BORROW SMART
ALABAMA LAUNCH COMPLETE!
Incredibly Successful!
October 22, 2007
By now most of you know we launched
our Borrow Smart campaign on Thursday of last week. The launch was an
overwhelming success. This is our report. Be sure you read
the entire report and click on the links that are highlighted for a full picture
of the Borrow Smart Alabama campaign. Also, please be sure to
redirect this information to your stores so they will be fully aware of
our program. As the campaign progresses we fully expect the press
to begin making inquires and contacting local stores (more on that at
another time).
THE LAUNCH
We held our first press conference of
the day on Thursday morning at The Money Store in Montgomery. It was well
attended by local TV, the local press and the Associated Press. Charles
Hunter, our CFL spokesperson, announced our Borrow Smart plans and
played several customer testimonials for the press. The press was quite
responsive to our announcement and asked good solid questions. The
questions and the mood was quite positive. The press seemed to be genuinely impressed by what we were doing. We then
moved on to the Title Cash store in Birmingham for our second conference
of the day. That conference was not quite as well attended as the
event in Montgomery, but we did get local TV coverage and Charles was
interviewed by phone by the Birmingham News. Again, we were well
received.
Our statewide
TV
and
radio campaigns also began the same day. To see our TV ad
click here,
to hear our radio ad,
click here and
to see our customer video testimonials
click here. These tell a very compelling story. This campaign will run for about a month in markets throughout
the state.
THE RESULTS
The press coverage results were
incredible. We had a great
article in the Montgomery Advertiser,
one of the largest papers in the state and the our capital's newspaper. The
coverage on the internet was just phenomenal. Go to Google and type in
Borrow Smart Alabama to see the coverage or
click here
(we’ve done it for you). The press coverage was on the internet wire
within an hour of our first announcement! The local stories were in the
papers at the next edition of the papers after our press meetings.
With regard to the
Birmingham News
story, we were somewhat disappointed. We contacted the News immediately
and
challenged the story. They
reprinted our challenge almost immediately
and they have invited us to meet with their full editorial board to go over our story in much
greater detail.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
If you are a CFL member
your store kits should be
completed by the middle of this week.
Click here to see the full kit. We will contact you when
they are ready to go. The kits are comprehensive and
will include inside posters, brochures, window stickers and desktop
displays. Your store will be well identified as a Borrow Smart Alabama
member. It will be hard to miss you. Especially, since you can easily
be found (click here and try for yourself).
If you are not
a member now is the time for you to
reconsider joining with us. Our campaign has just begun. It is our
intention to promote Borrow Smart stores with the press and with
prospective customers in our local, grass roots campaign. We will
do this in all of our ads, in all of our press articles, in all of our
direct contacts with the legislators and regulators and on our web site
(www.borrowsmartalabama.com). All of the audiences will know
who you are and will know if you participate with us in
our Alabama, pro-consumer
Borrow Smart Code of Fair Lending. We think it will help
you and your store in many ways if you support this statewide effort. You can visit
our website, view our ads and read our press releases by clicking on all
the links in this report and then you be
the judge.
If you want the benefits of being a
CFL member and our Alabama, grass roots imitative,
click here for more
information about joining with us to improve the image of our industry
and that of your business. As a member, you get all of this for less
than the cost of a yellow page ad!
CONCLUSION
This announcement and launch exceeded
our expectations in almost every way -- from our very first
announcement with the Alabama
Black Caucus in Point Clear a week or so ago to our meetings with the
Alabama press last week. But, this entire effort is a work in progress
– not a one shot event. This is the beginning. Rome was surely not
built in a day and our industry and our members did not acquire the
image we have in a day, either. Further, it will not be changed in a
day no matter how much effort we put behind it. It will take time.
But, we are committed. From this point on when there is a conversation
in the public arena about us, we will be there too. And so will you if
you are a Borrow Smart member. We are now at the table and we will be
there to present our side of the story about our customers, about our
industry and especially about our members.
Please look around at other states and
jurisdictions (Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia,
Washington DC, Oregon and more) they all have seen very bad things
happen to their businesses as a result of not presenting their side of
the story. They were constantly bashed and beaten up in the public
arena with virtually no public response for their side of the story.
They all thought having representation in the legislature would keep
them safe and that’s all it would take. Well, they were wrong! Where
are they are today?
The days when we could rely solely and
exclusively on our lobbying effort are gone! We are in an instant
communication media world and our adversaries have mastered the use of
it to their benefit. If our industry wishes to be around we had better
learn to do the same.
From our recent meetings with the
Alabama Black Caucus we know there are so many misconceptions about us
and about our customers and that with a little public communication
work, combined with our critically important lobbying effort, we can
start to change that image. We saw that first hand at our meeting in
Point Clear with the Alabama Black Caucus. Changes will not happen overnight, but over time we can make a
major impact. The flip side is that if we don’t make the
effort we know the
end result. We can no longer depend only on our effort in
Montgomery. We must work on this problem on all fronts or we are gone.
Thanks to everyone who has supported
us in this effort -- especially our members. There are so many to thank. This was truly a
team effort and everyone played a part. In particular, the folks at Big
(John and Robin), Michael Sullivan of the Lobbyist Group, Charles Hunter
and Heather Sellers of The Money Store and Roy Hutcheson at Title Cash
and our entire
CFL Board of Directors. They all played key roles in
making this a great success.
Now the real work begins. But, we are
sure off to a great start.
