KeyCorp Ad Campaign To Trumpet Expanded Management Account

KeyCorp plans to roll out an advertising campaign next month touting its recently expanded money management account, a bank executive confirmed.

Just last month the Cleveland-based bank began offering the account- which includes checking, sweep, and brokerage accounts as well as credit and debit cards-to all its retail customers. Previously the product, which now carries a $15,000 minimum, was available only to KeyCorp's private banking clients.

The advertising campaign, which is scheduled to launch Oct. 1 and run for two months, will include print ads in regional newspapers, such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Seattle Times, as well as radio spots in the bank's 12 major markets. The print ads were created by Young & Rubicam, New York.

KeyCorp is also planning a direct mail marketing effort, designed by Dallas-based DMDA.

Through the campaign, which focuses on the theme "managing your money," the bank will seek to attract existing customers to the money management product and introduce them to the account's new investment options, said Leif Roll, a senior vice president and director of product management at KeyCorp.

The bank this summer broadened its cash management account to include access to Charles Schwab & Co.'s OneSource mutual fund program. In April, KeyCorp became the first bank to enter into a partnership with Schwab to offer its wildly popular OneSource no-load fund supermarket.

The relationship with Schwab has been "successful," said Jack Kopnisky, president and chief executive of Key Investment Inc., KeyCorp's brokerage arm. "We were able to gather in a lot of client assets that were being held outside the brokerage accounts," Mr. Kopnisky said.

The bank has attracted money that previously might have gone to Vanguard, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price for no-load funds, he noted. He declined, however, to specify how many such accounts are now using OneSource.

KeyCorp will use its ties to Schwab to introduce a no-load mutual fund wrap product in the first quarter of 1998, which will complement an existing load wrap product called KeyMap, said Mr. Kopnisky.

"We're going to be using many of the select funds from the Schwab product set as the composition of this no-load wrap," he added.

First Union Corp., Charlotte, N.C., also signed a deal to offer OneSource to its customers. It is set to roll out the mutual fund program by the end of the month.

First Union will distribute OneSource through its Cap account, established in 1985 and similar to KeyCorp's money management account. OneSource will also be available to First Union's customers in other ways, including the bank's investment advisers, certain portfolios, and directly through First Union's discount brokerage arm, said a spokesman. u

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