Thursday, February 12, 2015

Nusenda Doesn’t Send(a) Me

Effective Monday (2/9) or Tuesday (2/10), Nusenda is the new name for New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union. NMEFCU has been my “bank” for 18 years. A long time ago I went through a financial institution name change. It was mostly done right.
What the hell is Nusenda? The Albuquerque Journal story this morning said the credit union used a consultant. Probably it was the same guy who invented Bank 34 in Alamogordo.
My name change experience was the move of Albuquerque National Bank and ten others (I think it was ten) into being Sunwest Bank. As an ANB / Sunwest employee, I handled the public relations on the name change. Pre-internet, the logistics of getting the information around the state were complex. But we got it done.
While “sunwest” really doesn’t mean anything, it sounds like it does. These are words people know. Nusenda is, well, nusenda.
The Sunwest change took effect on a Monday. It was announced over the weekend by what was then the state’s largest single advertising campaign. By Monday morning customer consciousness of Albuquerque National Bank of obliterated.
Nusenda just appeared. We first heard of it when my wife drove by the Uptown office on Tuesday (2/10). That may hav been the effective day. Why a day in the middle of the week? There may have been an email, but it went to our spam file. We have seen no advertising. Today’s Journal story reported the change and had people making fun of the change. Translated, NMEFCU let others control the story. That’s just stupid.

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