SEATTLE — Saturation co-op advertising by credit unions gets a big boost late this month or in March when Washington State and Alaska CUs undertake a TV campaign featuring a whopping 40, 30-second advocacy messages a week.

And the Academy Awards show on the local ABC outlet Feb. 25 could be the debut outing for the ad blitz being crafted by a Seattle agency this week in a Los Angeles studio under sponsorship of the 30-member Washington State Co-Op Advertising Committee. On top of the ads, the committee is also forging ahead with an ambitious blogging and branding effort to target young people, particularly women, through iPods, YouTube and various forms of viral and "social media."

In scrapping last year's "Together Better" theme, the committee has now opted for an ad model that emphasizes a clever, storytelling narrative "that captures a feeling but you don't know it's for credit unions until it's all sewn up at the end," explained Kristina Walters-Juma, a member of the committee that has been working for weeks in designing a new branding message that would draw new members.