Delayed in Dallas

As I was sitting at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport (delayed for four hours), I had a chance to reflect on the past week. It has truly been my pleasure to serve as a class officer. I hope everyone enjoyed the networking events - and little extras - that we put together for you. It was our goal from the start to provide you with fun and exciting activities during your week at school. I'd like to thank you for your participation and enthusiasm.

I wish my 2010 classmates all the success and happiness that they deserve. I will miss all of you. To the class of 2011, good luck. Appreciate this opportunity you have been given, and have fun with it.

It' really the last time.... Chris has been saying this all week. I just got on the Radisson Shuttle for the last time this trip. Headed to Stan's Blue Note for the graduation party. Thanks to the ABA staff, instructors and class officers for all their work! And congrats to Penny - you will represent us well.

Class of 2010 ROCKS! Put the 2011 ABA marketing conference in your budgets next year!

Congratulations Graduates!

To the class of 2010 - THANK YOU for making the first year students feel so very welcomed throughout this entire week! I think I can speak for most of our class when I say that you guys did an amazing job at networking, mentoring and involving each one of us on a daily basis. What a bittersweet moment it must be for all of you to wrap up your School of Bank Marketing experience tonight at your graduation ceremony and reception. Good luck to each one of you. I hope you take the knowledge, skills and network you gathered from this experience and apply it with such passion in your organization that it becomes contagious to every member on your team.

Tonight - we celebrate you and your accomplishments. Let's get this party started!

-Amber Farley

Awesome Bank Marketers!

Bank B-4 Score @ The Door

Click to see how we scored Sandi - our community regulator:

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/o3kwnOQDBuij9FgW

Sandi Rocked!

We, in the "B" Community think this says it all!

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/rJ06GlPpKLhcpWYv

The final day

Had a great time this morning with Jack Hubbard, Chief Experience Officer for St. Meyer & Hubbard, Inc. What Jack brings to the table is hard to commit to words on paper. I gave up on taking notes and just started tagging websites, books, blogs and other bits of info he shares. Note to Year One students - bring a laptop with you to class next year! You'll be light-years ahead when you go back to the real world.

Community A just completed the shareholders presentations and we're about to cut loose and prepare for dinner. It's been a fast an furious week. Congratulations to Jack Hubbard on his 25th anniversary of teaching at ABA SOBMM, and also to Candy - who told us she's been part of the school for 29 years!

Cheers to the Class of 2010 and good luck to those who will follow behind.

Banker bowling on a Sunday night in Dallas. Smart money is on Lori Gazzillo!

Anxious Moments

We are moments away from the final results in BankExec! Whatever the outcome, I'm so proud of the Double A Bank management team. We're a mix of personality styles on the Disc assessment, and developed good procedures for making decisions. Tick tock, tick tock.....

What are the leadership challenges for bank marketers?

We're currently in the "Effective Marketing Leadership" class taught by Sara Watkins. She shared with us some findings from Forrester Research showing three top marketing challenges:

1. Follows lead of other departments (more reactive than proactive)
2. Lacks authority
3. Disconnected from peers

Other challenges identified by some of us include:

• Executive management overriding marketing decisions
• Department heads not in agreement with marketing plan
• Matrix overload: Multiple regional presidents with different marketing requests
• Lack of understanding for what marketing can achieve
• Marketing not viewed as an investment
• Lack of communication to perform work (sales disconnected)
• Marketing disconnected because role is specialized

Some ways to establish better expectations and accountability:

1. Establish contract and expectations with CEO

2. Build a dashboard for tracking marketing ROI

3. Join ALCO (Asset/Liability Committee)

"Our tests proved that budget was sustained and increased by adding transparency and accurate metrics." Financial Services CMO: Forrester Research.

These ideas play well off of yesterday's speaker, Jeff Marsico, who also posted this today on his blog: http://jeff-for-banks.blogspot.com/2010/05/open-letter-to-bank-marketers.html

Great information and food for thought, Sara and Jeff! - mz

Double A Bank is no longer under letter from the FDIC

So, Q2 wasn't so great for our bank (Double A Bank). We saw our ROA at 1.10 and ROE at 18.07, which wasn't bad but our Fed Funds Purchased was 165% above our total capital...not a good thing apparently.

After a visit from the FDIC and an action plan to fix this issue and adjust our spread up from 3.65, we saw the following improvements:

• ROA went from 1.10 to 2.03
• ROE went from 18.07 to 31.86
• Spread went from 3.65 to 5.13
• Fed funds purchased went from 165% to 38%

Our decisions were very easy last quarter because we knew we had a spread and a funding issue. This quarter's decisions were just turned in and I can honestly say we didn't have as much focus on where to place our emphasis because there wasn't an obvious issue in need of attention. Hope we didn't play things too safe. We'll know in a couple hours...until then... - mz