MONTPELIER, Vt. - If you ask Roberta MacDonald what credit unions should do to increase brand visibility she replies with Zen-like wisdom: “Look within,” she says.
“Credit unions have a wealth of information right among the rank and file membership, but never think to ask them questions that could yield crucial marketing data,” said MacDonald, svp of marketing at Cabot Creamery Cooperative, who will share her unique strategies and perspective at CU Journal’s Grow Show next month.
MacDonald says that credit unions should be asking members simple but vital questions like “How did you learn about us?” “What services are important to you?” and “How many in your family are members?”
The author of “Finding Four-Leaf Clovers,” a book about improving one’s quality of life, will share her marketing techniques when she presents “How the Cream Rose to the Top” at the Credit Union Journal’s Grow Show, April 27-29 in Orlando.
MacDonald says her book is really about practical advice on how to relax and gain peace of mind but yet the same techniques have applicable business analogs.
“You don’t have to look at each clover individually,” she says. “You can relax your eyes and often the four-leaf will pop right out.”
MacDonald says using these concepts as part of a marketing strategy can often be beneficial when you “learn how to let things go and stop thinking.”
For the past 19 years, MacDonald has run a highly successful marketing machine that has been instrumental in transforming Cabot Creamery Cooperative from a small farm-family owned cooperative into a major player with a number of award-winning campaigns. MacDonald says there are two things that motivated her to work within the cooperative space.
“They are more difficult to sell off. No one person makes that decision,” she said. ”And their operations have a transparency about them that is not evident in your mainstream corporations.”
MacDonald says she tries to help credit unions identify specific member needs so that the CUs can offer better products and services.
Born an army brat in Fort Sill, Okla., MacDonald graduated from Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia and spent the next 15 years exploring the gregarious side of her personality living in various cities throughout the U.S. She has more than 27 years experience in consumer and event marketing. Before settling in Vermont, she gained recognition for her work with the San Francisco Opera, Ford Foundation, CBS, American Express and the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial.
In 1984, then Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin recruited MacDonald to become the state’s first marketing director.
In 2005, she won Governor Jim Douglas’ first-ever Marketing Vision Award while helming Cabot’s marketing department.
Since joining Cabot Creamery back in 1988, MacDonald has championed cooperatives and CUs as “our country’s better business model.”
MacDonald wants to dispel the perception in the financial industry that “somehow, cooperatives suggest something less.”
She says her presentation is really “marketing 101” told through the pocketbooks of poor rural farmers.
“It’s about how you build a brand with no money,” MacDonald said.
