From MTV & Gaming to Credit Unions: A Creative Manager’s Playbook

You know Ben Burke is, uh, no, sorry. Ben Bur is the creator of all the sound design and sound editing for Star Wars. Oh my God. So he's the one that did, I've heard of Star Wars. Yeah. That's a movie, right? You know that movie? There's space, right? Yeah. Something like that. There's, I think I've heard of that.

Some furry creatures and droids. Yeah. Guy with a lightsaber. A lot of beeping and bopping. Beeping and booping beeping. Yeah. So he created like all those noises and Wow. All those sounds and stuff. So what a legend.

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now, here's your host, Eric and Mike. Alright, thanks for joining us, everybody today on the pod. We have an amazing guest with us today, Mr.

Steve Vez. Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Appreciate you coming along here. You went to school at, I went to school at, uh, San Diego State. Okay. Back in the nineties and graduated with a degree in graphic design. In advertising. Okay. And then, uh, took a little bit of a break, and then after that I went to Academy of Art in San Francisco and I got a degree in.

3D design and modeling, which I do not use any of that right now. But, um, they did have a lot, a lot of elective courses, which kind of put me on the path of doing motion graphics, but also web design. Was it because that was like the blooming field back in the mm-hmm. Late nineties. Mm-hmm. So I took a lot of web design and then I took a lot of video classes.

Mm-hmm. Ended up using most, most of those for my career. Really didn't do much with 3D modeling. Thank God. Because that's a really hard, that's a lot. Yeah. That's lot's a very, it's really difficult. I always think they're like modern day Renaissance artists. Mm. You know, in certain ways. Interesting. All of that culminated with you then into your role now as the creative manager.

For the SAFE Credit Union here in Sacramento, one of the largest credit unions here in Sacramento, correct? Yeah. One of the largest ones in Sacramento. We were, I believe, we're the second biggest one in Sacramento. Okay. Next to Golden one. Yeah. So, uh, and been a Sacramento staple for over 80 years, but the credit union has, the credit union has evolved significantly.

Um, even so much, like even over the past, you know, I've been with say for eight years, almost eight years. Okay. And, um, even in that time, I feel like the. Credit union has evolved. Um, from a company perspective, the industries that I would was a part of when I was in San Francisco were either gaming or entertainment.

Okay. So, uh, I did some stuff for, uh, Cuca Sports, so NBC olympics.com. Mm-hmm. Um, I worked at, uh. MTV networks. So fun. Yeah, it was pretty fun. You know, we were underneath, uh, uh, comedy Central and um, Nickelodeon umbrellas. Nice. And so we were building websites for them and it's stuff like that. Wow. Um, super fun.

Like you just got to see some zany stuff, produce some really kind of fun content. Yeah. Uh, but it's weird though because like in those industries and, and, um, and then after that I went into gaming. I was a creative director for a, uh, that, for a gaming company that where we, uh, took content and then we localized it to different regions of the world.

Okay. So, um, and then that business model was, uh, it's called M-M-O-R-P-G. I don't know if you know that. It's multi mega player online place, people shooting each other. I think. Yeah, it's like a lot of stuff where you get the game for free and then you can buy like a wizard hat in there for, you know, in game, um, currency.

Okay. Anyway, so all that. Fun industries. Yeah. But you don't really like engage with the, the u the user. Mm-hmm. The end user, right? Mm-hmm. You're, you're producing content, but it's kinda like you throw it out there and you're like, wow, look. 20 million people saw this. Awesome. And then you just kind of move on to the next thing and just keep on doing that.

Um, so that was San Francisco, and then when I moved here, uh, I got laid off from my gaming job and so I needed to find a job here. And so, uh, I ended up working for a company that was, that did, uh, what they do, they did, they did insurance for private student loans, for credit unions that introduced me to the world of credit unions.

And then when that company. Dissolved or was no longer and I didn't have a job. I went, I was in Sacramento and that's when I heard about, you know, I was like looking and I saw SAFE, needed a ui UX designer. Okay. And um, you know, my first thought was like, you know. SAFE. You know, it's like you, you just don't really think of a credit union as being anything other than just like banking.

It's just like, this is just very rigid, you know, the most corporate of all corporate. Yeah. Like, yeah. It's like just corporate finance. Mm-hmm. Whatever. Not corporate finance, but just blah some not sexy. Right? Yeah. And um, that's sort of like the persona I had of SAFE. I went in there and I would say like.

You know, the marketing department instantly that I was a part of. Definitely not, not like that at all, you know? Yeah. It's like super cool. Really, really nice. People just di really diverse as well. Yeah. Um, just I was like, okay, this is like interesting. I just never thought the culture was like this and I hate saying all rah rah about it, but it does, it does feel like that though.

You know, like you, you do feel like the sense of like, you are really. You know, from a lot of the ways that we do stuff for marketing, we really are genuinely trying to help out. The community and the members so Well, and I think that's interesting. Credit unions by nature have that as their mission.

They're about that. Right? They're about their members. It's supporting them and, and providing, you know, and if to hear that the culture behind that is also like, that just makes sense. And it's refreshing to hear that it's not manufactured in a way it does sound very authentic, which is important, you know?

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's one of those things like you, um, I, you really wish you could. Market the culture of SAFE. Mm-hmm. And, and show that out to the community, going like, Hey, look, you know, uh, we are like a diverse group. We very much like respect, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, political beliefs. We respect religious beliefs.

We dis we respect a lot of the things that are a part of the Sacramento community. Hmm. And we just, um. We really value you as a person. Yeah. And we really value you as a member and, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's awesome. Stevie brought up an interesting point. Yeah. You said we, we, uh, your role is creative manager right.

At SAFE Credit Union. And I always thought of it as like an organization like SAFE usually has a creative director. Right. So there's differences in those roles. Maybe you can explain the differences a little bit. Sure. And then explain why you, your organization has chosen to. Have a creative manager and then utilize, uh, creative directors.

My role is to organize the way that the creative team gets assets the way that we. Distribute the work and, you know, for our normal marketing, uh, our more, our normal marketing assets that we deliver out to the world, right? Mm-hmm. So email, um, social, uh, banners of all kinds of different mm-hmm. And, and, um, you know how we do the website as well too?

Print material, print materials. Well, so stuff that's brochures, brochures, everything that's on the bridge. So our creative team manages that whole process of. Getting all those ideas, getting all those promotions. Mm-hmm. Making sure that, uh, we are adhering to the media or to the deliverables, whatever the specs mm-hmm.

Need to be delivered. And our role is to just make sure that those campaigns get launched properly. Okay. And the way that should be, you know, that the way we've all decided this company to do it. Yeah. Um, because, you know, there's a lot of stakeholders, right? There's product owners, um, there's strategists, there's.

Compliance has to look at it, you know, there's mm-hmm. There's a big team of that needs to do in order to get a product out. So, um, or get a promo out so when, when you're making things Yes. Whatever they may be for marketing. Right. And sales. Uh. Tools as it were. You've got a lot of other people involved in giving approvals and decision makers around maybe at the beginning, where it's strategy and we wanna go this direction.

Yes. And it needs to kind of feel this way. And then you've also got compliance and a lot of things on the back end. Once everything's done, you've also got people that need to. Look and review and approve all this stuff that way. Yeah, for sure. So it's, it's okay. There's definitely a balance of how everything gets produced, right?

Mm-hmm. So we have our copy and then the copy comes in. Then we have design, and then it has to get approved and make sure that it's compliant and making sure that. We are not breaking any laws. Mm-hmm. And making sure that we aren't talking about things, we're not leading on, you know, basic marketing and especially for the financial industry, you, there's a lot of triggers that could happen and you don't wanna lead on, you don't wanna lead on anybody to think that they're getting something when they might not be, you know?

So that's, yeah. Highly regulated. Highly regulated for sure. As it should be because, you know. The banking industry has had problems with that in the vast Well, trust is a huge issue with it. Trust is a huge issue. Yeah. So, and, um, so anyway, we just wanna make sure that our members and, you know, acquisitions or members, they, they feel, we feel good and they hear the messaging complete.

Mm-hmm. And that's why there's like a run of disclosures and mm-hmm. Whatnot. My role as a creative manager is to kind of make sure all that is humming along and getting produced and going out the door. How many people on, on the team that you're managing. Then there is, uh. Two designers and one copy. Okay.

Copy person as well too. Got it. And then we, so our team is, is that's the creative team. And then we have a team of strategists as well too. Team of strategists. Yes. I was thinking when you told me this before, I was so jealous. It's part of marketing that I feel like a lot of people don't think about.

Yeah. I think when people think about marketing, they always think about the visual. Components of it. Exactly. But there is, you know, there is a lot of analytics too behind the method of badness of what we're producing and why we're producing it, right? Yeah. So SAFE as leadership decides that we wanna do a promotion of some kind, or they want to do, uh, whatever it is that we were trying to get out to the public, that this is what we're promoting.

Um, so we drive a campaign. From that campaign, the strategists kind of like, look it over and just they strategize to how they're gonna, you know, the target audience, where we're gonna go. Um. They give you basically the roadmap in a sense, based on analytics and data of where Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's, it, sometimes it's from higher levels of leadership that decide like, we have this one product and we are going to do X, Y, and Z with this amount of money, and it's gonna go to a certain, um, segment of audience.

Gotcha. And then from that, you know, they, they. Talk to our marketing team and our strategists or VPs, um, will look at it and say, we strategize. Like, okay, well we're gonna make have an email campaign. With that, we're gonna talk about, um. We're gonna make a landing page that, you know, the email's gonna go to a landing page or we're gonna set up a journey in Salesforce, or yeah.

Whatever it is that we're gonna do. Okay. But it's just trying to make sure that the art assets, the art that we're producing, the marketing assets, um, kind of humming along, just making sure it goes, so, so when you're helping, you're kind of trafficking and, and proving and art directing a little bit. Right.

But then you said kind of the more tactical things that you're really involved in are run and gun shoot video and Yeah. I mean. You know, this year was a little bit different because we did a whole redesign of our website. Yes. And so that was in couple, and that was with our rebrand, that refresh that we just did as well too.

So that was a little bit more like, you know, I was knee deep in web design mode. Mm-hmm. You know, and just trying to figure out like. Colors and trying to figure out design, trying to figure out layout, you know, doing some research with what's out there in the industry. Mm-hmm. All that kind of stuff. Um, and just trying to make sure that.

We were really just trying to hold true to our brand identity. Yeah. And what we look like and being consistent across the board with that. So let's talk a little bit about creative direction then. Sure. 'cause that was something that you had mentioned. You don't really have creative direction in-house in a sense.

Correct? Yeah. Not in house. Um, you know, we, we. Went to an outside agency for that. Mm-hmm. And, um, they helped us out with our last two campaigns. So we had a, uh, one, we called it the U campaign. It was basically big old YOU, you know, you saw it everywhere. The billboards saw everywhere, billboards and stuff like that.

Saw blue and the, yeah. So yeah, so that was a, the U campaign. So that was from. The last five years, six years? Mm-hmm. It was like 2019 ish, I think. Yeah. And then we just recently went over and, um, changed our, like, our positioning to, uh, it's called, uh, for what's next. Okay. So, and then just the, the way that we produce imagery and the way that, uh, that we are creating assets now is more based off of, um, illustration as opposed to like stock photography.

Uh, the way that we've sort of. Sort of position positioned ourselves as well too, as a, you know, in the, in this credit union sphere of, of Sacramento. Yeah. You know, we wanted to make ourselves, you know, almost like, just look different, you know, just, just to kind of stand out, you know, sort of differentiating facts.

Yeah. Sort of zag a little bit. Right. Nice. So, you know, we're trying to, um, you know, like we've said, you know, there's, there's a lot. There's, we are the second. Biggest credit union, you know, in Sacramento there's one that's bigger, right? Yeah. And so we trying to make sure that we are differentiating ourselves, um, you know, makes sense in that industry, in that field.

So you rely on kind of the look and feel main creative direction from an outside source. And then once. Th maybe they step out a little bit and you take over control of that and then kind of direct it down that same street, let's just say, for an analysis. Pretty much that's, that's kind of how the, um, especially this last campaign mm-hmm.

Um, has gone was, you know, they, they kind of give this, the, the overall brand feeling of it. Mm-hmm. Like what is it that we are trying to say as a, as SAFE credit union. Mm-hmm. Um, and then from there, you know, from, from. A from, a little bit, from an art direction standpoint, you know, or a lot from that art direction standpoint when it comes to the illustrations that were produced.

We had a local artist produce nice illustrations as well. Love that by the way. And, uh, not ai. So keeping those local illustrators busy. I love, I mean, we still do have to rely on. Stock illustrations for certain things. Sure. But, you know, setting the tone for that, you know, type of illustration. Um, and the style, we, we definitely went for a local illustrator.

So you're driving the look and feel. You're doing a lot of the art direction. You're in my, in my translation inside my head. You're extending the look and feel of the brand. Correct. Yeah. So what we will do is, um. We, you know, there was a concept of SAFE for what's next. Mm-hmm. And then from there, you know, we had, we had probably about five or six con approved concepts that we were gonna use of different types of illustrations.

Mm. In kind of like a, like surreal settings, you know, um, that, that the characters in the illustrations mm-hmm. Were the way that they were presented. And so we would take those illustrations and then. Make 'em into campaigns. Mm-hmm. Or make 'em into a product campaign of like, okay, we're gonna take these two people that are looking through a door and we need to figure out how that's going to promote checking or something, you know?

So Yeah. Like right to a headlines or something. Right. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't, it probably wasn't the intention when we were making the Yeah. You know, initial concept. But then once we got the illustrations, we were like trying to figure out, okay, how does this, how do we marry the concept with product, with campaign?

Yeah. And trying to make this all feel like. It was intentional. Interesting challenge. Now, what's the thinking behind this? I, I, I It's, it's kind of different that you would outsource that mm-hmm. Kind of brand or campaign. 'cause these campaigns last for years, right? So you invest in that initially upfront with this outside source.

Um, what's the theory behind going outside for something like that? 'cause that seems like a pretty important decision for sure. To kind of, you know, come up with that initial look. But what, why, what's the thinking there? You know? Um. I think it's mainly because it's, it's great to get an outside perspective of, of your company or your industry or whatever it is.

Yeah. Uh, and kind of look at it from a different perspective other than internally. Right. We know, we know SAFE, we know we know our product, we know our members, and we know what we feel is, is the right direction to go. Sure. But there's sometimes I feel like with, with. Messaging or a different way that you wanna look at Yeah.

Um, the surrounding environment. What's going on in your community? What, what is the landscape of the financial community that's happening in Sacramento? Yeah. Good. And. I feel like, you know, as a, as a company, as SAFE as a credit union, we, you, you might miss some of that. You know, you might, you, you, you really do think about it.

Like we, we, you know, we help out our members, we help out our community, but sometimes I feel like an outside source might look at it a little bit differently and so. You know, when we reached out to, um, you know, the different agencies and creative directors that would help us out with that, they worked with our SVP and really just, you know, trying to narrow it down.

What is it that, that we need to do in order to make a. This stand out different than, um, whatever, uh, what every other credit union is doing right now. And it's sometimes it's that dynamic of when you're in the jar, you can't see the label. Yeah. You can't for sure. You can't read the label. So it's nice to kind of hire that outside perspective, bring that in, and then really, you guys run with the campaign and Yeah.

And y you know, we've, we definitely work with him a lot, you know? Mm-hmm. And, and just saying that. Hey, could you, you know, he'll, he'll come to us with some concepts of mm-hmm. Of sketches of the next round of illustrations. What do you guys think of this and this? And then, you know, we'll, we'll, you know, he comes in to us with blue lines or mm-hmm.

You know mm-hmm. All that kind of stuff. And then we'll make comments like, you know, can you, um, whatever, you know, can you make, can you make this person bigger, smaller, mm-hmm. Et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it's definitely not like, I think the initial concept of. Establishing, you know, the anthem of whatever it is that we're doing.

Hmm. Is, you know, two people in a room. Really just trying to hammer that out, which I think is actually pretty good. 'cause it goes with my whole brainstorming thing. Like, I feel like you just kind of need that concentration Yeah. Of higher level thinking leadership wise that we're gonna go and. Tackle this thing.

Well, I like the idea of this because you're basically layering on interpretations, which makes for a deeper Sure, uh, message. I think, you know, 'cause you're all pulling on the same rope in a sense. You're all going the same direction. But there's some sophistication to having those layers of interpretation.

One being the creative director working with the senior vice president about that. And then there's your team's interpretation of all that. So I think that that provides a really fresh insight. Yeah, I was, it was a, um. It was a really good process over the last year, uh, in, in, you know, that was, that was definitely for the, the, the rebrand itself.

Mm-hmm. Um, my role was to redesign the site and just try to get, align our branches, our site, our whole creative identity together, and so we kind of worked in parallel, I guess, so. Mm-hmm. It was, they were, mm-hmm. Doing the brand and I was trying to figure out the website proportion of it as well. And then, um, we all decided, you know, somewhere around.

February, March, we, we, we decide like we're gonna just launch this all at the same time and just nice, you know, come out with one big bang, coordin kind of thing, you know. So let's talk a little bit about the website, because I know you said you had, um, worked very hard on that. But it was interesting when we were doing kind of our pre-call on this, there was an interesting insight that I thought, oh, the, some of the genesis for that rebrand or right.

Refresh on the brand, started with research around the website. Take us back to the beginning, the very, very beginning of that story. Yeah, so our previous website that we had, we had, um, we had different colors on there, right? Mm-hmm. So we had green, we had purple, um, blue, and we, we just sort of use that. In various ways throughout our site.

No real rhyme or reason towards it. Mm-hmm. Just if we needed a purple button, we had a purple button, blue button. Blue button. No, no real like thought to it. Just, we just liked the colors or something. Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm not really sure the, the it, this direction was sort of established before I got there. I mean, we just sort of carried it through.

Mm-hmm. Um, then it's always been something we've not really. Totally liked, but we liked it for our site and we sort of liked how the colors just played, um, with marketing materials 'cause we had some options. And so, uh, when I became a creative manager. Back, uh, last year when I became creative manager, um, we had an open, we had a job opening for a full-time designer.

Huh. And so we, you know, put out our, uh, you know, put out the job description and we got some candidates. And one of our candidates was a, she worked at a branch in Roseville. Mm-hmm. And what we decided to do was we decided to give her some, you know, all of our candidates, some homework and you know, hey, can you design this, give it back to us, we will critique it, and then we will, you know, call you back.

So there was a full-time employee that worked at a branch, right? You brought her on, gave her more direction. Yeah. So she, so she was a candidate and we decided to look at her, her assignment that we gave her, and when we got her assignment back, the, the second one. There was a big, like, this is orange and blue, you know?

Mm-hmm. It's just like, these are colors that we don't really represent on our site, but that, that to us felt like that was her interpretation of what it must be like inside the branch. Yeah. And then whenever we took pictures inside the branch, it was always blue and orange. Blue and orange. Blue and orange, right.

Like consistently through all the branches kind of. Well, it's, it was. Mainly, I mean, blue is, we call it SAFE blue, right? Blue is the name staple color. Yeah. And then orange is always been sort of like the accent within the branches. Okay. Uh, I think it, part of it was because of an old school design where they wanted to put some, like poppies.

Oh yeah, I think so. Um, years ago, probably. Yeah, years ago. Which, uh, are very polarizing in amongst, uh, people that look at 'em. Some people really love the poppies. Some people really hate the poppies. What? It's the California state power. You can't hate that. I hate, I'm sort of anti poppy, but Oh my goodness.

Right here folks. You heard it first. I know. Here first, I do love California Poppies reminds me of my mom. So, you know, she loves poppies. So there you go. So the interpretation that we got from just her design was that, is that, you know, members probably go in here and look at everything and they probably think like, our brand is blue and orange.

Mm-hmm. Just flat out blue and orange, and so. It had that kind of light bulb moment of like, why isn't this being represented on our site at all? Mm-hmm. And why, why aren't we carrying this flavor of color throughout our site? Because our site has green, purple, you know, whatever. Mm-hmm. It's just none of that was relating at all, but it is there and that's the brand and that is what we have and that that is something that we gotta respect and that is the identity that was probably, that was established.

A while back. Mm-hmm. And those two colors, um, probably mean something to the members, you know? Mm-hmm. Or when they're seeing something. So when we came to the redesign, I played around with a little bit with like, well, what if we recolored it, you know, X, y and Z color? Just try to do something different.

And then it just always kind of pulled back was we just gotta put, we gotta infuse orange into our site. Mm-hmm. Um. It was, it was a hard, it was, it was, it was a weird thing because some people, like I said, aren't really fans of Orange. Mm-hmm. And how are we gonna do this? Orange is kind of a, a, like, this is, no, no offense.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to take the offense, Steve. It's hard. I'm fighting. It can't be an obnoxious color, especially on the web. Right. It's kind of an alarming color. It's an alarm. Different color, an color, you know, and um, and then blue's very dialed back, you know, and very, could be very mysterious, you know, and all this other kind of stuff, so, yeah.

Yeah. We, uh, had that moment where we're just like, okay, well let's, let's just decide that we are trying to put, we're gonna put blue into the website and, and make this work. Yeah. And make it work. And so, uh, we went through a di a bunch of different ways that we were gonna try to figure this out. And, and then on top of that, right, so there's, there's the color of blue and orange, and those are our brand colors.

Coming down the pipeline are these illustrations that are coming for our new brand? Oh yeah, yeah. That's coming. So we have to sort of think about like, in the same kind of path, in same path, glide path path. And so, uh, you know, immediately you're just like, okay, well those illustrations definitely would not fit in the old design.

Mm-hmm. And we gotta make 'em fit in this new design. So my analogy to myself, which I pitched to our SVP and my VP was like, our website needs to be this, which is essentially. We gotta pretend that like we are in an art museum. Hmm. And the, the design of the website is literally there to help describe things.

As you would see a placard on a, you know, in a museum. Interesting. And how you would describe something through fonts, you know, a steady, consistent font. Um, your, you know, your H ones, your, your headlines need to be headline one. Yeah. Headline ones, you know, should be consistent. Um, all the way down to H twos, h threes, and, uh, everything.

You know, it just needs to feel in my heart, like when I was designing, like it just needs to feel like we're stepping into a museum and. We're there to observe and just be there and hang out and observe some art. Mm-hmm. Observe some promotions that are going on our products, whatever, and not have it overwhelm, not having the design overwhelm, the, the art illustration that's there.

Nice. In theory. That was, that was, that was what I wanted do. And I, and I think we, we came to a pretty good conclusion as to what we launched, you know? And so I'm hoping that that translates what, you know, we, I was trying to achieve. Um, and I, and it's, it know, it's, it's had a pretty decent response towards it.

That's good. It definitely cleaned up the site a lot. Yeah. And not just from a visual perspective, but also our developers are, um, we have a great. Team of, of our developers that write the code for our site, and it give them an opportunity to kind of clean up our CSS, kind of clean up our content blocks that we use to help distribute, you know, the different information throughout our site.

So, um, it was a great experience and, and I have to, I have to admit, like the, it kind of the, the rebrand and then the website launched and the all kind coming together and then we launched it in June. Um. It went really well. And I think it was a lot of it was just, it felt like everybody was marching towards the same goal.

You know? That's a big part. And that, that gets back to kind of your job as manager. You have to kind of corral a lot of that feedback thinking, uh. Design, you know, critique, I guess you could call it. And it's, it's nice that you used the analogy of a museum to kind of get everybody aligned. And I think that's an important thing when we're talking about design or getting people aligned with anything really.

It's like really bring about some sort of a, there was an overarching theme that you used. That kept everybody marching in the same direction. Shows great leadership also shows great management skills, I think, because that's a part where things could fall off the rails a little bit. It's interesting that you, when you were talking about it too, you used the you campaign or the.

Next for what's next. Yeah, for what's next. Those are really important to kind of have those as shorthand in everybody's brain. Not that they switch back and forth or anything like that, but when you do say, okay, you is over now we're going for sure next. Yeah. You know, almost having a one word description for those that even helps, I think, get people aligned internally around.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. It, it definitely like. It puts sort of like finality towards something. Yeah. And it, it brings like the genesis of something else and it gets pe I think if it gets people excited about, or at least at our work, it gets people excited about, Hey, you know, there's this new thing that we're promoting.

Yeah. And there's a new voice and direction that we're doing and, and this is it. When you, um, start this, just one last point on this. When you start to do this development concept. Theme development with this creative outside creative director. Mm-hmm. Is it something where you start with just writing words down?

I mean, there's, the visuals come in very, very late, I'm assuming, in the process, right? Or is there a part of the process where you integrate visuals along with the words? He was definitely really good at, you know, sketching out ideas. Coming up with, you know, he's a big sketcher. Right? Okay. Like, he loves to sketch out ideas, he loves to play with words and everything, and I think it just kind of evolves from there.

Mm-hmm. You know, you just kind of have a few ideas and thoughts and ways that you wanna project things. Um. And, you know, if you were to see some of his earlier rough sketches, you could tell like, you know, there is definitely, there's an exploration in thumbnails and sketching towards getting to that process.

I mean, I'm sure you know this, that's part of a critical part of developing anything visual. For sure, for sure. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a big storyboarder believer. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Especially if it's for a project that I feel like needs to have some sort of like, uh, thought towards camera angles or anything like that, so.

Mm-hmm. I understand like mm-hmm. Wanting to have a visual representation of what you want to do? Yeah. Um, in just the loosest form, quickest form possible. I would do more video in, in previous jobs before SAFE, I would, you know, we would create some animations. Mm-hmm. You, it's, it's helpful to get the storyboarding process down because.

It, it helps like guide the way that you wanna set up your camera or your shot mm-hmm. And making sure that you are thinking about the elements that are inside frame. Yeah. And also movement of camera, right? Mm-hmm. Because you are taking a 2D element and you have to make the, the person or the user believe that it's in a world of some kind.

Yeah. And, um. When you're in that world, it could be a variety of ways you look at that world. You could be looking at it from the bottom, looking up from the top view you can look at from behind somebody. I mean, there's all different ways that camera represents, or camera angles represent, um, emotion, um, status, you know, all those kind of things.

So perspective. Perspective, yeah. All that, all that really fun ways that cinema is made. Um, it's so. I like to, before when I was doing storyboarding, I used to love to just, uh, you know, sketch out what I was, what my thoughts are behind the thing that I want to do. Yeah. Uh. That video that we showed you, the wolves, wolves among zombies.

What Steve, along with one of the previous guests, Sheila Johnson, who's been on the podcast before. Right, Steve and, uh, Sheila made a movie called Wolves Among Zombies. Nice. Yeah. And um, it was a AI generated title that was given to us. Okay. And as well as a synopsis. Um, and then from there, you, so just to kind of.

The whole, the whole process of it was that we were like, Sheila comes to me and she goes, um, myself and another, uh, videographer that we've worked with before, and she's like, guys, um, I don't know if you know who shaky Graves is. Um, he's a country musician. Yeah, country folk. Rock musician out of Austin, Texas.

Yep. Uh, so he's just a weird guy in general, but he's super excellent guitar player and just like, just. Awesome musician, but it's still weird. So he has this one contest. So he was, had this thing called, um, shaky Graves Film Festival where he, he has an AI generated machine. You, you put in a couple prompts and then you, um, it'll spit out a synopsis and a soundtrack, and from there you have to pick.

Songs and music from the soundtrack and you have to make a short film out of the synopsis and everything. And then it's like, go. So Sheila saw this and she was just like, guys, we gotta do this. And I was just like, it's like December right now, and Christmas is around the corner. Oh wow. And we have no, and this thing's due in like a month.

She goes, let's do it. So from there we, we, you know, you have to take a good hard look at yourself and go, can I really do this? And I'm like. This is gonna be not something in my schedule right now, but I really want to do this because it looks like a lot of fun. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so we, um, we thought that through, like what we wanted to do, um.

Thought of the zombie angle and all this other stuff. I used the storyboarding process to help establish like my camera angles, my push-ins, you know, like how I was gonna set up the figures, how I was gonna frame the shots and all that. Right? So yeah, we ended up creating it and then we won, which was really cool.

Yeah. Yeah. We flew out to Austin for that and um, just. It was, it was interesting. Have you ever been to Austin? Never been to Austin. Been to San Antonio though. Oh really? Love that. Yeah. But yeah, it was my first time in Texas. I'd never been to Texas before. So, um, really cool, cool story. Yeah. That's awesome.

I think it's important. Uh, thanks for the story on the movie. It's interesting. And yeah, we'll put the link in the show description. Sweet. Thank you. 'cause it does show, I think creative people in general, and this is a very creative centric podcast that we're having, which is interesting because, um.

Marketing leadership has a lot of different forms. It people enter marketing leadership from a lot of different angles. Yes. There's the creative angle, and I think that's where you and I both kind of entered into this marketing 'cause it's about communication, it's about clarity and all those things. But then there's also the marketing majors and the people who aren't creative, but.

Love marketing and understand the strength of it and their creativity is expressed in writing. And maybe something that I, I, I'm not a big fan of writing myself. I mean, I do it all the time. But You're a visual guy. I'm a visual guy. Right, exactly. So it was interesting to hear that story and I think, uh, it's important to have those creative outlets outside your job a little bit.

Speak a little bit to that and like, how does that empower you during your workday? Uh, you know. It, it's, it's kind of like, I feel sometimes, and I don't know if you have the same thing, but you know, you're always kinda like the tortured artist. Like you always feel like there's some sort of need to say something or write something.

Yeah. And you're constantly thinking of things. I don't even, like, for me, like I love movies. I'm always constantly thinking about can I make a found footage movie, like Blair Witch or something like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, um, or can I make an animation or, and then. I do kind of hone it back sometimes to my job in marketing, like, Hey, could I form something to help out my social channel?

Or whatever. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Could I mm-hmm. Create something like, whatever thought that I have that from a, uh, you know, a late night jotting down something on a notepad. Could I make that something into a marketing direction for my work? But yeah, I, I feel like I'm. I don't know if you're the same way, but just constantly thinking of things.

Yeah, and like trying to figure out. And it could be as mundane as like, you know, um, I'm looking at your bins right now. And I'm like, what font is that? You know, like, what, what is that font? It's always Gotham. You can always assume it's Gotham. That's our go-to for everything. So, yeah. Oh man. We have, I have, I'll tell you off mic of.

Funny story with Gotham, but what was interesting and why I really was excited to have you on the podcast 'cause you again are working at this level where you've got teams of people, you're not a marketing team of one, you have people, you have outside sources in a sense, from the per, from the, um, perspective of a marketing team of one.

You kind of had unlimited resources. You can, you've got strategists on staff, you've got designers working on, you've hired creative directors outside. You work with video teams to build all of the assets that you need. So it's great to hear that. 'cause there's an element that's, that may not, um, directly relate.

But there's an aspirational piece to it that if you are in a company as a marketing team of one, think in terms of growing, growing your company, I'm sure your boss wouldn't mind if you helped grow the company or the revenue or whatever that measurement is, right? Um, and so having these kind of ideas and concepts out there, I think are super powerful to help people visualize.

I'm here. But I want to go there and, and help them to grow into a bigger organization and things like that. Right. So let's talk a little bit about some of the concepts that are universal, that in your mind can help. And you said something earlier in our interview, uh, pre-interview, you can relate to the idea of a marketing team of one because you personally take on that role to help your team.

Reduce the load on, on other parts of your team when things start to get stressful. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So, you know, um, it is, it, it, you know, obviously that was an embellishment, right? Just saying like, you, you kind of take it all on yourself, right. You know, I'm a marketing team of one and I do it all myself, but, um, no, we, the team is, everybody supports each other.

Everybody does everything. Yeah. But there are times though, when you feel, and this, I feel like this happens to me, like, um. For example, with the web design portion of it, like you're kind of in your own little world. You're, you're, you're figuring out, uh, you know, you're doing your r and d about like other credit unions, other financial institutions, what are they doing?

And you're making wire frames, you're making, you know, you're trying to figure out the content and all that other stuff, but, so you do kind of feel like you are this sort weird marketing team of one, like you are the one. That is doing this project, and you are the one that needs to drive it. Mm-hmm. And you need to be the person that is ultimately responsible for it being launched, or it needs to talk to this person, or, you know, you need to get this approval or that approval.

You're project managing it yourself. Yeah. You're, you're creating the workload for yourself. So you, there's times you do feel like. You are a marketing team of one. And, and I try to say that loosely because if anyone from our team listens to that, they're gonna be, dude, you got all kinds of people, man. But, um, but like sometimes when I go on a video shoot, for example, um, we used to go on video shoots and I would be, it would be like myself, a producer, another cameraman, you know?

Yeah. It's just like all this other stuff. But you end up figuring out like. As we've done so many of 'em, and we've had to go to a lot of different places to shoot for, uh, different videos throughout our community for people that, you know, we've either gone given grants to, et cetera, et cetera. Um, you go out there and you're like, you realize like, I should try to reduce my footprint a little bit, you know?

Interesting. Like, I don't wanna come in there with just bags of blazing tripods lights, you know, because it could look like this, right? Yeah, yeah. Like you could really. Fill a room with equipment if you don't watch out. You know what I mean? Like extension cords. Talk about addictions. Yeah. Oh my god.

Photography equipment, right? Yes. I am a master of just collecting things that like, maybe I'll use that, you know, that kind of thing. So I've tried to reduce it down for myself as well as, um, our digital designer that we hired on. Yeah. Um, if we do go out, like how do we optimize our situation so that you are, you know.

Marketing team of one. You are going out there and you are, um, being efficient with the things that you have. Scrappy. Scrappy, right? Yeah. So it's like, I don't need to go out there with my pocket six K, black magic, you know? Mm-hmm. Camera and, um, big old, you know, lights and, and C stands mm-hmm. And all this other stuff.

Mm-hmm. I could literally get by with, um, a iPhone, um, a monopod, and maybe a light. That has a V mount on it so that I, you know, I could transport it around and Yeah, that's enough. You know, and that's enough to light a shot. Um, that's enough to get the message in. And, and also I feel sometimes that, um, you know, we, we, we go out to different communities and we capture, uh, we capture people that have, that had an impact.

Mm-hmm. Or, or something's impacted them. Yeah. Um, whether they're part of a nonprofit. And they go and, uh, they, for whatever reason, they need help from this nonprofit. Yeah. And so, you know, SAFE gives them, SAFE, gives this nonprofit a grant, and then the grant helps out individual. And then, um, a lot of times we'll get testimonials from the individual, you know, just trying to make a story out of it.

Tell the story exactly. Yeah. Tell the story of like, grant to nonprofit, to individual. And when we get to that story, um, when we get to that person. They aren't people that wanna be in front of the camera all the time, you know? Sure. And so, sure. That's tough. You're trying to minimize like how this is impacting them and just the intimidation of all the stuff Yeah.

Is a lot. I mean, I hate being in front of camera, dude. I dunno how I'm doing. You're doing great though, Steve. You're doing amazing. Um, I hate being in front of camera and I under, I, I. I just are very jealous of people that just get up there and they're like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, they can just do it.

Like it's absolutely just second nature to them. But when we do go out, and I do feel like sometimes when you are that marketing person of one, that you do really have to try to be mindful and. You know, you have to have empathy towards subject. Mm-hmm. And people, and place an institution that you're at.

Good. It's wild to see like the behind the scenes shots of some of that too. 'cause you're like, wow, it's just a guy on a chair. But no it's not. So Steve, you talked a lot about marketing teams have won internally and how they help move things on efficiently, move projects along efficiently and, and cleanly and, um.

Not scaring your subject matter or your subject if you're filming something like that. I mean, a lot of that applies probably to how you project that onto all of the different platforms that you use. Talk a little bit about that efficiency mindset. When it comes to choosing platform, because the olden days were like, we're gonna go billboard, we're gonna go tv, we're gonna go, everything that's out there.

Is there some sort of calculus that takes place internally within SAFE that says, okay, this is great. Let's just do it here. This is great here. Let's just do it there. Yeah. I mean there, there's a lot of decision making that goes to, you know, the way that we. Put our different assets across our channels.

Okay. And what type of it is, uh, we, you know, a big thing for us is of course, email campaigns. Mm-hmm. That we drop into Salesforce and create journeys out of 'em. And so our marketing ops team, I think that was our other team that I forgot to mention, but our marketing ops team is really good and efficient about trying to establish and tr also trying to be, uh, respectful of how, how.

People receive emails, right? Mm-hmm. Receive an email campaign, you know, and like, we don't do an all member send. Yeah. We, we really do try to be deliberate about who we're targeting, um, at a certain point. Nice. So in that respect, you know, the, the. Email platform is something that we really do try to optimize as much as possible to make it more efficient, um, and not, you know, not get our ma members angry at us.

Not to over communicate. Yeah. Not to over communicate. Um, but then on the other side of it, which you know, I kind of talked about before was like there's the social side mm-hmm. Which, uh, can be a little bit more zener and can be a little bit more lighthearted. Mm-hmm. And so we try to build content towards that audience as, as well.

Um, in trying to be, trying to know like your target audience is Instagram, so you gotta figure out something in the first six seconds. Yep. You know? Yep. And, um, we go longer than that a lot of times, but you know, really we do try to see if we can make our content match. The analytics that we need to kind of adhere to optimize for that platform again.

For sure. We get to that. Right. Alright. Alright. Well this has been great. This may be as a good place to stop the podcast, but let's do a little recap before, uh, we're done here. Your journey is really interesting. You're very creative design. That's why we can you geek out on design like all day long. It sounds like we come from a very similar place.

I know. I feel like we could talk about design forever, right? Forever. Yeah. It's, it is a problem. It is. That's okay. We're gonna deal with it. We're gonna get through this. Uh, but going back on your journey, it's been interesting to, to see from your perspective a lot of the creative thought, intention and process around.

Working with a credit union so big with having a big team. Mm-hmm. Um, there's a lot of decisions that you made that were, I love the, the openness in which you have approached not only how you bring uncreative direction, outsourcing it, that's pretty different. I like that kind of concept because you really do have that outside perspective.

It helps Right. With everything. You even opened up by bringing in a young designer. And did you hire the young designer? Oh yeah, of course. Staff. She's on the team right now. Staff. Okay, great. That's exciting. Yeah. Um, so that she gave you some interesting insights into how to clarify. Oh, she's, she's really good.

She definitely keeps me in check a lot with decisions and, and, um, you know, keeping the design process as honest as it can be. So she's, she's, she's excellent. You talked a little bit about. Staying creative and staying inspired by doing outside project. I love the idea. The film is amazing. Oh, thanks.

Award-winning. Of course. Yeah. You should do, you should do one with us next time. I'll call me up. Yeah, I'll, I'll talk to my agent and, uh, I, I, I, I wanted to make two observations. One, let's just look at the socks. Oh, right, please. Those are rolling Stone socks. These are stone socks. Yeah, you're up in the sock game, which I appreciate, you know, it's a big part of the pod it, so, yeah, I didn't know that.

And, um, I, I, you know, I love their, I love this whole, uh, shoes and socks and just Oh, oh, thank you. Yeah. The, the laces that don't really do anything, but they look awesome. Unfunctional. Yes. Unfunctional Laces. Yeah. Is that part of the, their branding titles on Functional Lace Shoe? They have like four or 500 different models, so yeah.

I don't know. Before we, but there's a, yeah, there's a, I got a gift for you, man. Okay. And I, wow. I don't know, I don't remember if you remember me talking about it. It's not, it's not a light, but, okay. Um, here, it's, it's, it's really weird wrapping, but, um, I love the wrapping by the way. This is something that, you know, I always love to save the wrapping and yeah, you get right into and save for something else.

If you need this back, I don't need to steal. I do need the bag back. Oh my goodness. Look at this. Look at this. Do you remember? Yes. Now I remember. Yeah, so those are eggs from our farm that we have. I have it and a little lavender on there. I believe those are probably. Like, literally like a couple days old, so I don't know if you know about eggs.

Those eggs could stay out for a little while. Okay. They don't, they don't need to be refrigerated unless you wash 'em. If you wash 'em, then you gotta put 'em in the refrigerator. So just let you, interesting. We're learning a lot here on the podcast. I, I hope that's all correct information. I am like not a farmer at all.

I just kind of go by, I need to look at these things because I know Yeah. Oh, please do. Yeah. You've got a farm. And, um, so look at that. That is gorgeous. Look at, look different colors on that. Um, that's really cool. Thank you. That is all from my like. Uh, so this is totally my wife doing like the, the, the, the nice little twine and lavender.

I was just like, I'm going, I'm gonna bring him some eggs. And I was like, ready to bring over like the, the, the, just a bag, just a box zip. That's like the dude way of doing here, man, here's some eggs. And like, um, but ended up, no, she was just like, no, stop. Got curtains, entwine, and lavender. So she sounds like an overachiever and I appreciate that.

Uh, she's in finance, so Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, man. That's really, I really enjoyed this. This was super fun, dude. Yeah, thanks so much for being on the pod. Yeah. Appreciate it. And uh, thanks, everybody else. Thanks. Yeah, thank you.

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