YES Summit: Speaking the cultural language
Posted by Brent Dixon on December 5th, 2007
In a session on reaching the 18 – 30 year old Hispanics”, Reverend Ed Gomez of El Buen Samaritano Epsicopal Mission said the best way to build trust, engage, and serve the Hispanic culture, and I would argue any culture, is to get outside of our own heads – both when we communicate and design products.
In a quote I swiped from the YES Summit blog, Ed said Wells Fargo did this…
...because it hired Hispanic staff, including management, and engaged the market by participating in local community events. It made its presence felt on the personal basis and used the relationships it built with community leaders to design products specifically suited to people who operate outside the majority economy.
Wright-Patt CU wanted to be more relevant to young adults, so they hired 23 year-old Dustin Limburg on as Marketing Representative for Young Adults. When I asked him how they are approaching the market, Dustin said, “We basically look at them like a separate SEG.”
How are you getting outside of your head and speaking the cultural language?
Hey Brent -
Thanks for your excellent posts from the conference! Here in NC, we recently entered into a WOCCU partnership agreement with Caja Morelia, a CU in Mexico. Clearly, we can provide support to them on issues such as technology, but they can really help us understand the Hispanic culture and how to connect with particularly populations that perhaps have not been a part of the financial services world.
Your post is dead on – if you want to attract a demographic, it’s helpful to hire good people in that demo and stand aside. :)
Absolutely! You want perspective? What better way than adding someone in your target market to your staff. In fact, make it an entire department. We keep talking about how to market to Gen Y and how to market to the Latino population…yet our cupBOARDs are bare of any representation of these groups.
Brent, I enjoyed reading your posts and your Tweets from the YES Summit. Your reflections make me think that another way for CUs to “go outside of our heads”is to recruit board members who represent specific groups. This was brought home to me in hearing about Justin Ho.