In the abstract, people don’t care about car loans, but if they want/need a new car, they care–at least until they get what they want. Like it or not, financial products/services are just facilitators of other things, whereas Apple products (and gadget in general) create experiences all by themselves.

So the challenge is getting consumers to care about the facilitators as part and parcel with the end goals–i.e., you can’t have one without the other. For example, for our online financial planning service, we are constantly trying to promote the belief that planning is the critical first step to reaching your financial goals. If we can get consumers to buy in to this belief, they will care about planning because they care about their financial goals.

Our service is only a facilitator–but so is every other financial product/service. So the only way to be relevant to people is to make the connection in the consumer’s mind between our service (the facilitator) and the real goal (car/home/peace of mind).

This is a lot harder than what Apple has to do, if you ask me–but I agree with Ron, it’s still about creating caring, not awareness.

Go back to the Apple example: In one respect, Apple has it easy: There are gazillions of people who are really gadgets, or computers, or cell phones. That’s not to say, of course, that Apple doesn’t do a great job of making people like their brand over others. But credit unions don’t have it that easy. Few people care how when a bank/CU introduces a new product. Ho hum.

It’s analogous to Coke and Pepsi in one respect. You would think that there are no two fiercer head-on competitors than those two firms. But what I witnessed a number of years ago (first hand, I might say, in a consulting engagement w/ a Pepsi bottler) is how the two firms COLLABORATED in South America. They were both looking to make inroads into rural Brazil. Did they fight about which brand tasted better, or any of the other things they claim about each other? NO. They knew job #1 was not to bash each other, but to build demand for soft drinks.

This is what I’m chiding CUs for. Quit worrying about big banks. Quit trying to convince everybody that you’re good, and they’re evil. The public cares about that — for NOW. It’s going to pass. Long term, the anti-bank sentiment will pass, and CUs won’t be able to ride this wave. They gotta get people more involved with managing their finances and caring about which FI they do business with. This has NOTHING to do with any one CU’s brand.

For each person I think the draw is different, but as some of you have stated, no marketing department can make people care about their money. Some of the typical things people use as their criteria for selecting a bank are branch location, ATM location, fees, personal relationships, online functionality, interest rates paid or earned and hours of operation. Years ago this list was shorter and you could probably rank it fairly easily with branch location being a clear leader. Today, the list of criteria keeps getting longer and it’s anyone’s guess what order someone might rank them in terms of importance.

I tend to think that when it comes to the retail banking customer, as time moves forward, physical locations and personal relationships unfortunately will diminish in importance. I don’t think that’s necessarily true when it comes to commercial relationships. But even in the case of commercial, the technology that customers demand create more and more distance between banker and account holder. We keep pushing them further out – and it’s what they want: drive-ups, ATMs, online banking & bill pay, remote capture – heck have you seen video banking in the lobby? Someone actually takes the time to get out of their car and walk in and we greet them with a pay-phone handset and tv screen?

My money says that in time account holders will gravitate to financial institutions – banks or credit unions – that can provide the BEST set of tools to make managing their money as easy, painless, cheap and FUN as possible. I’m not sure I’d want to be in the bank building business in 10 years because the bank branch that matters most to people younger than 30 lives online.