Do You LUV Your Brand?
September 12, 2014As someone who travels a lot for work, news from airlines always gets my attention. Southwest Airlines is doing an overhaul of their logo, their paint jobs on planes, their snack bags…virtually everything associated with their brand. We see the same images and messages all the time and after a while we stop noticing. I always think of Charlie Brown’s teacher when I hear a friend of mine threaten her kids with some form of punishment (which never happens, they still get ice cream after failing to listen to anything she says). The same “you’re going to bed early” or “no technology if you don’t do X” or some similar thing is held out as a consequence, yet there are never consequences. In order for her kids to take her seriously or for companies to get us to pay attention again, sometimes a change is required. Southwest is doing exactly that with their makeover of their logo and branding efforts.
Recently, I met with someone who is involved in the marketing/branding area of a big company and as corny as it sounds, we talked about her financial life much in the way that we’d talk about the branding efforts of a corporation. Her “financial brand” at the time we spoke was one of disregard and decisions that ranged from sketchy to poor. If a friend needed a travel buddy for a trip to a beach anywhere in the world, she might skip a car payment to buy a plane ticket. If someone wanted to go out to a really expensive dinner, she might wait an extra pay cycle to send her check to her cell phone provider. In her own words, her brand was “fiscal irresponsibility.”
Since that’s the area she knows inside and out, we talked about her financial life from the perspective of observer, not participant. We talked about what changes would need to be made in order for her to change her financial brand from fiscal irresponsibility to “financial wellness.” It was a very fun and lighthearted conversation that dealt with her financial life like we were solving a business problem, which we were…
As we delved into what looked like “financial wellness” to her, it looked a lot like the Financial Finesse definition of financial wellness. She was trying to move from chaos and living beyond her means into a low stress, living below her means pattern of behavior. When we started talking about it from a behavioral aspect “This is what it looks like today vs. this is what you want it to look like,” I could see light bulbs going on in her head. She had a moment where, out loud, she yelled “A-Ha!!! I get it now!” That may have been my first a-ha moment that came with real sound effects and a high volume.
We plan to meet again to review her progress in the coming months, but between now and then she has committed to:
- Pausing for a minute before making any impulse purchases. That was her single biggest “hot spot” financially. She loves to shop and has lived with the thought process of “If I have room on a credit card, those shoes are within my budget.” A hilarious line, but one that has some danger associated with it.
- Cooking (one of her hobbies) more and going to fine dining establishments a bit less.
- Paying down and paying off all of her credit cards, starting with the highest interest rate cards.
- Increasing her 401k contribution to the maximum that the company will match (6% in her case, from her 2% level at that time) and then increasing it to the maximum that the IRS will allow when she pays off her credit cards.
With her new brand of “financial wellness,” I see great things in her future. A question you can ask yourself is “What is my current personal financial brand?” If it’s what you want it to be, that’s awesome! If not, how do you want to re-brand your financial life?