Chad & Christopher gear up for their Illinois Credit Union League Annual Convention appearance:
Join us April 26-28, 2012 in Schaumburg! For more info on the Illinois Credit Union League Annual Convention, visit http://www.iculeague.org/2012AC.htm.
Hope to see you there!
Do you work in marketing or business development at a credit union?
Then you need to attend the premiere national event for your area – the CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 7-10, 2012.
It’s a great event filled with inspiring, informative, and thought-provoking focused sessions. Plus where else can you network with hundreds of your fellow marketing and business development professionals?
Oh, and the Disclosures will be there too! We’ll be performing our new education session “Add More Cowbell to Your Credit Union Messaging” on Thursday at the conference. It’s a repeating breakout session so you have two chances to come see us in the morning.
Hope to see you in The Big Easy!
Hey credit union event planners & training directors! This post is for you.
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with you on the “Top Five Reasons to Hire The Disclosures for your Next CU Event” and since then we’ve been pretty busy. Recently, The Disclosures have:
Why are we telling you this? Because based around our experiences, we’ve created a new session that teaches credit unions how to tap into their creative veins and make fun, unique and engaging content through social media channels!
The session, called ”Add More Cowbell to Your Credit Union Messaging”, walks participants through the creative process of morphing CU communications into fun, interactive messages that work well over social media channels and can strengthen relationships between members and employees. Specifically, we’ll discusses topics such as:
And in case you’re wondering, we’ll still have our guitars handy to liven up the audience with some credit union inspired music!
So as you plan your credit union-related meetings next year and are looking for unique content, please keep The Disclosures in mind. Whether it’s our brand new ed session, our popular CU history and philosophy ed session entitled “Credit Unions in the Key of Awesome“, an emcee performance or even if you just need some acoustic music to liven up your evening reception, we’ll be ready to rock.
You can find more information about us, our booking information, and much more around our website. Otherwise, feel free to contact us directly with any questions.
Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you!
Christopher Morris & Chad Helminak
The Disclosures
The Disclosures were lucky enough to chat with CUBroadcast recently to play a few songs, talk about our music and much more. Enjoy the interview!
Looking for the perfect gift this holiday season?
We’ve got you covered. Our debut album, “(Hey, We’re) The Disclosures,” makes a great stocking stuffer, or alternatively:
We think they’ll like it. But don’t take our word for it…. As Madison’s Isthmus said, “Each track sheds a different light on the history and philosophy of financial cooperatives… backed by the duo’s brisk and lively acoustic guitar interplay.” Or as the Credit Union Times put it simply - “The Disclosures rock the credit union difference.”
Where can you buy the album? The album can be purchased digitally online of course through Amazon.com, iTunes, etc but for gift purchases, you’ll probably want to get the actual, physical copy through CDbaby here. And as a bonus, if you buy more than one, you get 10% off!
Happy holidays and THANK YOU!!!
PS - If you live in Madison, let us know and you can buy the CD from us directly. Also, if you want to buy a large quantity of CDs for your organization, let us know and we can most likely provide an even bigger discount on discs.
In advance of Bank Transfer Day on November 5th, the credit union music duo The Disclosures have released a short music video highlighting how consumers can switch from a big bank to a local credit union. Credit unions are encouraged to use the video on their website and social media channels as part of their member outreach efforts.
The viral Bank Transfer Day continues to grow amidst widespread dissatisfaction with high bank fees. Bank customers who have become disillusioned by practices like these are now looking to local cooperative credit unions, who typically charge fewer and lower fees and provide other services that represent their structurally-driven commitment to people, not profit.
“The idea of moving your money to a credit union is a hot topic now because of Bank Transfer Day, but we hope credit unions will find value in sharing our video long after November 5th,” said Disclosures band member Chad Helminak.
The song gives a quick overview of the steps needed to move funds from a bank to a credit union and is a slight departure from The Disclosures’ recent video efforts around their original songs. Instead, they re-worked Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” in a fashion similar to their call-to-action video, “Don’t Change Interchange”, which parodies George Michael’s “Faith”.
“Sometimes it helps to get an important message across if you take something people know and turn it on its head,” said Disclosure Christopher Morris. “And like everything we do, we don’t take ourselves too seriously to help make it entertaining.”
With thousands of consumers pledging to move their money from big banks to local credit unions on or before Bank Transfer Day (November 5th), we wanted to highlight a couple of our music videos that credit unions can use to promote the credit union difference.
Bank Transfer Day has been highlighted in numerous national media outlets and continues to grow amidst widespread dissatisfaction with high bank fees. Bank customers who have become disillusioned by practices like these are now looking to local cooperative credit unions, who typically charge fewer and lower fees and provide other services that represent their structurally-driven commitment to people, not profit.
We have a few YouTube videos that share themes with Bank Transfer Day:
We encourage you to use the videos on your websites and/or corresponding social media channels to highlight the philosophy of credit unions in the run-up to Bank Transfer Day (and anytime really). In addition, we invite credit unions to use any of the songs on our album, “(Hey We’re) The Disclosures, ” as part of their on-hold message, lobbies, etc to help communicate the credit union difference in a fun, musical way.
Hope you find these resources useful and Happy Bank Transfer Day!
In celebration of International Credit Union Day, The Disclosures will be performing a special breakout session from CUNA Campus in Madison, WI and you’re invited to join us!
Thanks to our friends at CUNA Mutual Group and Filene Research Institute, we’re able to live stream our session and make it available to credit unions around the globe. Here are the details:
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DETAILS: If you haven’t seen us live before, we deliver credit union history and philosophy lessons in a unique way – we leave the PowerPoint slides at home and instead rely upon our guitars and original credit union songs and stories to engage audiences in these very relevant ICU Day topics.
WHEN: Thursday, Oct 20th from 8:45 – 9:30 CT
LINK: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/lunch-with-ed
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We hope you’ll have time to tune in and enjoy some thrift-rock to help your ICU Day celebrations get off to a great start.
Also, have you checked out our new ICU Day song and video yet? We can’t say it enough – we’re grateful to work in an industry with so many amazing individuals who are willing to collaborate and make a project like that even possible.
Music video includes clips from more than 40 credit unions and supporting organizations
The credit union music duo, The Disclosures, have released a free song and music video for International Credit Union Day (October 20, 2011) called “Building a Better World”, which pays homage to this year’s celebration theme. The band encourages credit unions to use the song and video to raise awareness of the positive impact credit unions continue to make around the world.
Download the song (mp3):
Lyrics:
> Building a Better World – Lyrics (PDF)
“Our music has always focused on finding new ways to package the credit union message,” said Disclosures band member Chad Helminak. “With ‘Building a Better World’, we decided to take it one step further and invite credit union folks to have some fun and help demonstrate our cooperative nature.”
The Disclosures put out a casting call to credit unions to provide video clips, which would eventually become the entirety of the music video. In addition to the submissions, the band also filmed credit union people singing a few of the segments. More than 40 credit unions and supporting organizations make cameos in the video, which include credit union staff lip-synching lyrics, performing air-guitar with hockey sticks and even dancing with mascots.
“We’re truly amazed at the response and support we received for this project so far and we’re truly thankful for credit unions’ participation,” said Disclosure member Christopher Morris. “Credit unions’ personability usually shines through their member and community service, but now you can see it also holds true for music videos.”
Credit unions are encouraged to distribute and share the video on their websites and in other online communications.
As part of the video collection process, the Disclosures also randomly selected a video submission to receive a signed copy of their CD “(Hey, We’re) The Dislcosures”. The winner was Doug MacMillian from State Employees Credit Union in N.C.
1. Like us on Facebook:
2. Share our site and song with others:
UPDATE: The deadline for submissions have passed. Thanks to all those who sent us video footage!
International Credit Union Day is right around the corner (October 20, 2011) with a theme this year of “Credit Unions Build a Better World” and The Disclosures have a unique way for you to get involved!
To help celebrate, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) has asked us to put together a special song for this year’s event. The song is called “Building a Better World” and we’ve recorded a bare bones version of the song. We still need to put the finishing touches on it, but we need your help.
Here’s where you come in: We want you to star in the video! Since credit unions are building a better world – why not feature credit union people worldwide singing about it, right?
We’d love to have you record a video of yourself (or part of your staff) singing along to the song (especially during the “na-na-na” part during the chorus). Once we receive your video, we’ll edit it together with other submissions to create the music video, which will then get posted to YouTube for credit unions around the word to share with their members. The quality doesn’t have to be perfect – use your phone, your laptop camera, whatever you can find. We’ll make it work.
Also, not only will you star in the video, but one lucky video submitter will be randomly chosen to receive an autographed copy of our debut album “(Hey) We’re The Disclosures”!
Interested? Contact thedisclosures@gmail.com for the latest version of the song and lyrics. Video snippets will need to be submitted by Wednesday, September 21 and we can provide directions on sending video files.
Thanks and we look forward to rocking with you!
