with my old marketing plan, and when can I get back to driving results? I’m a marketer. That’s what I love to do is produce results for my credit union.

Cameron:
So what is it? How do you think about marketing in the midst of a pandemic and a coming recession, and how do you think about your rebrand? Because you obviously want to roll that out at some point as an asset in a real time.

Becky Smith:
Yes. It’s a question I hear from my team almost on a daily basis. What are you going to do? What’s our marketing plan going to look like? Particularly for us since as you mentioned, we did have a full brand campaign ready to go in April. So we obviously put all of that on pause right now. What we’ve done actually is we’ve repurposed. Certainly we’re not spending nearly as much as we had planned to, but in some of the media spend that we had slated particularly for April, we actually put together a very quick short commercials spot just thanking healthcare workers. No call-to-action, no real driving them to our website. We don’t even have our URL on there. Just a thank-you.

Becky Smith:
So we’re changing what the message is slightly. Less about lead generation and driving new business. More about thanking people and subtly letting members and prospective members know that we’re still here, we’re still around staying in front of people but in a different context. So to be determined on when we will launch our brand campaign or get back to some of the more business-focused marketing that we do. But right now we’ve just switched gears and made it more about internal and external, just communications, and PR, and thanking our community for what they’re doing. So just a slightly different take on the work that marketers always do.

Cameron:
I love it. All right, well great note to stand on. I think you really took your mom’s empowering advice to heart. I love what you guys are doing at [inaudible 00:35:46], and wish you guys all the best of luck in all that you’re doing.

Becky Smith:
Thank you Cameron. I appreciate it.

Cameron:
All right folks, thanks for joining again today. I really enjoyed speaking with Becky, and hearing about everything they’re doing. A few of my key takeaways. The first one that I really appreciated was just the really simple framing around employees, members, and community. How do we make our employees feel valued, be tuned to their needs, and help them feel safe? How do we help our members deal with this uncertainty, and let them know that we’re there for them? And how do we help our community to thrive and stay strong in these difficult times, and building for the future? And I love the focus around ultimately they’re all connected and that a strong community is what’s going to lead to healthy members and healthy employees. My second takeaway was, I was really impressed with the idea of doing matching grants for members. And so basically letting your membership base those who feel more secure or like to have more surplus right now, but they have the chance to help give back to the other members and really strengthen those bonds of cooperative membership.

Cameron:
The next takeaway I had was this is really something that should be looked at in three to six-month cycles. It’s hard to plan too far into the future. We want to really be thinking about the long and medium term. But let’s really focus on doing the right thing in the next three to six months and not get overly caught up in forecasting the future when it’s so uncertain. I also thought it was really interesting with these grants that the grants are explicitly for people who are affected by coronavirus. They are not for folks not literally perhaps being infected, but who are financially impacted. Like, say you’re a server in a restaurant or you have childcare needs. And they’re not for people who are struggling before. And I thought that was a really powerful example of being clear, and just some of the natural tensions that we’re all dealing with when there’s so many people in need of help. And I can see another credit union making the exact opposite decision. And there’s not really a right or wrong as long as there’s an organization people feel like they’re doing what’s aligned with their purpose and core values.

Cameron:
I also appreciated hearing about what financial consultations look like today for CQ, and how they’ve changed. And the real focus on, of course having conversations. And I thought it was really fascinating and as they are tracking the moods of their members that it has moved from an initial degree of sadness and confusion towards fear and worry. And I think that’s a really helpful and interesting emotional pulse for all of us to keep in mind as we’re going out there and try and support our membership bases. And I thought it was a really powerful reminder that while of course there are specific transactions and products, one of the most powerful things we can do at the end of the day for anyone is to broaden their perspective and create lots of options so they can be aware of possibilities that they might not have known about before.

Cameron:
I love Becky’s statement that chaos can force clarity around where your future lies. And tying that into that of course there will be a big move towards digital channels right now and probably a lot of that will become habit and it will be even more common when we get to the new normal. But that it’s really important that as digital becomes a bigger part of what you do, it’s not the only part of what you do. And delivering digital services to the underserved is quite difficult to do well. And then lastly, I really appreciated the conversations that we had around what marketing looks like in both a pandemic and the recession that will follow. And I love Becky’s framing that doing the right thing and making the right choices will become a competitive advantage in the marketplace. And that marketing is really a lot less about lead generation, and it’s more about thanking right now.

Cameron:
All right. Well, on that note, thank you all for joining us today for another great episode. Until the next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.