First, a disclaimer: The folks at Currency Marketing are my friends, and so is Trey from TDECU, so my opinion is not objective. But still…this is just ridiculous.

For those who haven’t heard, a month ago Resource One Credit Union, located in my town of Dallas, TX, launched a cartoonishly blatant ripoff of Currency’s Young & Free Program , called MyLifeMyMoney. Pilcher covered it well at The Financial Brand.

I’ve been quietly rolling my eyes, but yesterday represented the last straw when they posted their call-to-action video, “K.I.S.S.“

As Pilcher pointed out last month:

MyLifeMyMoney copies essentially every component of Young & Free, including the overall strategy, the spokester’s responsibilities, the media used, and the incentives offered to the spokester.

Even the title “Spokester” is a word made up by Y&F Alberta’s Larissa.

So when I watched the latest video, and saw that R1 had even tried to (poorly) hijack the style of Larissa’s “The Difference Between Credit Unions and Banks” series, I was so bewildered all I could do was shake my head and cuss a little.

Let’s be clear: The hands-on-paper styling of the “Difference” videos were not original to Larissa, who borrowed it from Common Craft. However, she owned it, used it to deliver a message in a unique way to a new audience and used that style to create something original within the same style. She also gives credit to Common Craft as her muse.

A friend compared this to the film Multiplicity, where Michael Keaton copies himself and each copy is a little closer to eating glue.

There’s a difference between influence, homage, and a slipshod ripoff.

And again: It’s not like Currency invented calling for corporate auditions, Donald Trump and his pet hairpiece had been doing it for seasons. But they took a good idea and created something new.

I’ve created a slightly modified edit of R1’s K.I.S.S. video:

Collaboration is great. Influence is fantastic. Be inspired by great work. Borrow away. We can pull a lot of morals from this story, I’ll go with the least common denominator:

“If you’re going to steal, try not to do a pisspoor job of it.”

From the first day of kindergarten we are taught to get along with others and work together. In the normal course of events, though, most kindergartners act more like Mike Myers in the famous Philip the Hyper Hypo Kid skit on SNL than Beaver Cleaver.

Of the many challenges and opportunities facing credit unions, none is more daunting than the topic of getting along with others and working together (a.k.a. “large-scale collaboration”). We’ve tried to break down these challenges in a recent research publication. I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on a few things:

1. Are credit unions more like Philip (kinetically going out on their own) or the “Beav” (extremely cooperative) when it comes to collaboration? Which is more appropriate for today’s realities?
2. What do you see as the benefits and costs of large-scale collaboration?
3. Do you have good stories to share on credit union collaboration that aren’t widely known?

Filene is already conducting more research on the topic of large-scale credit union collaboration because we think it’s a pretty darn important topic for credit unions to consider in these changing and challenging times.

(Editor’s note from Brent: On a related – but completely unrelated – note: Eddie Haskell is speaking at an upcoming CUNA event. That’s all.)

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George Hofheimer is Chief Research Officer for the Filene Research Institute, a think tank that investigates vital issues affecting credit unions and consumer finance. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife Carrie and two boys Huck and Milo. He is a washed up marathoner and an over-ambitious soccer player.