Good marketing means 'never running with the herd'.

• Position: ABA Marketing Network - Interview

She calls her business "Blah, Blah, Blah." Her corporate title is "chief of everything" (COE).

So, it's not surprising that Terri Langhans stands out from the crowd. In fact, she teaches bank marketers to behave the same way.

The author of the book, "The 7 Marketing Mistakes Every Business Makes and How to Fix Them," Langhans will be one of the keynote speakers at the ABA Marketing Conference, Sept. 12-14, in Scottsdale, Adz. Her topic is, not surprisingly, "Maverick Marketing: How to Stand Out from file Herd, Get Better Results and Attract Mort' Business."

Marketing Edge recently talked with Langhans to find out what's so different about "maverick marketing."

Q. Banking is widely seen as a commodity service. You argue that banks need to act like "mavericks" in order to differentiate themselves. That do you mean by that?

A maverick is someone who does things differently, follows a different path. When it comes to marketing, whether you're a bank or some other business, most tend to do the same thing--describe their pin, ducts or services, show pictures of the smiling, "friendly" staff and list the nifty features that are supposed to make you different, but rarely do. When you're a maverick marketer, you don't do what everyone else does. You find ways to stand out mid be different.

Q. A lot of banks market themselves by talking about how wonderful they are. But you argue that this is the wrong approach. You say banks should "connect before they convince." Connect to what?

The premise of "maverick marketing" is that people don't crate about you or your boring bank. Sorry. They don't. They care about themselves. And most marketing is all about you. Worse yet, it tends to be a blatant sales pitch, full of chest-pounding claims and boastful bullet points. And again, it's not just banks doing it. The poor consumer out there is bombarded every minute with marketing and sales messages, and that all sound alike. In essence, "Hey! Look at me! Ain't this great? Wanna buy some?"

Because of that, as consumers, most of us have an elaborate defense system built around our personal and professional lives to keep unwanted marketing, advertising and sales messages away from us. It's like we have a fortress with a wall of protection around it and built-in radar. We can spot a marketing message coming in seven syllables or less. When our radar goes off, we duck and cover, hunker down, send it to voice mail, dump it in the trash, hit the delete key.

And the...