Updated: October 19, 2009
READ ABOUT NEWS AND EVENTS THAT IMPACT CFL
MEMBERS.
BORROW SMART CO-SPONSORS ALABAMA BLACK CAUCUS MEETING.
October 19, 2009. For the third
year in a row we have co-sponsored the Alabama Black Caucus annual event
reception.
Click here
and read the full story about this exciting event that has paid
incredible dividends for our industry and our members.
PAYDAY INDUSTRY ASSAULT IN ALABAMA - AN UPDATE.
October 5, 2009. It is quite clear
the assault against our industry (described below)
has now moved from the meeting of September 24th to the press, as we
fully expected. If you have followed Borrow Smart for any length
of time you know from our many comments that this assault against us
is directly from our adversaries play book. That is, the assault
begins by motivating local adversaries (Arise on September 24th) and
then going on the attack against us in the press (as seen here)
and finally moving in for the kill in the statehouse. Of course,
this can evolve over months and years. If Arise and their national
cohorts are committed to this assault for the long term, you can expect
much, much more. The big question is this: Is this whole
exercise a trial balloon to see
what support our adversaries can garner and to test the industry resolve, and
more important, the ability of our industry to fight this self-serving
attack? It will not take long to determine the answer this
critical question.
Here is a summary of our response since learning
of the Arise conference less than ten days ago:
-
Met with key legislators who were on the panel
ahead of the Arise meeting on September 24th (click
here).
-
Attended the Arise conference on
September 24th.
-
Launched Borrow Smart educational training in
the Montgomery market. The first event was on THE VERY DAY
of the Arise Summit and generated positive media coverage as we
expected (here and
here).
-
Responded rapidly and succinctly to the many
press articles from our adversaries where we felt it was appropriate
to respond (here).
-
Co-sponsored the annual Alabama Black Caucus
event where we had an opportunity to get "up close and personal"
with key legislators who may be affected and motivated by this
event.
All of the above has occurred in less than fourteen
days from the day we first learned of this event! We are confident that we are
prepared to deal with this -- at last for the present. We may need to do more if this moves to another level, but we have the pieces in place today to react, as you can clearly see. And, keep this critically important point in mind, our
adversaries may determine from our swift and strong response that this
may not be a cake walk as it has been in most other states. They
may just decide to pick another fight on another issue and drop this
one. Either way, we are prepared.
As we have always stated,
the days of our industry only having a lobbyist program are long gone.
Look at this event -- none of it involved a single lobbyist. This is a public
battle and it must be fought on the public front, which is exactly what
we have done. If we wait until our adversaries build up a
groundswell against us and then move to the statehouse it could very
well be
too late! The time to deal with this is right now -- not after the
bills are introduced. Look around at the other states, once the
issue arrives in the legislature it becomes significantly more difficult
to deal with. And, if it gets that far and does not succeed at
first rest
assured they will continue to come back year after year. So, we
must make every effort to deal with this now.
Count your lucky stars that the industry leaders
in Alabama stepped up well in advance (2007) to make
these preparations, which you can now see are so obviously needed.
Be glad you operate here and not some other non-Borrow Smart state.
There is absolutely no way we could have launched any meaningful response
in such a short time if we had not established Borrow
Smart. It would just be impossible to respond in a matter of days
as we have done. Absolutely
impossible! Further, we believe this effort may send a message to the
other side to move on to another state without a Borrow Smart
(deterrence!).
Our adversaries have clearly had much better luck outside of Alabama. We hope they heard
us! We shall see.
ALABAMA ARISE CREDIT SUMMIT UPDATE.
September 26, 2009. The Alabama Arise Short Term Credit conference was held on Thursday,
September 24, 2009. We attended most of the conference but
were "discovered" at about 3 PM and asked to leave, which we did.
The bottom line is that this was a well organized
and incredible gathering of local and national activist who have one
goal -- the elimination of payday lending. You can
click here for a full
report.
WHAT BORROW SMART HAS DONE
We have taken action. First, we visited two of the three legislators on the
panel in advance of the meeting. We were received with mixed results.
Representative Busky invited one of his legislative friends,
Representative Kennedy in his adjoining district in Mobile, to attend
the meeting with him. They were both receptive to our discussions.
Senator Ross was not overly receptive to our point of view, but did
listen to our position. He was also the most vocal against our industry
at the Arise meeting.
We have not taken this situation lightly at Borrow
Smart. In fact, it is potentially the most significant challenge
we have ever seen
against our industry here in Alabama. We have undertaken several
public initiatives as a result. The first was a TV appearance on
the largest station in Montgomery on the day of the event (click on the
image to the right). The second is that we have scheduled a financial education
seminar on Tuesday, September 29th at one of the larger high schools in
Montgomery. We fully expect this will generate a good bit of media exposure
and support for what we are doing as we have seen from previous events
(as seen
here). In fact, that is the focus of
the TV story above. Thirdly, we will attend and co-host the Alabama
Black Caucus annual event later in the week (Thursday, October 1st).
We will have an opportunity to meet in a social setting many of those
who do not fully understand what we do and give them the "other side" of
the story and tell them what we are doing for consumers in their
districts. This is the third year we have hosted the meeting and
it has been an incredible event for us. This year's meeting has
sure taken on a new meaning, though. Scroll down to the next story
to read more about the Black Caucus meeting.
CONCLUSION
We have met internally to discuss the impact this event might
have on our industry. We believe it can be devastating if Arise
and their cohorts are able to gain traction on their action plan.
We are not sure they can do this in an election year with many other
critical issues facing our state. To be honest, we just are not
sure it will gain momentum -- at the moment. It can all
change in an instant, though. If Arise and their partners, who are
many and have tremendous resources, are able to generate grass-roots
support in the local communities they will make significant
headway against us. We clearly believe it is possible. We
are not, however, sure it will happen. The best way to describe
the situation is we are sitting on a truck load of dynamite at the
moment. If someone manages to find the fuse we are in big trouble!
Our strategy then, at the moment, is to continue to do all
the things we do at Borrow Smart and to take this time to build our
action plan in the event the Arise plan begins to take on a life.
We clearly can not wait until Arise and their cohorts have begun a
groundswell against us. We must be ready to go or be ready to
close down. It is really our choice.
Finally, two things are incredibly important at
the moment. We need everyone in the industry to support us in this
effort, not just a few. That is we need more members. So,
please do all that you can do to encourage owners you know to join us.
It is real easy. Just click
here. Second, we need to do more than just be prepared to work
in the media. We need to be prepared to fight it out in the
communities and to work smarter than our adversaries with their well
proven advocacy action plans.
We will report back later.
BORROW SMART WILL CO-HOST THE ANNUAL BLACK CAUCUS EVENT BUT WITH A
WHOLE NEW AND CRITICAL MEANING THIS YEAR.
September 8, 2009. Borrow Smart will again co-host the annual Black Caucus event to be held
in Point Clear, AL on October 1st. This event has been a great
opportunity for us to make important friends and spread the Borrow
Smart
word to a targeted group of Alabama legislators. This group
is important because in the past they have not always heard the
"real customer side" of our story and they have not always understood or much
cared for our business. Remember, at Borrow Smart we represent the
customer side of our industry with important messages not previously
heard from the press and others. This is an important message for
our friends to hear and that is what we do. We have made many good
friends at this event in the past and we expect this year will be no
different.
Click here to see reports from prior year's events.
This event takes on a significant new meaning this
year,
though. Read the post directly below to see the threat we
now face from what could be a relentless, national assault against our
industry right here at home in Alabama. Note that the legislative
participants on the panel are all minorities who have not always been
our friends. Some of these same people will attend the the Point
Clear meeting. More than ever before, we need to communicate our
customer's voice and not some self serving industry "we do good" message
that we know does not work. And our adversaries need to hear it
from us and not from a powerful national group like the CRL from
Washington DC with incredibly deep pockets and almost unlimited
resources!
We want to again alert you that this event in
Montgomery has the potential to trigger a massive assault against us.
We know this well from watching it unfold in almost 18 other states over
the last two years. This is how it all begins. And, we
probably do not need to tell you how it ends. Just look at Ohio,
Virginia, Georgia, Florida and a whole host of others. You will see!
NEW INITIATIVE AGAINST THE INDUSTRY IN ALABAMA.
September 2, 2009. We have just learned
of a conference that will take place in Montgomery
on September 24th. You can click
here and
here to
see the flyers that describe the conference. At the moment we are
treating this as a major event! Look at the roster of national
groups that are attending this conference and we believe you will
understand why. We are planning our course of action and will
report back soon.
BORROW SMART MARKS FIRST YEAR IN BUSINESS!
April 26, 2009. Depending on how you count, Borrow Smart has been in business
for almost a full year now. What started as a bold idea in late
2006 by a few industry leaders in Alabama brings us to where we are today.
Read on for a full report.
We
began our organizational effort in January 2007 and by May of 2007 we
were incorporated, funded, had dues paying members who were fully committed and
had a
governing management team. From that point on, we were engaged.
We launched our public initiative in October of last year.
You can read
the launch report here. Suffice it to say the launch was an
incredible success.
Since then we have exceeded our expectations beyond anything we ever
anticipated. Here are the highlights of our activities and accomplishments so far:
-
Launched a well received, statewide media campaign that
announced Borrow Smart to the citizens of Alabama which included our
customers, legislators, regulators and the general press.
-
Held highly successful press conferences announcing
Borrow Smart in Montgomery and Birmingham.
-
Received many positive press reports on our imitative
that represented a 180 degree turn from the old press stories of the
past.
-
Launched an interactive web site with
professionally produced customer video testimonials and an
interactive store locator.
-
Received reports from key legislators on recognition of
and accolades for Borrow Smart Alabama.
-
Held incredibly positive editorial board meetings
with the states two largest print publications -- The Birmingham
News and The Montgomery Advertiser.
-
Launched advertising in the state-wide Community ReInvestor magazine to promote wise use of our services
to one of our target consumer groups.
-
Mounted challenges to many negative and inaccurate
press reports about our industry with corrections and/or positive
responses from most.
-
Worked with local TV and print reporters on
industry stories that resulted in an entirely different tone about
our industry. A tone we have ever seen in the past.
AREN'T OTHERS DOING THIS?
We don't think so. Certainly, no one that we know of has launched
a total campaign that includes:
-
A local, grass-roots communications effort
closely coordinated with a local lobbying effort.
-
A consumer oriented effort as opposed to an
obvious industry "we say this about ourselves" approach. The consumer
oriented name says it all --
Borrow Smart.
-
Production of television quality customer video testimonials
that tell unique, real and very touching customer stories on the use
of our services.
Click here to view testimonials.
-
A state-wide, paid multi-media communications
program.
-
A knowledgeable, "media friendly" industry
spokesperson (Charles Hunter) for a common, consistent industry
consumer oriented message.
-
Professionally produced in-store materials
identifying our members as Borrow Smart stores.
Click here to see store kits (be sure to scroll down to see all
components of kit after you connect).
-
Representation of the "short term lending
industry" which includes both payday and title lending --
not one or the other, but both.
Borrow Smart had many critical elements
that had to come together in perfect
order to be successful
(read about them here). Had any one of them been missing or
not executed properly the results could have potentially backfired. But,
thanks to an incredible team of folks that included Big Communications,
Michael Sullivan and others, it all come off with remarkable results.
Others outside of Alabama have done parts of our Borrow Smart program
and CFSA has a highly successful, broad based national program for
payday lending only. But no one has put it all together as in
Borrow Smart with a local, grass-roots, consumer focus. That is
local, as in "where the decisions are made." The Borrow Smart effort has made incredible
inroads for our industry in our state. Inroads and results that
have never been made before. Not by CFSA or anyone else.
If
you doubt what we have accomplished look at the many other states that
depended only on a local lobbying effort. Some went a step further
and simply hired a PR firm to send out press releases to tell the industry story or
some depended on a national campaign to save their hides. Do
a little research and see where most all of those states are today or
just click here.
They are surely not where we are! We believe a
totally integrated campaign makes the difference.
As we have said on many occasions, a local grass
root effort is critical and we must represent all of the short term loan
industry -- which includes both payday and title lending. We
did that. No one else did it and we firmly believe the results
speak for themselves.
WHAT WERE THE RESULTS?
Quite simply, we believe the results speak volumes
about what we have accomplished. Our results can be measured by our industry
perception along with the press stories and articles that shape our perception.
These were noticeably changed by Borrow Smart. There is still much
to do, but we've made a significant first step. Another key
measurement is the lack of adverse action against our industry.
Adverse action that results from the continuous one-sided press attacks
and the resulting perceptions that follow directly as we have seen so many times in the past.
Go to our affiliate association
here and read all about what we really accomplished this year. The proof is in the pudding, and
the pudding was served in a full bowl -- at least for this year.
Soon
we will get to start all over again.
LEGISLATIVE REPORT FROM LAST WEEK.
April 21, 2008.
Click here and jump over to the TPCA
web site for an update to last weeks legislative activity.
SURVEY RESULTS FROM MEMBERS.
April 21, 2008. Last week we sent out a survey with several questions about our next
meeting and about how we keep our members informed.
Go here
to see the results. Thanks to all who participated. We will
get back soon with an action plan.
BORROW SMART TO ATTEND BARRON PRESS MEETING ON PAYDAY LEGISLATION.
April 7, 2008.
Click here to go over to News at our
affiliate TPCA site for the latest.
MORE ON THE BORROW SMART ALABAMA LAUNCH! November 12, 2007.
The good things continue to roll in following
our Borrow Smart launch. Here are a few items that may be of interest:
-
Borrow Smart is a hit at the Alabama Black Caucus
meeting
-
Surprise report from an Alabama State Senator
-
Borrow Smart store kits
-
A great meeting with Birmingham News editorial
board
-
New Borrow Smart initiatives
-
New Borrow Smart members
You can read more about the recognition our
members are receiving as Borrow Smart members from some very important
and influential groups and individuals. They know about our
members because we tell them and because they are
visiting our web site in droves.
Click
here to read this special, members only full report.
BORROW SMART ALABAMA HAS SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH! October 22, 2007.
Our press conferences and our launch are now
done! They were a whopping success. See
our full report
here. Below is a list of some of the media coverage following the
press announcement of our
Borrow Smart launch:
TV Ad
Radio Ads
Montgomery Advertiser
Birmingham News
Our Reply To Birmingham News
Google Search On The Web
TESTIMONIALS ARE ON THE WEB! October 19, 2007.
Our first CFL project is now an overwhelming
success thanks to all of you and to our customers.
GO HERE
TO SEE.
TESTIMONIAL TAPING IS COMPLETE. THE HEAVY LIFTING IS DONE! August 28, 2007.
We have finished the taping and it came off very
well -- thanks to Robin at Big Communications! Check here soon for
when the finished product will be available. It will, at a
minimum, be several weeks.
NAMES & SCHEDULES ALL WRAPPED UP FOR TAPING THIS WEEKEND. August 21, 2007.
We have finished the testimonial selection and
schedule for taping.
Go here for a
list of those who will visit Birmingham this weekend for the taping
session. Big Communication has put together packets for each
customer and they have been mailed to the store from which each customer
was referred. The customers have been instructed to stop by the
stores to pick up their travel package before coming to Birmingham.
Click here
to see the welcome package and what is included for the customer.
We've tried to think of everything, but if you see we've missed
something, please notify Robin immediately and we will get it fixed.
Robin has been in constant communication with the
customers so they should have all the information they need. If,
however you or your customer need more information please contact Robin
at robin@bigcom.com or
205-322-5646 ext. 103.
As you can see from the welcome package, this
should be a fun weekend for everyone involved -- not to mention being
very productive for our CFL effort! We are anxious to get reports
back from you all on what your customers thought.
Click here and drop us an email and let us know.
There are a couple of additional items to mention.
First, we do plan to notify those who were not selected and thank them
for their effort. Second, we are several weeks away before we see
the finished testimonials. We have a few others who we may record
in the next week or so and afterwards we will need time to edit and make
them ready for distribution.
TESTIMONIAL PROGRESS & UPDATE. August 13, 2007.
We are almost there. Robin has set a date
for August the 24th and 25th as taping dates in Birmingham. About
two-thirds of the target prospects are committed to the session.
We will publish a list as soon as we have the full list of prospects
committed. We expect that to be in the next day or so.
TESTIMONIAL PROGRESS & UPDATE. August 7, 2007.
We are getting very close to our short list of
testimonial prospects for taping. But, we are not quite ready to
publish them. We should be ready within a few more days.
Robin has been in constant touch with all of the prospects and is
working toward a date for the taping. The dates are in August and
are Friday and Saturday the 17th and 18th or the 24th and 25th.
The plan is to tape on Friday and Saturday to accommodate our customer's
schedule. We will get back to you in a few days.
We know these are going to be incredible!
TESTIMONIAL PROGRESS & UPDATE. August 1, 2007.
Thanks to everyone who submitted testimonial
stories! We have over 60 customer testimonials that were submitted
by our members. There are some really tremendous stories. We
have always said our customer's value the service we provide. That
clearly comes across in what our customers have told us during this
project. We know we will have some great videos from this effort!
At the moment, we are in the process of contacting
the prospects and making a short list of those customers who are
interested in telling their story on video. We expect this process
will take at least another week to 10 days. We will get you
information as soon as we complete this next phase. In the
meantime, some of you may hear from Robin Oliver with Big Communications
in connection with the names and stories you submitted.
We will get back to everyone in about ten days.
