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We spend a lot of time tooting and…um…the opposite of tooting…the horns of various and sundry credit union marketing efforts – particularly if they involve social media.

This time we’re going to toot Third Degree Advertising, out of Oklahoma City, and Trabian’s horns at the same time. It seems Third Degree went and won itself an Addy with the Buck the Norm online campaign. The site won several, actually, including Best Interactive and the prestigious Best in Show. Third Degree designed it and Trabian built the CMS and generally created the Internet magic.

Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first award Trabian has won recently – our work with A-Plus Federal Credit Union landed A-Plus and us a first place in the Lone Star Awards from the Texas Credit Union League Marketing Council in the fall.

Toot.

Our buddy Robbie Wright just let us know that Filene.org has been added to the Thumb Up/Thumbs Down section of web design showcase Unmatched Style. This means it’s up to be featured on the homepage, which is kind of a big deal.

What does this mean for you? If you love (or even really like) Filene’s design, and think it deserves a pat on its shapely caboose, please go vote (10 stars = “thumbs up”).

Thanks in advance for your help. Honestly, we’re already all aflutter at just the prospect of it being featured. Unmatched Style truly is a beautiful thing.

Go here to vote.

As some of you may know, our first credit union client and the reason for our entry into this industry was Houston Federal Credit Union. During the project we worked closely with their Senior VP of Finance and Technology, Christopher Choat, and gained a tremendous respect for his hard work and commitment to the success of HFCU.

The Credit Union Times announced in the May 3rd edition that Chris has been named as the new CEO and will assume that role in June, when their current CEO retires.

We want to offer our congratulations to Chris and our best wishes to Sally McKnight, HFCU’s retiring CEO. Though we never had an opportunity to work with Sally, we’ve heard nothing but great things!

Just noticed that our site has been featured on CSS Beauty, which is definitely a nice way to start the day.

If you haven’t checked them out before, do. They’re a great place to find design inspiration, news, book reviews, job listings, tutorials and all kinds of other tasty goods.

We want to thank Shane at Unmatched Style for featuring us on his fantastic behemoth of a CSS showcase site today. His review was probably the nicest thing I’ve ever heard that didn’t come from my own mother’s mouth. It has lead to some incredible feedback and an enormous influx of visitors.

We’re all completely blown away and are really appreciative to him – and all of you for dropping by. Also, I have a question for you all after the jump…

One piece of feedback that we’ve heard through the comments on Unmatched Style involved the amount of content we include on our homepage. Here’s a segment from one:

“It‚Äôs very nice graphically, but seems a little cluttered. My first impression upon visiting was that there was too much packed onto the page, everything seemed to demand my attention at the same time.”

I’d like to hear some thoughts on this from you guys. Our reason for going for the one-page vibe was actually to simplify the amount of jumping around visitors had to do to round up information about us. It’s kind of an interesting balance to try and strike, putting enough information right in front of users, while not cluttering up the message.

This is especially an issue because our target market, credit unions, are generally not the most web-savvy group out there.

Thanks again for dropping by, we’re all looking forward to your comments. We like to get better at this thing however we can.

*Update: We just noticed that we were also added to CSS Mania, another fantastic CSS showcase that currently indexes over 2300 sites. Check them out right this second. And also, we somehow made it to the del.icio.us popular page. Honestly, we’re astounded. Thanks guys.