Transcription:
Being the Calm in the Storm: Messaging in Troubled Times

Bill Klaproth: When you've been searching for the right insight, advice and information on financial marketing, you know where to go The Speakeasy, the exclusive source for financial marketing insights, with a shot of human. Starring Kelly Hellickson and Hilary Reed from EmpowerFi, Strategy infused data driven marketing solutions for financial institutions nationwide. I'm your host Bill Klaproth. And on this episode, we talk with Amy McGraw, an award-winning Marketing Executive with 20 plus years of experience in building an unsurpassed business profile, doubling annual business growth, and developing industry leading marketing and public relations teams. And we're going to talk about messaging in troubled time, such as the pandemic and natural disasters that seem to happen with more regularity. Amy, welcome to The Speakeasy Podcast.

Amy McGraw: Thank you. It's really good to be here and it's good to have a moment of calm to speak.

Host: Sure is. So that's why we're very happy that you're here. So let me ask you this from your experiences in Detroit, going through the financial depression of 2009 and weathering storms in Florida from a seemingly never ending battery of hurricanes to today's pandemic response, what tricks do you have up your sleeve to keep in touch with members of the credit union?

Amy McGraw: Well, I'll tell you the depression of, well, I don't know if you want to call it depression, but what happened back in 2008, 2009 was a very, very different than what's happening today. And I think people are beginning to see that is not the same. So we can't follow any kind of rule book for what happened back then for what's happening now because it's not the same, there are the rules. There are no rules for what's going on right now, back in when I was also, when I was in Detroit, that was a very different market than, than it is down here in South Florida. And that particular time, the interesting thing was finding ways to connect with our members on a sort of a day to day type of basis. Yeah, we had programs, you know, we had that Save to Win program. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it encourages people to save through sort of a lottery link savings program. And that was super popular with our members up in Detroit. And it definitely helped members think in a different way in terms of savings because so many of our members did not have any kind of a lifeline or safety net built for when the crisis had hit. But another thing that was sort of interesting was finding ways to connect with people on more than just a financial basis. Like for instance, we got involved with urban farming.

I know that sounds kind of crazy, but we actually started working with some local schools and things. They were taking some areas that were burnt out and really just sort of dilapidated parts of Detroit and turning them into urban farms. And so we kind of tried to help our membership and the City of Detroit take a negative and turn it into a positive, much like lottery link savings and negative of you don't have a safety net, but Hey, yes, you can. Instead of buying that lottery ticket, put in a savings account, but you still might win some money from it. Even right down to the fact that, Hey, we're going to help you plant some food in this area. And so that the neighborhood can come and pick corn or okra or whatever it is that they were planting at that time. So that was a very different type of scenario than what we have right now. One of the things down here in South Florida I will absolutely say this. This is, this area is no stranger to disasters and crisis. Having had to go through it, be prepared for hurricanes every single year and every year they've gotten worse and worse. I've been really lucky. I've been down here nine years and we've only been hit by Irma and even Irma sideswiped us.

We were supposed to get more of a head on and actually it just sort of wobbled. It's kind of funny to think about hurricanes wobbling, but they do. And it wobbled to the left or to the West and ended up hitting Tampa much more so than the Miami area. So even that storm that we got hit with cat one winds was, to people around here and it's nothing. Cat one is nothing. I mean, I'm freaking out. It was my first real hurricane, everybody else down here is like eh, this is nothing, but then this COVID thing hit. And this was definitely something nobody saw coming, nor could you really prepare? Yes, we have a pandemic plan. Yes, we have a disaster recovery plan, but nobody foresaw the idea that we were going to completely shut down businesses, including our own credit union. For the most part. I mean, we were essential service, so we kept drive throughs and things like that, and call center open. But for the most part lobby shut down, we still have our lobby shut down right now. South Florida is still a pretty high danger zone. Nobody saw this and even when we all like said, okay, let's turn on a dime, we're nimble, we're quick. We could do this.

Nobody really said, okay, it's going to last nine months as opposed to just be a few weeks and then we'll get through it. And then it was going to be this V-shaped, you know, economy thing is going to bounce right back. And now this whole idea of a K shaped economy recovery, who in the world ever would have thought that, you know, U and V, we understand, but K? Wow, that's something completely different in that scenario, a K type, our particular membership, which are higher on the economic scale are recovering much better than maybe some other credit union members who are serving members that are in the lower echelons of financial status. So yeah, it's been interesting. One of the things we did was we have a program called Get Beyond Money. We actually started it last September at launch. So it's actually been, just had its one year anniversary. We did not create this with this idea that people were going to need a lifeline for a financial health crisis after a physical health crisis. But it has certainly ended up to be that. And we're just now taking it to the level, offering things like webinars instead of in person seminars and doing things more online, but offering those same types of services, coaching and whatnot to our members to help them through this middle time of not knowing what's going to happen next. That was really long winded wasn't it?

Kelly Hellickson: Amy, how are you going to, Oh, that's okay. We love it. How are you? Are you going to change anything for 2021 in your, your marketing business development, sales, all of that experience plan?

Amy McGraw: Yeah, we tried to sort of stick, sort of kind of stick with our 2020 plan because a lot of our 2020 plan was around Get Beyond Money. We originally did a big push in fourth quarter last year that was sort of our pilot and it was very successful. So the plan was to relaunch it in April for three to four months and then basically get out. And when I say get out, I just mean in terms of pushing advertising, we wanted to be out before any kind of political advertising was really pushing hard, cause we don't have to be up against that. It completely changed. And in March when we all realized that we were being sent home and so we, you know, we, yeah, we did that commercial of we're all in this together. I'm almost sorry to say that because everybody used that messaging, still using that messaging. We changed it up a little bit to be more about joining our community and helping each other out. It's also our 85th anniversary. We had huge plans. We were able to have a big dinner for our 85th anniversary with all our employees. We had an 85th anniversary contest with people, you know, sending us videos and things of the way that credit union has helped them. We changed even that we didn't, I mean, instead of saying how the credit union helped them, we asked them, tell us stories of how they're getting through this.

How are they working from home? How are they helping their neighbors? And we started awarding and sharing those stories rather than how the credit union helped them. We just said, it's more about people and our community and our community sticking together and helping each other out. So let's look for those stories that we can share for our 85th anniversary. And maybe that will help others with ideas of how to help their own neighborhoods and their own friends and family and things. So yeah, we pretty much just shifted everything and around. Another thing we had done was we had a certain amount of budget for travel and conferences for all the employees and the board members. And when it became real clear that no one was going to be traveling or going to conferences our CEO took that entire line item, which is around $85,000 and re gifted it, I guess you could say. And created $500 gift cards that he gave to every single employee with the agreement that, that the employee would take that $500 and spend it on a local business to help support our local businesses. And that was hugely successful.

It was a huge inspiration for the employees, as well as speaking of PR got us a lot of PR even national PR, which was kind of surprising. And but it was good. It was really, really good that our CEO came up with that. I'd love to say I came up with that, but that was all him. And it was just it's one of the reasons I love working for credit unions is because when you get right down to it, whether you're a CEO or you're a teller, everybody works for credit unions for run one reason because they want to help other people that's living that people helping people. And there was no better time to see that in action than during this crisis.

Hilary Reed: Absolutely. That's fantastic. Well, I think that definitely covers everything that we wanted to talk about with touch on and more, but Amy underneath that and leaving us with a final thought, you know, people helping people aside from maybe, and maybe that's the answer with the gift card. Was there any other one single factor that you felt cupped your, your credit union tied to your community, tethered more, more soundly during the pandemic than that? Or do you have another example of what you could give us that just helped you stay connected? Because again, it's about the members.

Amy McGraw: Right. It is absolutely about the members. I think one of the things which we do all the time, but we elevated it is we have something called a Smile Program. And it's not something we advertise. We don't tell anybody we do this. But it's the opportunity for every single employee. And this is thing that we changed because it used to just be the branches, but I opened it up to every single employee of the credit union. If they're talking to a member and that member is experiencing a hardship or maybe something great happened, even through all of this, maybe they became a grandma. They, you know, maybe their son just graduated high school, but couldn't actually go to graduation that employee is empowered to give that member up to. Well, it really doesn't matter up to, it's, I think it's up to $600 is the max. But most of the time it's usually around 50 to $100 gift cards, flowers, Amazon gift cards, Etsy gifts, you know, something personalized, along with a Smile card that just basically says, you know, we're with you in this. And we just wanted to put a smile on your face. Cause we know you're going through whatever they're going through. 

And it's signed in handwritten by the employee who had that contact. And it was the other employees who were back in operations or in lending who never had access to this program before really made use of it. And which is really, really positive to connect with our members outside the day to day, it cannot be used for making up for any kind of mess up on our part. That's not what the smile program is for. It's literally to just connect with that member on a human level, to let them know that we are part of their circle of friends, family, or whatever you want to call it community, but we're, we're here for them in good times and in bad.

Hilary Reed: That's amazing. I love that.

Amy McGraw: Right. And there's no press releases on it. I don't put it out. Like it's not supposed to be something it's literally supposed to be just a way for us to connect with our members on a very human level. And I've had it in place for over year. This is just when this happened. I changed it from just the branches and call center to every single employee of the credit union.

Kelly Hellickson: That's really great. I mean, and we're all human, right? Especially in this pandemic situation, it's just people that is, that is the definition of people seeing a need and helping other people. So that's awesome. Thank you so much, Amy, for all of your insight. I always love talking to you, so thank you.

Amy McGraw: Absolutely. It was fun. You guys take care and stay safe.

Hilary Reed: Yeah, you too. Thanks Amy.

Host: Thanks Amy. And thanks for joining us. And if you want to connect with Hillary or Kelly or you want to simplify your credit union marketing needs, you can find that with EmpowerFi's full-service marketing and design support. So your credit union will stand out from the crowd. All you have to do is visit empowerfi.org. This is The Speakeasy Financial Marketing Podcast. Thanks for listening.