Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Consumer empowerment and FICO scores

Understanding FICO scores is critical for Consumers who want to take back control of their credit. Indeed, FICO scores are now used not only by lenders when purchasing a car, buying or refinancing a house but also by more and more employers as a measure of character and financial responsibility! In the Forbes video below with Quentin Hardy, I share where to get help to keep your FICO scores up so that you can get the best possible deal on your mortgage and the job you want.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Enterprise sustainability in the real world...

FICO is on its way to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% over three years with no incremental budget, only leadership and vision. This Forbes video with Quentin Hardy is a quick exploration into how it all happened!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Branding as a refocusing exercise: FICO

"March 10, 2009: In the interest of clarity and consistency, Fair Isaac Corporation today announced that it has officially adopted the brand FICO as its corporate identity." This corporate renaming qualifies both as adoption of initials, and elevation of a product brand to the corporate level.

What, or who, is a Fair Isaac? A nice guy, in the credit rating business? As a name, it scores at the top in "whimsical," if not positively cuddly. Turns out, however, that there were two guys, Bill Fair and Earl Isaac, who in 1956 founded "Fair, Isaac and Company" (whence the initials FICO). The comma got lost in 2003, when the legal name Fair Isaac Corporation was adopted. But "Simply removing the comma changed nothing," says Chief marketing Officer Laurent Pacalin; "journalists would still talk about Fair Isaac as 'the guy who did FICO'."

And what is a FICO? Fair Isaac's principal product is the "FICO Score," a credit worthiness number carried by virtually every American, and the leading measure of consumer credit risk in the U.S. It is a number thus central to both crisis and recovery.

This is what Tony Spaeth, Corporate Brand Matrix, had to say about the brand work that we did here at FICO! Read more here.