Faranda asks CUNA conference marketers to safeguard their `competitive advantage'

ORLANDO, Fla.- Technology has not only changed the tools marketers have available to use, it's quickened the pace and shortened the time they have to capitalize on their ideas and move on to the next unique offering. This is the technologically changing marketing world credit unions are doing business in today and which they must be prepared to compete in. Thomas Faranda, president/CEO of Faranda & Associates and author of several books including "Gaining Competitive Advantage" stressed this point repeatedly to attendees at CUNA's Marketing Council's 2000 Conference. "Anything you can do for your members that other people either can't do or won't do is your competitive advantage," Faranda explained. "This means they are going to remember you, they're going to value you and they are going to want to do business with you. "That's very important, because all of your marketing efforts are designed for one purpose," Faranda said. "They are designed to get members to come in, get them to call in and get them to access what you have to offer." Selling efforts are a little different, Faranda pointed out. These are designed around the goal of what financial institution staff does with members once they come in. "Competitive advantage is designed to wrap these two `sciences' together, creating services that members want, need and value, so that they want to come to your credit union to do what they want to do," Faranda said. CUs are part of the financial services world, which is moving and changing at "the speed of light" technologically. So when marketers define and implement a competitive advantage, it's no longer the marketing solution of a year as it might have been in the past. In a world that's so quick paced, it could lead to problems if staff at financial institutions or businesses, trying to stay ahead of the game, go out on a limb and announce newest programs or innovations before they're in place. "This is very dangerous," Faranda warned. "In the old days, you might have had a year (before competitors could recycle your idea and use it for their own competitive advantage). These days, you might have as long as three months (to capitalize on your new, unique idea), or maybe even as little time as three days." Examples of this that Faranda cited included what happened to a billion dollar airline company, Peoples Express. Peoples Express officials "gave away their competitive advantage," and this company then disappeared from the face of the Earth in a matter of months. "That's scary!" he said. In the ever changing technological landscape of marketing and providing services, CU employees should keep in mind that anything they do is temporary. But one thing that marketers might want to think about, Faranda said, is that the more technological something they do is, the harder it will be to duplicate by someone else. While new rules apply to a world that is changing quickly, the good news is that some tried and true "old principles" still apply. Three major U.S. businesses (not CUs) that have been extremely successful and that apply an "old rule" to the way they do business, Faranda said, have something in common. "They all achieved what they have today by empowering people (staff members)," Faranda said. "They view people as an asset rather than a cost." If CUs focus more on the member ownership aspect of their make-up, they will have one big competitive advantage in the scramble to come out on top that really cannot be duplicated. Faranda praised all CU marketers and CUs that were winners of the coveted CUNA Diamond Awards. "I spent the morning going through all the awards on the boards outside this room," Faranda noted. "I have to tell you something. If I go back even five years and I look at the literature that was produced by all the different sizes of credit unions compared to now, the difference is absolutely staggering. "For one thing, this is because you and I have become more marketing conscious. For another thing, technology allows us to do these things with desktop publishing, or at least desktop preparation of the publication before it goes into true printing. "And also we realize that credit unions are part of a worldwide niche that is called financial services," Faranda said. "If we forget that, then we will never, ever grow. But we will survive, unlike a lot of banks that will not survive. We will survive because we have a unique philosophy and because we have a unique market, and because we have a unique way of doing things. We have members who are owners." Growth, however, may remain illusive unless CU staff is able to focus on being part of the global financial services environment, he said. "This means that people all over the world want what they want done, when they want it done, and how they want it done," Faranda said. "Our job is to provide that for that member. It's a completely different ball game. If 20 years ago, I'd come in here and started talking about sales and marketing, they would have thrown tomatoes at me, if they'd had them. "But today, this is all part of what we are trying to achieve." -lide@cutimes.com