Kevin Adelsberger
Welcome to part 2 of the Content Machine podcast with Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank. We had the pleasure of working with Chad on a rebrand recently, and this is the rest of our conversation with him about that project. Foundation Bank has been around for a while, right? Almost 100 years? Yeah.
Chad Wilson
1934, so we’re 90 years old this year.
Kevin Adelsberger
90 years old. Things maybe in the recent past wouldn’t… Like a rebrand would never have been on the table in the last couple of years, probably. So this is a different thing for you guys to think about. How has that… How has been the response been internally? It’s been good for the culture or bad? Or how’s it?
Chad Wilson
It’s been very good for the culture. I think that people are happier to wear the brand now. That was a real priority for us is we wanted it to be a brand, the color scheme, the fonts, the look. We wanted it to be something they’d be proud to wear. On Fridays, we encourage branded material to be worn. I think it’s landed very well with that. The feedback has been, I would say, almost uniformly positive within the team. There have been a couple of folks. One of our core values is absolute honesty, and we want to be able to hear-
Kevin Adelsberger
That’s a double-edged sword, right?
Chad Wilson
We want to be able to hear contrary opinions, and I’ve appreciated some of the input for, I’d say less than 2%, but a couple of folks that had some concerns, and that actually has fed into maybe the way or maybe the mix of colors and the kind of branding we’re using in different places because of some of the input that they gave about color combinations and things like that. Even though we were on the back end of it by the time we got that input, it’s still helpful in the way we represent the brand going forward. You guys provided us a great brand guide where we can mix and match a lot of these colors and looks of the logo. That’s something I learned is that you’re not just picking one representation of your logo and your logo type and your icon, you’re really getting a palette of things consistent with your brand to use depending on the setting, depending on what works for that particular audience. So Yeah, internal input, generally positive. External input has been good, too.
Kevin Adelsberger
Now, if there was a company listening to this that’s thinking about doing a rebrand, what would you… Just say they came to you and said, Hey, I need a rebrand. What should we be thinking about if we’re going to do that? What would you set them up to think about?
Chad Wilson
So I would ask them, Are you worthy of your brand already? Are there bigger problems? Because you can have a beautiful façade, so to speak, But once people get inside it, if they’re not having an experience that’s what they expected just from what they saw on the outside, you don’t want to whitewash your business. And so I think that there’s a real need to look internally, what are the biggest operational challenges, culture challenges, morale challenges? Hey, just are we making money in the first place? Make sure that the guts are good, the bones are good. And I think once that’s the case, there’s a necessity to turn to, Okay, what is the message we’re sending through our external marketing? Yeah.
Kevin Adelsberger
Well, let’s talk about banking for just a minute here. So what are your thoughts about marketing for community banks? So you’ve talked about making sure that you know who your niche is and what your service you’re providing, but anything else comes to mind when you think about marketing for community banks?
Chad Wilson
I don’t think community banks do it well. I think community banks do the relationship side of banking really well. But I think there’s another piece there that we’re missing as an industry on being, I would say up to date. Community banks at times can seem, I’m speaking of us too, can seem a little behind the times, maybe a little old fashioned. And I think there’s some great things about being old fashioned, but I think what community banks have an opportunity to do is hold on to everything good about being old fashioned, about being traditional, about down home family values kinds of institutions, but represent that in a way that looks current, that looks like you are on top of things, that you are not stuck in another day, but you’re trying to tease out all the great things about the past, but you’re trying tweak that looking forward to the future, because people need to know that community banks are future-oriented. I think the degree to which you can represent that will allow you… There’s going to be a lot of community banks that sell over the next decade. In my career, we’ve gone from 9,000 banks down to less than 5,000, and that’s just in a 20-year period. And so more and more community banks are going to be selling if they’re not future-oriented. And I think a brand is one aspect of making sure that you’re forward-oriented.
Kevin Adelsberger
All right. Give you one minute just to pitch on Foundation Bank.
Chad Wilson
So we absolutely love building long-lasting financial relationships at Foundation Bank. So if you felt overlooked by your financial institution, or if you felt like you’re just a number, if you felt like you don’t know anybody at the branch in which you do business anymore. We want to be the alternative to that experience. We want to know your name when you walk in the door. We want to be available to help you in all the financial decisions of life. There’s home buying, there’s investing for the future, there’s managing your assets currently. We’ve invested a lot into technology to help those be tools to help you do those things. But at the end of the day, we provide financial solutions, not just financial products. We think there’s a difference. It’s the way in which you go about teaching people how to use those tools and helping them make good financial decisions for their future. If that’s something folks are looking for, we think people are starving for that. But most don’t have the time to set aside to make a change in their financial life. But we think it’ll be worth it. A little time now could lead to tremendous dollars and time in the future.
Kevin Adelsberger
Then you have a podcast, so I want to give you a chance to promote that, too.
Chad Wilson
Okay. We do have a podcast we put out every couple of weeks. It’s called Money Matters. And we try to talk about things that are going on in the economy, but boiled down into layman’s terms. I know that when we read things in the media, sometimes it can be overwhelming. It’s hard to tease through some of the data and the jargon. And so we just try to boil it down to this is what it means, and this is how it might affect you in how you make daily financial decisions. It’s a quick one, 10 to 15 minutes, and really accessible for folks that just want to know a little bit more about what’s going on in the economy.
Kevin Adelsberger
Well, Chad, thank you for taking the time to join us on this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back with future episodes, so stay subscribed to see what’s next.
