Four Takeaways from the First Ever Financial Brand Forum

April 2nd marked the first ever conference from The Financial Brand. It was an intense and energy filled two days in Las Vegas, and I’m now able to decompress and process what I learned and the insights I will take forward.

1. One of the first things I did at Thursday morning’s opening event was engage in one of the many physical interactive posters that were placed throughout the vendor area. These posters asked questions of the attendees and asked them to write – not text or tweet – their answers on the poster. Who does Analog anymore? The Financial Brand does…and there in lay an interesting thought for me. In a conference that would be filled shortly by a kickass opening video from CU Grow, why ask participants to go old school analog?

That thought lead me to refrain from live tweeting any of the event or the nightly activities – I’m too old to engage in anything too incriminating – so this was indeed a conscious choice. What was the end result? I did feel as if my own internal processing of each event and the Forum as a whole went deeper. I wasn’t looking for tweets, I was looking for linking ideas to build a larger, more in-depth picture of the content. I believe I found some very new insights into some ideas that were challenging me and my clients so will mark this as a win!

Takeaway: Digital is the future but it’s meant to complement the best parts of old-school thought and engagement, not as a 100% replacement.

2. My favorite session of the entire conference was from Lani Hayward of Umpqua Bank. Her presentation on “Building the Umpqua Brand Experience” provided a great glimpse inside how Umpqua has grown, differentiated itself, and become the gold standard for brand within our industry.

My biggest takeaway was their internal barometer when it comes to going the extra mile and piloting new ideas. Innovation has to be an inside out movement within an organization for it to really settle into the DNA of the organization and it’s true with Umpqua.

What is your bank doing to try new ideas? Are we too afraid of failure to be innovative at our banks and credit unions? I rarely see financial institutions green lighting things that are bold enough to make participants giddy and excited. What’s your threshold for moving forward? A ironclad ROI guarantee? If so, you’re not trying hard enough.

Takeaway: There’s a huge chasm between Umpqua and most FIs…what’s your first step to fill that void because you need to move now! Whenever I take on a large challenge, I just take it Bird by Bird!

3. I heard at least one conference participant say that the ideas presented at the conference weren’t revolutionary. That’s true for most conferences. The success of each participant will always reside solely on their and their FIs ability to EXECUTE the ideas shared within the sessions!

Takeaway: I took away a lot of great ideas from the conference – some new iterations on things I’ve heard, and a few new ideas or at least new lens from which to look – but they are all fluff without execution. What can you do today to start executing? I’ve already moved to distillation and now implementation on at least one idea…are you ahead of or behind me?

4. Finally, what I noticed the most about the Forum was how palpable the energy was in the first night and full day. Jeffry Pilcher and the team at TheFinancialBrand.com have done an amazing job of building their brand over the last few years and for delivering fantastic content.

The Forum was the first time most readers were able to physically experience the brand and to meet Jeffry. I won’t say that the guy is a rock star but in watching people crowd around him at the first night’s reception, it was clear that this brand carried weight.

Takeaway: Do FIs ever do a good job of creating pent up demand and excitement for a product or service? I’ve only seen a very few examples from ING Canada or other countries where a campaign was deployed over time to build excitement. Are we just that boring as an industry or will be ever be able to create excitement around something? The first step will be creating something that has the potential to delight and excite our customers.

So those are my takeaways from the conference. If you have some to add, I’d love to hear about them!