Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

I get a lot of press releases across my desk every day. This one stood out:

"With few banks able to lend money, cash is king, and it seems that private money is seeing a ton of interest from entrepreneurs and business in seek of capital. RaiseCapital.com is an online community which allows private money to seek deals…and they are seeing tremendous growth and deals done, as traditional financial outlets are closed due to the markets.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

When I was perusing Yahoo Finance yesterday, an advertisement for Bank of America caught my attention. It wasn't that the advertisement was particularly engaging or that the design was fantastic, it was a little addition to their ad that made it intriguing. Take a look.

Are you sick of force feeding advertising? Maybe your CUs' pool of possible members is tired of it too.

I've been looking into some of the new advertising methods that step outside the box and engage passersby. The focus of these new, high-tech methods is to advertise without the target market even knowing they are looking at an advertisement or, if they do know, to be so intrigued they don't look away.

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

HSBC bought  24 ad pages in the Oct. 17 issue of New York magazine, making it the largest single-issue advertiser in the magazine's history. The ad buy includes every full-page ad in the magazine before the listings section, and the back cover.

Wow.

Bold move? Definitely.

Crazy? Maybe not.

By Gary Easterling, CCE

Our members, our communities, and our nation need the credit union difference. Today is the day for the accumulated strength of the credit union movement to step up and give back to the member-owners.

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

Leave it to plane travel to inspire two grumbly posts. (See the other one here.)

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

On Sunday night, I had to pay to check a single bag from San Francisco to Rochester, N.Y., through Boston. $15. For one, not-even-especially-heavy bag. I was grumbling.

By Mary Arnold

Posted by Ron Jooss

Last night I was coming home from the grocery store and I stopped in at Cold Stone Creamery (or Stone Cold Creamedy, as my 5-year-old son calls it). I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but somehow I never feel all that guilty about it. The kid who was working the store was hanging a Happy Halloween banner. He jumped off the ladder as I opened the door and said, "Welcome to Cold Stone Creamery."