The Food Bank
Summit Bank, Princeton, NJ, likes to have employees at its 60 in-supermarket branches roam the aisles offering bank services to shoppers. Problem is the associates are usually tied up helping customers make deposits and cash checks. So Summit tried a continuity game to get shoppers to use its in-store ATMs for services other than withdrawing cash. Its longish-yet-enticing title: Cash in at the Summit Bank ATM and Cash Out with $25,000.
ATM users received one word of a seven-word sentence with their receipts each time they made a deposit or cashed a check. The first to collect all the words to complete the sentence won the grand cash prize. P-O-P materials alerted shoppers they could win $20 instantly by making transactions other than cash withdrawals.
Summit Bank associates personally enlisted participants in the aisles of Pathmarks, Shop-Rites, and A&Ps in New Jersey and Pennsylvania during the September-through-December promo. “We wanted our own people to show shoppers how to use these services. Consumers didn’t realize they could do it. The contest was a fun, interactive idea,” says Summit Bank senior vp sales Steve Nivet.
Results were bank-breaking. Deposit and cash withdrawal transactions totaled 43,500 in December, compared with 8,600 transactions in May ’98. “We expect them to stay at that level or grow,” says Nevit.
Bridgewater, NJ-based agency GWP handles Summit’s in-store bank promotions.
