Welcome to another episode of The Marketer’s Edge, a series designed to share senior level marketing perspective about marketer challenges, opportunities, and agency relationships. Our goal is to help marketers and agencies learn from other marketers across different industries. Today we are speaking with Jason Norton, SVP Marketing and Business Development at DuTrac Community Credit Union, located in Dubuque, Iowa.

DuTrac was founded in 1946 by John Deere Dubuque Tractor Works employees who wanted to offer their coworkers an alternative to commercial banks and other for-profit financial institutions. Today, DuTrac serves individuals and families in a 34-county area and continues to be a not-for-profit cooperative, existing solely to serve nearly 50,000 members rather than to maximize corporate profits.

What We Discussed:

In today’s interview with Jason Norton, we discussed a wide variety of issues:

• DuTrac’s beginnings and what Jason does for the organization.
• Some of the toughest challenges facing the industry in the next 3-5 years.
• Merger and acquisition activity in the credit union space.
• Things Jason is doing for DuTrac and his community that differs from what typical marketing executives do for a credit union.
• Various philanthropic activities DuTrac gets involved with and how they make those efforts public.
• Jason talks about his role as a Director of League Relations for a different credit union prior to his role at Dutrac.
• The marketing efforts he’s currently using to  build awareness and membership at DuTrac.
• The relationship with their current agency (J.W. Morton) and how they helped them.
• Advantages and disadvantages to bringing an agency on board.
• Advice Jason would give to a marketer thinking about bringing an agency on board for the first time.
• The advice he would give to an agency that was knocking on his door, attempting to win business from him.

Thanks Jason for a great interview!

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