Corporate Sponsorship to the Next Level.

Banks have sponsored golf tournaments, sweepstakes promotions and concerts, all in the interest of reaching one potential market segment or another. Now First USA Bank in Wilmington, Del., has decided to sponsor college students.

Two of them, in fact Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe, two 18-year-old high school graduates from Haddonfield (N.J.) Memorial High School, who call themselves the "World's First Corporately Sponsored High School Students." Barrett, a freshman at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., and McCabe, who attends the University of Southern California, will serve as student representatives--the bank calls them "spokesguys"--in exchange for their tuition and room and board. The job will entail carrying the torch for the bank and encouraging fiscal responsibility among college students.

The youths lobbied hard for the job, to the point of opening a website that suggested some of the potential endorsements (from on-campus posters to T-shirts and surfboards laden with sponsored logos). The effort paid off in a big way; First USA assigned them a publicist, and they were interviewed on the Today Show. A story appeared in USA Today, and they participated in a satellite media tour that resulted in 30 interviews (five hours' worth) of interviews on television morning shows across the country.

That adds up to...five hours of interviews, 60 minute to the hour...30 interviews...um, rather more than their allotted 15 minutes of fame.