Chipotle, a Mexican style restaurant chain, is using obsolete marketing materials for a positive promotion tied to Earth Day. Your bank or credit union can generate marketing ideas along this same line.

Using a firm that recycles old billboards into consumer products, Chipotle is selling reusable lunch bags that incorporate pieces of the restaurant’s billboard advertising into the bags’ side panels.

Maybe your financial institution doesn’t use billboards or doesn’t use enough to make this idea feasible, so where do you take it? Do you use newspapers where your ads appear to catch paint splatters? Grind old mail packages into garden mulch?

No. This post is about making a mark in the community by supporting a cause, like recycling. Your good works turn into good will toward your bank or credit union. People appreciate companies that support the community and want to do business with them. You get your company’s name in front of the public more often, which should be one of your advertising goals.

Want to recycle something for community betterment? Empty the closets where your old premiums hide. Donate the gifts to organizations that hold raffles. Or, suppose you have boxes of CorningWare or similar items left over. Donate the cookware to the local shelter that provides meals to poor and homeless.

Ignore my garden mulch comment, but suppose your employees get together as a group and donate a few hours of their time to help the city plant flowerbeds in parks or around town. There’s no reason you can’t put up a sign or banner with your financial institution’s name on it wherever your crew happens to work.

There are Habitat for Humanity projects and Paint-a-thons where business groups get involved. Can you imagine a community fix-up project that’s out of the ordinary? Contact the local press so they cover the event (free advertising).

Back to recyclables, your organization could purchase recycled or environmentally-friendly items to use as promotional premiums. Look for ways to increase awareness of your promotion by teaming up with a local recycling group. They’ll help spread news through their own publicity channels and your financial institution’s name will be part of their promotion.

You could give your customers or members a surprise gift connected to recycling. They’re sure to talk about it (buzz marketing) and you get added promotional exposure when they use the items in public.

While recycling fills much of the theme of this post, the real intent is to stimulate creative thinking. Come up with unusual ways to get your bank’s or credit union’s name in front of the public. The unusual attracts attention. How can you make a unique promotion work for you?

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Customers who buy a Chipotle lunch bag during the promotion get a coupon for a free burrito, which generates more sales when it’s redeemed.

This year, Earth Day is Sunday, April 22.

Here’s another idea: Playgrounds for Publicity.

More about these types of activities: Be Active in the Community.

What’s buzz marketing?