By Fonda Semerjian
Marketing Account Executive, GCUA

The Georgia Marketing Council held its first meeting for 2002 at The Coca Cola Company Complex in downtown Atlanta on Friday, February 22, 2002. As a precursor to the event, several members met the evening before to dine at the city's well-known Atlanta Fish Market, an experience that produced only rave reviews from the pleased crowd.

At least 30 credit union marketing professionals from around the state attended the Council meeting on Friday. The day began with opening remarks by Mickey Garland of The Southern Federal Credit Union and President of the Georgia Marketing Council welcoming all attendees. Following the remarks, Mary Olson, Vice President of Marketing and Training at Delta Employees Credit Union discussed the Community Involvement team's latest initiative, Books for Children. This program is a year long Children's Book Donation Program for 2002 designed to help both the Georgia Early Learning Initiative "Bookworms" program and the Georgia Coalition to End Homelessness.

The educational sessions scheduled for the day began with Ben Reiling, the Marketing Chair and current Board Member for The Coca-Cola Company Family Federal Credit Union, discussing several marketing strategies of The Coca-Cola Company including the emergence and overwhelming success of the company's water product, Dasani and the acquisition of all Minute Maid products. Reiling continued to explain the importance of marketing to a company, using the numerous achievements of the large soft drink corporation as strong evidence.

The second educational session featured Glenn Miller, Vice President of Marketing at Associated and Federal Employees Credit Union and Mark Wild and Judith Ragunas of Digital Insight in a presentation on "The Future of Web Marketing". Associated CU's website was used as a guide as Miller and Wild spoke of a multi-layered approach to web marketing. That is, they argued that it's not enough to establish and implement a flashy, fun website. But also, it is imperative to educate all staff members and credit union members on site navigation. The site must meet the member's needs by displaying all financial products and services, offering educational steps to understanding those products as well as applications for those products. In addition, credit unions might want to add value to their site by including such entertainment information as news features, weather links, shopping venues and the like. The goal is to make the credit union website a one-stop shop, where members will enjoy browsing the site for fun rather than just for gathering their financial data.

Judith Ragunas of Digital Insight wrapped up the presentation by offering ways in which credit unions can target market and cross-sell financial services using advanced target-marketing tools. These tools are capable of collaborating data from survey research, MCIF systems, account data, promotional results, investment information and other statistics to pinpoint and target the audience most likely to have interest in a particular financial product or service. The threesome collectively provided credit union marketers with a well-rounded evaluation of online advertising capabilities for financial institutions.

Next, the conference attendees were treated to an exclusive tour of the executive offices of The Coca Cola Company. While getting a lesson in the history of the soft drink giant, guests visited the executive suite of the late President of The Coca-Cola Company, Robert Woodruff. Woodruff has been accredited as the marketing genius that led The Coca-Cola Company to achieve the success that it sustains to this day. The tour was a treat and honor for all marketers that attended.

The last presentation of the day, "Member Research-So Many Changes, So Little Time" was that of Jim Stachura from Aelera Analytics. Stachura explained that member research has come to be defined by analytics, which is broader in scope and adds even more real value to credit unions. He argued that technological and marketplace convergence is causing us to grasp a bigger picture, parts of which we will be unable to anticipate. He went on to state that the practice of member research is becoming somewhat more technical, bringing with it new issues such as how fast it ought to be done. And all the while, the market itself is swiftly changing to a new paradigm where we need to facilitate "conversations" between employees and members.

Jim offered several suggestions for credit union marketers to change alongside this changing marketplace including cross training in multiple disciplines, remaining abreast of research, learning new technical skills and listening to members.

All in all, the day proved to be quite beneficial to credit union marketers. Most attendees left The Coca Cola Company with a refreshed sense of responsibility and innovative ideas.

The Georgia Marketing Council was formed to help and support Georgia marketing professionals and other credit union professionals responsible for the marketing in their credit unions. Meetings are held three times a year. If you would like to become a Georgia Marketing Council member, contact Autumn Davis, Delta ECU, at (404) 715-4725.

And be on the lookout for details of the next meeting scheduled for Friday, May 17, 2002 in Augusta, Georgia!!!