The Buzz

Fast food does it. So do lotteries. Now a bank is doing it, too.

You can walk into any branch of Fifth Third Bank and request a “Unlock Your Dreams” game piece that you can scratch off and win instant prizes, like a $10 MasterCard Gift Card, or get your name in a drawing for $250,000 in cash.

You also could win something that would require you to be a customer, like a $50 deposit in a new savings account.

The bank is awarding $900,000 in prizes through Oct. 31 to attract new customers and get new business from old ones.

The goal is to get people into the bank so the staff can find out what they need, says Fifth Third spokesman Brant Welch.

“They can come in every day and get a new scratch off,” Welch says. “They can get their hat in the ring (for the big prizes) multiple times.”

It still feels weird for a bank to be handing out scratch-offs.

The times, they are a-changing.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Banking, Games, Marketing. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.