Using entertainment to teach about money

For the past four years, Mark DiPippa's been focused on his family, the two businesses he runs, as well as six money-savvy animal characters. Known as The Centsables, they're mild-mannered bank employees by day, financial-literacy superheroes on their own time.

The characters are part of a multimedia initiative to help kids ages 6 to 12 develop better money-management skills. And despite being launched in the fall of 2008, as the banking crisis hit, the line of Centsables products and content has been licensed by 30 banks and credit unions in 18 states.

The idea, says DiPippa, 49, of Huntington, who owns and runs both an advertising agency and event marketing company, is to help kids learn "but not realize they're learning," as they follow the exploits of the likes of Greenback, Hurlwind and Veloci-Rabbit. He sees this as "edu-tainment," at the intersection of the two main areas of his advertising expertise -- finance and entertainment.

Banks can license and brand the turnkey website, comic and activity books, even teacher lesson plans. There are also a board game and an action-figure toy line, and in the works, pending financing, is an animated television series.

"Let's face it. Saving isn't exciting. At that age, a quarter burns a hole in your pocket," says Dorrie Phillips, assistant vice president of marketing with Hudson River Community Credit Union, of Corinth, which is in its second year of licensing The Centsables as part of its youth program. Kids enjoy this approach, she says, and getting their attention fits in with the credit union's goals of education and community involvement.

The Centsables initiative is "very cool," says Daniel Hebert, director of professional development instruction with the Jump$tart Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit looking to improve financial know-how from prekindergarten to college age. A former banker, he says he's seen many youth programs "designed by bankers that had no appeal to kids," but that's not the case with The Centsables.

Perhaps one reason is because DiPippa says he's had his own "in-house focus group" -- his twin sons Richard and Christian, 15, and daughter, Laura, 11. They've shared regular feedback, he says, such as " 'Dad, this is great,' or, 'Dad, this is lame.' "

Still, there have been challenges. Though the client base has been growing and the initiative is close to breaking even, DiPippa says he has taken out personal loans to keep the project going. Five of his advertising employees at DNA Creative spend some time on the project, and two work on it full-time.

Dianne Caliman, 65, chief copywriter, has researched and written the content for The Centsables. "We just work until it's done," she says. "We all feel a tremendous ownership in the project. This is not just work for us. It's our passion."