Bank turns a robbery into a marketing campaign. And it's fantastic!

Who says your typical banker doesn't have a good sense of humor?

A bandit made off with $26,000 of Idaho First’s money following a shootout with cops. A week later, the bank ran one of the funnier ads you’ll see from a financial institution.

January 10 was typically cold in McCall, Idaho, a small resort town with nary 3,000 residents. With temperatures lingering just below freezing, Nathan Davenport decided to hit the ATM ... outside Idaho First Bank. Wearing dark clothes and a mask, he proceeded to cut the bolts off the ATM’s door, then attached a chain to it and ripped the door free with his truck (a stolen truck, of course). Apparently this wasn’t Davenport’s first time hijacking an ATM. The caper took less than seven minutes, and Davenport split with cash totaling $26,120...

...police eventually caught up with Davenport a couple days later. Turns out Davenport has knocked off at least 20 ATMs in similar heists over the last 16 months according to police, snatching over a half million dollars along the way.

The week following Davenport’s arrest, Idaho First Bank took out the following advertisement in their local paper, the McCall Star-News:

...This tiny bank with one branch and $90 million in assets managed to turn a rather serious robbery into a branding coup. Normally financial institutions try to keep robberies under wraps, preferring to make as little noise about them as possible. But Idaho First did something that 20 other institutions before them could have… but didn’t. They capitalized on a typically unsavory situation in a such a way that they got their story in front of everyone in McCall, their hometown (and quite a few people beyond there).

In a world crackling with social media, marketers need to be aware that any story can go viral at any time.

Rather than squander these opportunities, the new paradigm may simply to be honest -- and to use it to your advantage.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money