Looking back: when there were no super-regional and little local competition: three persons long affiliated with the ABA Marketing Network reminisce in observance of the organization's 90th anniversary.

The time was 1915.

The passenger ship Titanic had struck an iceberg and sunk three years earlier. The new Federal Reserve banking system had been formed two years before. World War I had broken out the previous summer.

It was during this year that a man by the name of Marvin E Holderness formed a new organization called the Financial Advertiser's Association. Decades later, the group would evolve into what is known today as the ABA Marketing Network.

Thus, the year 2005 marks the 90th anniversary of the creation of the ABA Marketing Network.

Happy birthday ABAMN!

Between now and the ABA Marketing Conference in September, ABA Bank Marketing magazine will present a series of articles about the ABA Marketing Network's history and the significance of its anniversary.

We begin with an interview with three personalities who have been associated with the ABA Marketing Network for many years. They are:

J. Douglas Adamson, Washington, D.C., executive director since 1988 of the ABA Marketing Network and its predecessor organization, the Bank Marketing Association. He is executive director of ABA's Professional Development Group.

Barry I. Deutsch, Palm Beach Garden, Fla., was an active member 4 the Bank Marketing Association in the 1980s and served as president in 1984 and again in the early 1990s after the organization merged with ABA. He is currently president of his own consulting firm, The Deutsch Consultancy Corp.

Dr. James H. Donnelly Jr., Lexington, Ky, the dean of the ABA School of Bank Marketing and Management also Chair of ICB's CFMP Board and ex-officio ABAMN Council member and a professor of business at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Dr. Donnelly has been affiliated with the school and with the ABA Marketing Network for more than three decades.

We posed the questions below to all three. Their answers follow.

Q: When you were involved with bank marketers, whet were your observations of the difficulties that marketers were addressing?

Donnelly: Over 30 years ago when I first became involved with the School of Bank Marketing and Management (SBMM) as a faculty member, the industry was just beginning to emerge from an environment of exclusivity of product offerings, regulated pricing and protected markets into one of deregulated product offerings, geographic expansion and increased competition. At that time, marketers were primarily tacticians. They managed and implemented advertising, promotion and public relations. Their biggest challenges included attracting deposits and managing branch openings.

Today most bank marketers in addition to tactical implementation are also involved at the level of strategy formulation and often are also members of the senior management team. Consequently, in addition to implementation, they must also be comfortable with strategic thinking and the bigger picture, understanding the role of marketing in asset/liability management, and measuring the return on marketing expenditures.

Adamson: Bank marketers have always understood and believed that in order for banks to succeed, they needed to put the customer at the center of everything they did. There were many years in ABAMN's history when that belief was not shared by other key members of many banks' management teams. I observed too many bank marketers facing uphill battles in their roles as chief customer advocates. Happily, I don't see that any longer. Today, marketing is truly mainstream. I believe bank CEOs understand and believe that they must have the customers' best interest in mind with every important decision they make.

Deutsch: As I reflect back on it, there was always at least one very popular session at the annual meeting that dealt with winning respect for the marketing function within the bank....

Many bankers still thought of the marketing guy as the PR guy, or the pots and pans guy, so upgrading the image was a big deal.

I guess the other difficulty was working out just what it was that marketing was meant to accomplish. We wasted a lot of time talking about traffic builders under the assumption that if we could get people into our building something good would happen. It took us a while to realize that it was not about the traffic, it was about sales and service.

Q: Was there any time in particular when the profession of bank marketing changed drastically and, if so, how has it changed?

Donnelly:. In the education and professional development area, a major tipping point occurred when the role of the marketer evolved from one of practicing marketing in the banking industry to having to also be a banker. They were required to understand the industry in which they practiced theft craft. The entire skill set irrevocably changed and is still evolving. In fact, the curriculum at the SBMM continues to change and evolve in response to it. Today, marketers must be competent in the technical disciplines of marketing plus banking and technology; broader disciplines such as critical and strategic thinking; and the components of emotional intelligence necessary for leadership and team building.

Adamson: The biggest change I have seen is in the professionalism with which the function of marketing is practiced in banking today. This has been evolutionary so it is impossible to pin a specific time on it: everything from the pricing models to the segmentation strategies and data mining techniques and applications. It has been great to watch the business become more scientific while still maintaining the critical element of creativity that makes marketing so much fun.

Deutsch: I do not think there was an event that you could call a watershed that changed the profession. It has been an evolutionary process of maturation and a growing realization about just what is involved in marketing management--analysis, planning, execution, control and measurement.

Looking back, we wasted a lot of energy trying to understand Proctor & Gamble and Disney. But, P&G sells products that are consumed and have to be repurchased, and Disney sells an experience that might or might not be repeated.

We sell the availability of a continuous stream of service, punctuated by customer interaction that might or might not lead to the sale of an additional service. And the real leading edge is learning how to market in that environment.

Q: What were some of your best memories of the association?

Donnelly: This is an easy one for me Anyone who has known me over the years has heard me say that the highlight of my year is the time I spend at the SBMM. There are two memories that will never fade. First, the people I have met and worked with over these many years. Many have become my cherished life-long friends. Second, is working with the truly committed faculty and staff to achieve what I call a role learning community at the SBMM. To me, a true learning community happens when a group of like-minded people come together in a non-threatening environment to learn from each other and from others. These two memories, the people and the learning community, are what I will take with me when I retire.

Adamson: My best memories are people. The number one benefit of ABAMN today, as it was 1915, is networking with peers--sharing best practices, challenges and concerns. My first experience with the association was in the mid-1970s attending a regional "brain exchange." Today, 35 years later, I love to watch the informal "brain exchanges" taking place in every corner at the ABA School of Bank Marketing or the ABA Marketing Conference. Meanwhile, the contacts I've made over those years continue to be great friends and still great sources of information and ideas.

Deutsch: It was always the people: professional acquaintanceships that became real friendships. Those were the days before the super-regional and the sub-national and there was very little direct competition. It was also before life sped up and travel budgets shrunk.

We could relax with each other and really share ideas, help each other out, and tell lies about how well we were doing. Sometimes, we could stay an extra day and really get to know each other.