PHOENIX — The $1.1 billion Arizona State Credit Union was still reaping a deposit windfall last week from a 4%, $25,000 money market account ad that appeared Nov. 5 in one of the souvenir newspaper editions 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 consumers, she said.
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 and the paper sold out within hours.
Over the Nov. 8-9 weekend, the state's largest newspaper re-ran 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.
Paul Stull, senior vice president of Arizona State, was gratified that it was able to get “full coverage for the credit union and at the time special awareness for the industry.”
“We decided to place the singular ad because no matter which candidate won, it would be a souvenir of a historic event,” said Stull.
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