Thoughts

Marketing Words: Should “Passion” be Part of Your Message?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jun 05, 2015, in Thoughts

Listening to a baseball podcast the other day, the two hosts digressed into a conversation about passion. One talked about the awkwardness of communicating that he is NOT passionate about what he does for a living (i.e., write and talk about the statistical nuances of baseball) given how many people love the sport. I found myself thinking that the hosts really do love the sport of baseball but have a hang-up about describing that love as a passion.

This presents an interesting issue for marketing, namely: is passion a strong term to incorporate into firm-level positioning and marketing messages? I’d argue it is not.

Most individual people aren’t passionate about what they do. But as Anu commented to me, people who excel in their work frequently have passion for it. In other words, there’s a good correlation between great performance and passion. Therefore, it’s easy to understand why a single person would describe themselves as passionate about something. It’s a characterization that conveys a deep and personal connection.

But the highly-personal nature of passion is why it falls down as a way to describe a larger organization or firm such as an asset manager. People understand that most individuals lack passion for their jobs; 70% of people are disengaged in their careers according to a Gallup survey. As a result passion at an organizational level carries a strong risk of failing the smell test; it attempts to represent something that isn’t very believable.

There is a lot of nuance in an issue like this. And while I’m not a fan of passion as a marketing term, there are certainly firms who will disagree. That’s what makes the discussion interesting.

Marketing Effectiveness Rating for Passion: 3 out of 10*

* note: scale is arbitrary, especially since this is the first post on marketing word choices

Proprietary Magazines Coming to Asset Management?

Posted by Anu Heda on Jun 01, 2015, in Thoughts , tagged with ,

Content marketing has come to the real estate industry. Douglas Elliman, the 4th-largest real estate firm in the US, launched a lifestyle magazine (via Wall Street Journal) that does not sell, market, or promote their current properties. Two years ago, we noted the online retailer, Net-a-Porter, and their magazine, Porter, in a client engagement with a top-10 asset manager. The magazine concept is an interesting technique for an asset manager looking to organize disparate in-house content sources. Leafing through Porter, you see the easy connection between retailer and magazine. Interspersed within the articles are clothes and accessories sold on the Web site. Looking through Elliman, there are no articles about new residential towers in Manhattan or Miami, rather Q&As with Ted Allen and Katie Lee.

In our industry we have a DC-focused magazine: Journey from JPMorgan. Journey follows thePorter model covering topics like Social Security’s future, diversification in a DC plan, and rising health care costs.

Will we see more magazines? If done well (good articles, quality paper stock, stunning photos and imagery), I see the appeal and I can imagine a magazine has a higher chance of finding its way into an FAs briefcase (or app on her tablet) than a PDF. And that’s a significant step towards building appeal with advisors.

Thought Leadership Arms Race Is On

Posted by Anu Heda on May 27, 2015, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , , ,

There’s omnipresent discussion (in the news, from asset managers, by wealth managers) of the 5-year long bull market in US equities. Reading this month’s Mixing It Up from Shefali Anand reminded me about the bull market. There’s another bull market. The asset management industry is experiencing a bull market in thought leadership. It’s easy to understand why: with so many investment options available to financial advisors, thought leadership becomes an important method of building brand recognition and becoming that coveted “trusted partner.”

Today, many asset managers are producing thought leadership in quantities never seen before. Let’s just look at 2015 volume to-date from five, well-known asset managers.

thoughtleadershiptableWhat are the obvious takeaways?

  1. Unless Marketing executives believe thought leadership to be a fad, standing on the sidelines is longer an option. Yet some firms continue to do so, publishing 1 or 2 thought leadership pieces per quarter.
  2. Introducing and populating a blog with multiple posts per week from different investment team members is no longer optional.

Digital Lesson from Robo-Advisors

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 26, 2015, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

Throughout 2014, we read much about the emerging robo-advisor industry and how it may be the disruptive technology to ‘revolutionize’ the traditional financial advice/guidance industry. Personally, I think revolution is probably a generation away, if at all. Regardless of the potential disruption, asset managers can improve their digital execution by learning from robo-advisors. To my eye, the best example is in tax-loss harvesting. Tax loss harvesting is a popular topic with financial advisors and many asset managers develop related FA support materials. Look at these blog posts from Russell, Vanguard, and BlackRock (best of the three).

Yet typical materials and blog posts rely on the user reading a lengthy, uninterrupted piece to better understand tax-loss harvesting. This Betterment implementation surpasses those by mingling text, video, graphics, and multiple sub-sections. Simply, Betterment presents a relatively dry and important topic in an engaging manner that asset managers could benefit from studying.

betterment

It’s A Lot About the People

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 23, 2015, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

A few weeks back, Ignites ran a poll (subscription) on the desirability of marketing star portfolio managers to retail investors. 60% of respondents indicated that focusing on the star PM is an unfavorable strategy.

It’s an interesting question, and despite the fact that there is no absolute answer you can count me in the minority. I’m not advocating promotion of a singular star necessarily, but more aggressive marketing of the investment team in general. It’s a weird quirk that the presentation of a investment strategy so often places the people driving that strategy in the background. The investment philosophy and process of most active mutual funds, for example, is broad enough where two different PMs can make markedly different decisions, craft different portfolios, and deliver significantly different results. So isn’t the person driving that fund paramount?

There is already evidence of firms raising the profiles of investment staff. Oppenheimer and JPMorgan offer two examples. I’d argue that asset managers will (and should) continue to build more depth around people in marketing their products. Going further, I think a greater focus on people will emerge in the passive space; after all, passive strategies are still ultimately designed by human beings.

Sure, there are always risks associated to marketing individuals. They change jobs. They retire. Some have personal shortcomings. Some are less than photogenic. But the reality is that the individuals are largely what firms need prospective investors to buy, and so they need to be a big part of any product’s story.