PHOENIX — The $1.1 billion Arizona State Credit Union is still reaping a deposit windfall from a 4%, $25,000 money market account ad that appeared Nov. 5 in a souvenir newspaper edition heralding the election of Barack Obama.
"I think we've brought in $11 million alone since our special Arizona Republic ad appeared, and we're well ahead of our goal having already generated $50 million from this campaign," said Cathy Olague, vice president of marketing.
The original goal "and we thought we were conservative," was to raise $25 million, much of it to be drawn from bank customers, she said. Commercial banks, she said, have deferred in doing much advertising in metro Phoenix during the financial meltdown.
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Arizona State figured it landed a "marketing coup" when it managed to place a back page ad in the Arizona Republic special edition covering the Obama election. A total of 500,000 copies of the special edition were grabbed up by Phoenix readers with the paper selling out within hours.
Over the last weekend, the state's largest newspaper reran the insert in its Sunday edition–complete with the Arizona State ad. As before, the Arizona State ad was the only one in the newspaper as the Phoenix CU claimed its ad also represented an achievement for "industry awareness" during an extraordinary period of U.S. history.
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