A Marketing Council
Meeting October 25, 2001

By Fonda Semerjian
Marketing Account Executive, GCUA

The Georgia Marketing Council held its final meeting for 2001 at the Holiday Inn Skytop in Rome on October 25. To kick off the event, all conference attendees met the evening prior to enjoy a trolley ride through downtown Rome and a wonderful Italian dinner at La Scala.

More than 30 credit union marketers attended the meeting on October 25. The full day program began with a morning session delivered by Mary Olson, Vice President of Marketing and Training for Delta Employees Credit Union. The Career ExCELL presentation educated all attendees on this innovative training program designed to rate credit union professionals in a series of career skill sets including development planning, career pathing, strategic planning, organizational design, and the like. During the session, participants enjoyed rating their personal marketing expertise and pinpointing those attributes thought to be vital to the success of credit union marketing professionals.

The session interim was filled with an "Idea Sharing" exercise in which several credit union marketers detailed their youth savings programs and philanthropic initiatives. Debby 'Dawg' Carter of Georgia Heritage FCU and 'Wacky' Wendy Unger-Moore of Phenix Federal Credit Union both explained their Savsaurus programs, while several others shared their enthusiasm for unique kids clubs including Looney Toons characters and huggable, safari-like animals. Several wonderful kids program ideas were shared including coloring contests, premium giveaways for new youth members and e-mail chats between kids and characters.

MJ Kabaci, Public Relations Assistant for the Affiliates used the time to share 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.

Nancy Hunt, Director of Account Development for The Konkle Group, closed the meeting with her afternoon presentation. The session entitled "Fish! Catch the Energy! Putting the Fun Back into Marketing" included a video representing a Seattle-based public fish market in which strategic "fun" work ideas are practiced. Later in the session, all council members broke into groups to brainstorm the ways marketers could apply such "fun" strategies in the credit union environment. This session proved to be especially unique as all attendees were treated to the vocal stylings of Leatrice Dooley of Atlanta City Employees Credit Union and the antics of newcomer to the council, John O'Hare of Rich's Employees Credit Union.

All in all, the Georgia Marketing Council's Rome meeting proved to be quite successful. All marketers left rich with new knowledge, new enthusiasm and a new fish stress ball!

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.

Stay tuned for the agenda details of the February meeting to be held at The Coca-Cola Company Family Federal Credit Union in Atlanta.