Though only in its early stages, the goal of the campaign is for credit union members and employees to embrace CU Drew. The idea, Rindone said, came from the Flat Stanley project, which was developed in 1995 by a grade school teacher in Canada. The teacher developed a cartoon character to facilitate letter writing by school children in which they document what Flat Stanley had done with them.

The CU Drew Web site is a one page site that was created in house by the credit union. The site gives a brief introduction to CU Drew and provides links to resources such as a YouTube video created by Young and Free Alberta explaining the difference between banks and credit unions. The site also links to CU Drews photo album that documents his journeys on the Tempe Schools Facebook page.

“Having the albums on Facebook allows us to manage them better. People can upload photos through Facebook, and other people can comment on pictures and places CU Drew has been. It's more interactive than having a static site somewhere else,” Rindone said.

Tempe Schools staff kicked off CU Drew's album by taking him along on their own vacations and posting pictures.

As the campaign grows, Rindone said that the CU wants to get younger members to print out CU Drew, color him in and bring him in to credit union branches to put up around the teller line. Tempe Schools also wants to implement contests around CU Drew and have young members bring him into their schools.

Rindone said the CU will also expand the site with games for kids, stock designs of CU Drew to be printed out, and the credit union will look for ways to engage members at the middle school and high school level. “So far we've received positive feedback from the Arizona Credit Union League, they've posted information on CU Drew on their Web site and it was mentioned in the president's report. We hope that the word will spread and that we can promote credit unions nationally.”

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