Authenticity-a great tool for building a brand! For some brand strategies, you need things like slick production, celebrity endorsement, or affiliation with pathetically hip trends. But a great tool to put the community in community banks, colleges, or hospitals is authenticity. Get the people with whom you have great relationships to talk about the relationship. For apeople-oriented brand (like just about every community institution I can think of) building a brand is about building a relationships-and then leveraging that relationship. Here are three examples of advertising campaigns that focused on real people saying real things. A hospital brand, an education…

4 reasons community banks should love millennials For as long as there have been baby boomers, bank marketing has been focused on this giant demographic bubble. Remember the song, "We've only just begun?" A classic appeal to the confident optimism of the baby boom-originally written as a jingle for a financial institution. Well, considering that people secure their professional relationships by their 40s (typically), and the youngest baby boomers are now well into their 50s, it may be time to focus on a new demographic goldmine, with the same zeal as brand strategies used to tune into the boom. That…