November 23, 2007
Since launching Borrow Smart over a
month ago, we have had discussions with several other states about
the program and how it might work for them. We believe
Borrow Smart, or something like it, lends itself to a national model.
This report provides a background for our program and what our
experiences have been to date with Borrow Smart Alabama.
OVERVIEW
In a few words, Borrow Smart is a local, grass-roots
comprehensive communication program
for the short-term lending industry that focuses on our business and
on our customers. There are several crucial points to make
about the program and our industry. First, it is our strong belief that the days of
just having a
lobbying presence in the statehouse or a good relationship with
legislators to preserve our industry are rapidly coming to an
end. Everyone clearly agrees government relations is critically
important to the preservation of our industry -- probably more so
today than ever before! But when you look around at our
adversaries, you quickly see they have positioned themselves far
beyond this to go directly to the public. They have, in
short, become media savvy experts. See this
report
regarding just one such example or read the articles
here and
here
that show how they have positioned themselves. If we continue to
ignore this rapidly changing and quite effective trend, we do so
at the risk of our very survival. Look
around at some of our peers who all had a great lobbying
effort but virtually no local grassroots, media or PR support to
provide cover for our advocates and fence sitters in the legislature (GA,
NC, DC, NH, FL, PA, AR, SC, VA, OH, NM and OR). Most all of
these states had significant governmental affairs (lobbying)
programs, but where are they today?
They are gone, severally wounded or under major assault! And there will be more in the crosshairs in the
months and years ahead!
Second, we firmly believe that any
effective communication effort must be a local,
grass-roots effort. National communication programs are
essential, but most critical is communication to the public and
decision makers on a local basis. Why is this so?
Simply, this is where the first decisions are made. As a noted
politician once said, "all politics are local." Surely, when
it comes to our industry, nothing could be more true.
Third, it should be broad based.
By that we mean it should include all short-term lenders and not
restricted to just a few large national chains. Certainly,
the national chains are important participants, but so are the local
companies who live, vote and serve locally. Both are important
to the long term success of this program. We have clearly seen
this in our one-on-one meetings with the press.
Finally, we assembled a premier
team to develop and launch Borrow Smart. This team represents years of experience in government
affairs and lobbying in our industry, public relations, advertising,
marketing and
the use of technology to coordinate and communicate time critical
issues among our members and to the public as well.
All of these factors and considerations
went into the creation of Borrow Smart.
We believe it (or something like it) will work for other states as well. Read
on for more.
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WHAT IS BORROW
SMART?
Simply stated, Borrow Smart is a grass-roots, local
statewide public relations and mass communication program designed to communicate the truth about our industry
(short term lending). It is about the consumers who use our
service and is targeted directly to the public. Additionally,
it is designed to put in place programs that will protect
and educate consumers from abuses they might encounter in the
use of our services. See our
mission statement here. These services are available
only at
Borrow Smart approved lenders who have pledged to support
our mission and our
Code of Fair Lending.
All of this is done in close
coordination with government affairs at both the state and local
levels.
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WHO IS THE
TARGET AUDIENCE
There are numerous targets of the
Borrow Smart programs. They are:
-
General public
-
Media/press
-
Legislators, local elected officials & regulators
-
Customers (existing and new)
-
Borrow Smart members (existing and
new)
It is critical that all of
these targets are reached. Considering the complexity of
reaching multiple targets, the program is a multi-media effort and
somewhat complex. Certainly, in order for this program to be
successful in establishing effective communication to and between
these targets and groups it is crucial that the program be
professional in every sense, well planned and orchestrated with
precision.
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BORROW
SMART PROGRAM
DESCRIPTION
First and foremost, Borrow Smart is a total
communication program. It is designed to support and work
closely with an existing government
affairs effort. Its purpose is to communicate the truth about our industry
directly to the public, to the media, to the legislators, to
local elected officials and to the regulators. With Borrow
Smart others will no longer shape our industry message for us with
the devastating consequences we have seen in the past.
We start from the basic assumption that there is a strong government affairs
effort and trade group(s) in place. Borrow Smart in no way replaces this effort,
but complements and builds on these programs through public
communications. Borrow Smart is not
just PR, not just paid advertising and not just one program.
The program is a total, fully integrated communication effort
that is orchestrated to precision. The components, the message and
the delivery are essential to the program's success.
The Borrow Smart program consists
of:
You can see this is not just a
"PR program." It is a totally integrated communication
package. Any effort that does not include
all of these elements and carefully delivered would be pouring money down a black hole.
We strongly advise against launching such a program without all of
these elements present. We especially warn that a program as
complex as Borrow Smart should not be attempted by a team who is not
well experienced in dealing with these issues.
Don't waste the money, or even worse, don't make matters potentially worse
with a poorly crafted program. The wrong message or a
misinterpreted message could be devastating. Borrow Smart is like making a cake.
If you miss an ingredient, mix them in the wrong proportions or cook
them up at the wrong temperature you end up with a big mess!
Our Borrow
Smart effort has cost us less than a
typical yellow page ad in the local telephone directory (per store).
Obviously, Borrow Smart has significantly more impact on the future of our
business than a yellow page ad.
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THE BORROW
SMART MESSAGE
Borrow Smart is a customer focused
program. It is about our customers
and why they use us as compared to other, less attractive
alternatives. When you hear and see real customers telling
real stories about why they chose us it is hard to come away
unimpressed. Borrow Smart is not an industry "tit for
tat" response against our adversaries stories, and the negative
baggage that goes with that. It is a consumer program that is
hard to bash. The name tells it all -- Borrow Smart.
We have all known for years that our
customers value our service. However, the media and our
adversaries have painted
our customers as the dregs of the earth (along with us).
How many pictures and stories have you seen where some poor soul
was trounced upon and forced to take a cash advance or title
loan? Well, those stories exist but we all know they
represent a very minute section of our customer base. For
every story on the front page of USA Today, your local newspaper
or on TV there are hundreds of others who have a very positive
story to tell about their experiences with us. And, they
have good, solid logical reasons for choosing us over the
alternatives. These stories are never told by anyone in
the public.
That is the story we are telling and it is working!
So, again, our focus is on the consumer and
their experience with us -- not on APR. We show in a very
plain, simple and touching ways why our customers continue to choose
us, as compared to bouncing checks, turning off utilities, or other
higher
cost alternatives. And, we show real customers
who are hard working, bright people tell the public in their own
words why they value our service and why they do not want our
industry to go away. These
stories are true stories
and ones that we all hear every single day. These stories have
never been told before (except to us) and these stories make
a dramatic difference to our audiences when incorporated into
the overall Borrow Smart message.
And, last but certainly not least,
we have a mechanism in place to develop proactive public
communication programs and stories that continue to tell our side of the
story. We view our current message as a work in progress
and it will change as circumstances evolve. With Borrow Smart
we are no longer held hostage to
our adversaries media capabilities and in many cases a press
that fully supports them. We plan to speak the truth about
our industry and about our customers on a continuing basis and
to respond quickly to misinformation that is placed in the media by
those who oppose our business..
In short, just as we have professionals working for us on the
legislative front we have now done the same on the public
communication front as well. We now have a seat at the public
"press table."
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SUGGESTIONS
FOR IMPLEMENTING
A PROGRAM IN OTHER STATES
Here are our suggestions. If you are
considering something similar we would be happy to meet with you to cover the details of our Borrow Smart plan.
Whether you
want to piggyback on our effort or just create one of your own is not
important. We want to help whichever option you may choose. The point is, it needs to be done!
And, the program needs to include all
of the elements we mention here. Anything short of this is just
wasting money and we do not recommend you undertake the effort.
The days of
having just a lobbying effort are about over. What happens
at the statehouse when one
or two elections do not go your way or someone sitting on the fence
falls to the other side? Most all of us have
a good relationships with our legislators. It has paid big dividends. But, the world is changing and
nothing last forever! It is going to take more than just lobbying
to keep us in business! Our adversaries sure do understand this
and if we want to survive we must as well.
The time to start a program is before
a crises develops. Starting a program in the face of immediate
legislation could be futile. Please don't wait until it is too late.
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WHY
EXPAND TO OTHER STATES?
We have a fairly selfish reason for
wanting this concept to grow. If our close neighbors fall
like others (NC, GA, FL, DC, VA, OH, VT, AR, OR and PA) we don't have a chance
here. A significant factor in the loss in these states
were our media savvy adversaries who had the ear of a very
receptive press. Both sides (industry and critics) had the
best lobbyist money could buy. It should be quite obvious that the
difference was the media. Just look at the stories that
surrounded these losses.
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CONCLUSION
AND RESULTS OF
BORROW SMART
It may be too early to
judge the full, long range impact our effort has had or will have. But, we
know the results to date have far exceeded our expectations in every
way.
Click here to read the full
report of the results of our launch. This report provides a
thorough and detailed view of how our program has been received with
links to actual press reports.
Since our launch we have had several media situations that we were not pleased
with. The first was a report in the states largest newspaper -- The
Birmingham News.
This story came out the day after our launch. We
challenged the story the same day it appeared and two business days
later, they
printed our challenge. We
subsequently held an unprecedented meeting with the News' full
editorial board. The other situations were back to back stories in the
Decatur Daily a week after our launch. These were not terribly
negative stories, but something we felt should be respond to. We
have communicated with the reporter that wrote the story and he
has agreed to hear our side before publishing another story. We hope to have the same results
as we
had with the Birmingham News.
We have also held editorial board
meetings with the states two largest newspapers -- The Birmingham
News and The Montgomery Advertiser. These were incredibly
positive meetings and they set the stage for us to be the point of
contact when any local media story begins to develop. They also
seemed to change the perception of who we were in the eyes of those
who have written very bad things about us in the past.
So, you can see we have received
an impressive response from the press. More important, we
have had the very same positive response from many of our friends
and even a few of our adversaries in the statehouse. In short,
we effectively reached our targets and they liked what they heard. But, this is a long term program and it will take
much more time and effort to begin to move the press and public away from
a picture of us painted by years
of relentless, one-sided stories. But, we are off to a good
start.
We hope you can see from this that Borrow Smart is clearly so much
more than "just a PR program." This is a totally integrated,
grass-roots communication effort to get our side of the story
directly into the hands of the public, our legislators and the
regulators. And, to continue to do so. So far, the
results have far exceeded our expectations!
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