For banks, college age has typically been the point at which young adults start getting treated like prospective customers, a pattern that marketing experts have criticized as out of step with other industries' concerted efforts to gain inroads with brand-savvy adolescents.
State Farm Bank, which has no real branches beyond its Bloomington, Ill., headquarters and has been seeking ways to establish itself as more than a local brand, is taking its own crack at a younger demographic - reaching deeply into the prospect pool with a partnership that gets its name in front of future financial services customers as young as three years old.
The thematic core of the $10.3 billion-asset bank's initiative: two ersatz branches in the make-believe city of Wannado.
Wannado City is an amusement park in Sunrise, Fla., where, for an admission fee of about $35, children can spend the day trying out about 100 adult occupations, from fashion photographer to emergency-room doctor to pizza maker.
As in the real world, what Wannado City calls "kidizens" get paychecks, which they can take to the bank and cash - and State Farm is their only option for doing so.
It became the designated bank after the park's creator, Wannado Entertainment LLC, asked State Farm Insurance Cos. about sponsoring Wannado City's fire department. When Wannado Entertainment said it was looking for a bank sponsor as well, State Farm jumped at the chance, said Bobby Wilkinson, its manager of national sponsorships.
"We have been trying to find ways to help brand the bank," Mr. Wilkinson said. "And what a great idea - to get our brand to these kids at a young age, looking at making them lifelong customers."
State Farm Bank was chartered in 1999 but was not rolled out nationally until 2001. Its products and services are sold primarily though the Internet and the parent's 71,000 agents.
Andy Barkley, Wannado Entertainment's chief financial officer, said several traditional companies were asked if they would be interested in sponsoring the park's bank, but State Farm offered the best deal. Neither side would disclose the terms of the contract.
Hundreds of thousands of children have visited Wannado City since it opened in August, and all have been customers of the mini-State Farm bank. When they enter the park, kids are given a check for 150 wongas (Wannado's official currency), and to cash it they must set up an account at the bank.
At each "job" the children are paid in wongas, which they can deposit in their account throughout the day. They can also make withdrawals to pay for items or services - such as to see a show put on by other kids, or to buy a piece of jewelry one of them made.
Though children run all the other businesses in Wannado City, adults operate the bank, because of the record keeping involved. Mr. Wilkinson said State Farm would like to create positions for children at the bank.
And the relationship continues outside Wannado City. The children - who range in age from 3 to 13 - can use the city's Web site to check how many wongas they still have in their accounts.
Mr. Wilkinson said State Farm is in discussions with Wannado Entertainment to become the bank sponsor at theme parks being planned throughout the country. (The Fort Lauderdale-area location is its first in the United States.) If such a deal is made, each child would have one account good at all the cities - just as they could at real banks with multistate operations, he said.
To ensure that parents know State Farm is a bank in the real world, pamphlets on it and its services are available at the branches in Wannado City. Also, all the automated teller machines there and at the neighboring shopping mall, Sawgrass Mils, are State Farm's. And to make the connection even more, State Farm agents in the Fort Lauderdale area are offering discount coupons for Wannado City to every customer who comes into their offices.
Though it is too early to gauge the success of State Farm's unusual marketing move, Mr. Wilkinson said agents have been providing him with "positive feedback."
And even if the children do not become State Farm Bank customers, they are at least learning the importance of banking, he said. "We are not only promoting our brand to a young demographic, but there is also an educational piece as they learn how to bank."
