Bagel Tuesday - Fresh ideas. Toasted opinions.

From a recent Adweek article:

“Advertisers are increasingly willing to look at non-click metrics, such as brand lift. We’re migrating away from what we call ‘swim lane’ metrics and moving more toward the portfolio’s impact and its result so you can adjust in a meaningful way.  If your not looking at cross-channel influence, you’re shot-gunning investment across a bunch of digital channels.  Brands need to get past digital impressions and into richer, predictive analytics.”  

Digital branding, advertising, content marketers, and creative technologists of the world, you’re not helping anyone by talking this way. 

I know, every industry has its buzzwords and corporate speak, but in the branding and marketing world we’re always telling clients to keep messages simple and avoid jargon.

So let’s start following our own advice and stop creating phrases like “brand lift” and speaking in weird metaphors.

By the way, “brand lift” is measuring the effectiveness of an ad campaign.

I know, I’m asking the wrong question.  I mention it, however, to point out that we’re at one of those points (again), when investors are uncertain of what to do with their money and asking this question (again).

So, how is the investment industry responding?  As always, there are a lot of opinions and commentary out there, but are we making it easy for investors to:

1. Find 
2. Read/Watch
3. Understand 
4. Decide

In most cases, investment companies aren’t hitting even one or two of these items let alone all four.  

#1 Make it easy to find.  I don’t want to pick on or praise anyone in particular, but of the 10 largest asset managers in the world, only half of them provide a link or article on their public homepage that begins to answer this question (I won't even get into finding information about investment philosophy and process, that's even harder to track down).  For most I had to navigate at least one or two levels to find some investment perspective and often it's buried in an area like “Resource Center,” “News and Insights” or I had to pretend to be a financial advisor.  Sorry, but this is not the first thing my mom (sorry mom, no offense) will click on. 

#2 Make it easy to consume. When I found commentary or perspective about the current environment, there aren’t many firms that present information in a way that makes me want to read it or watch it.  Unfortunately, most falls into one or more of the following content traps: 1) large blocks of copy 2) no visual elements (I just fell into this one myself) 3) weak or nonexistent headlines and 4) not another talking head!

#3 Make it easy to understand. This is closely related to #2, because if I can’t understand something I’m not going to want to read or watch it, but it’s still worth mentioning as a separate item because a lot of investment firms fall into the trap of writing long and complex commentary that often doesn’t take a stand. It may sound obvious, but most of your audience doesn't have an MBA, so whenever possible it's good to avoid industry jargon. With regard to not taking a stand, if investors are only looking for a recap of how the markets are performing they’ll go to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg or the hundred or so other choices they have. 

#4 Make it easy to make a decision. Again, the marks are low.  I couldn’t find one that made it clear what investors should do today other than to buy another product.  Does your chief economist or investment officer think we should sit tight or make a change to our asset allocations?  If you’ve already told the same story a hundred times, please forgive us, we need to hear it again.  I know it can be scary, but let your compliance dept. do the worrying, take a stand and be persuasive.  Investors want to be educated and convinced.

While every investment firms has a viewpoint and it exists somewhere, we pay enough fees to expect that it will be easy to find, consume, understand and make a decision about what to do with our money. 

This post is an excerpt from our recently launched Elevator Paper “Investment Brands are Different.”

The world of investment marketing lives by its own rules. Whether you’re selling mutual funds or institutional strategies, retirement advice or asset allocation, the tried-and-true techniques of other marketing categories don’t necessarily apply. Investment brands don’t behave like consumer brands—or like business-to-business brands. Here’s the first reason why:

A hybrid audience of professionals and consumers

Investment brands don’t behave like typical consumer brands. By and large, they’re not marketed directly to consumers. But they don’t behave like business-to-business brands, either.

The investment business has a unique brand model. Their audience is a hybrid of professional buyers and end-consumers. Professional buyers are generally intermediaries of one sort or another, such as financial advisors or plan sponsors. End-consumers range from retail investors to plan participants to high net worth clients.

The needs and desires of each segment vary wildly. Professional buyers are swayed primarily by intellectual argument and information. But consumer brands are built by creating an emotional connection between the brand and the consumer.

Investment brands must appeal to one and all. They must deliver the facts and figures demanded by professionals, who are the primary decision-makers. (They must also deliver this information to consumers, in a lighter form.) But equally important is giving the end-consumer a feeling of confidence and trust. Investors must believe in the people with whom they are entrusting their money.

That’s the blend of intellect and emotion that drives successful investment brands.

Continue reading or download the paper.

Writing for emotional impact is considered essential in a Hollywood script. But when it comes to investment writing, some marketers might disagree with this quote:

“People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds.  They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.”  – Robert Keith Leavitt

Money and investing come with all kinds of emotional baggage and people’s attitudes toward money can be highly emotional.  This may be less so among institutional and professional buyers (at least that’s what we’re supposed to believe) but for the consumer, hitting the right emotional notes can be critical.

A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled on the topic of investor psychology, so I’m not going to go there.  Instead, I want to talk about hitting the right emotional notes when writing to the average investor and professional buyers alike.

Bill Gross of PIMCO does this very well. Although he can be a bit long-winded. His market commentary and books almost always tell a story and are written to evoke emotion.

An example from his most recent investment outlook:

“About six months ago, I only half in jest told Mohamed that my tombstone would read, “Bill Gross, RIP, He didn’t own ‘Treasuries’.” Now, of course, the days are getting longer and as they say in golf, it is better to be above – as opposed to below – the grass. And it is better as well, to be delivering alpha as opposed to delevering in the bond market or global economy. The best way to visualize successful delivering is to recognize that investors are locked up in a financially repressive environment that reduces future returns for all financial assets. Breaking out of that “jail” is what I call the Great Escape, and what I hope to explain in the next few pages.”

Of course, this isn’t for everyone, and maybe I’m a bit of an investment geek, but I don't think you need to be a CFA to want to continue reading.

While his storytelling does a good job of attracting and engaging readers, his writing also has the potential to elicit a number of different emotional responses (all of which are better than boredom, of course):

• Anger and annoyance
• Fear and paralysis
• Shock
• Acceptance and hope

Perhaps more importantly, Bill understands the potential emotions his writing can evoke and he addresses the first three with the following techniques.

First, he prepares his audience for potential anger, annoyance, fear or shock by letting them know he’s about to tell them something they may not want to hear or agree with.

Second, after he drops a bomb, he let’s readers know that there’s hope – that his research shows there is a way out of this mess.  He offers tips and insight to allay fears, annoyance or potential shock.

Finally, he keeps it real.  He acknowledges the real challenges we face as investors and lets readers know that he appreciates the complexities, assumptions and undertones of the situations we face.  He doesn’t come across as if he has all the answers, but he does come across as someone who understands them and that give us confidence.  It helps us get to acceptance and hope.

With the markets in recovery mode and the recent financial crisis becoming a distant memory, it seems like a good time to reflect on what we’ve learned, if anything.

As I dug a bit deeper on the topic of “lessons from the financial crisis,” which only returned about 40 million results, the idea of rebuilding trust came up more than a few times.  I then stumbled upon a presentation that I think offers some interesting perspectives on the topic.

Titled simply “Trust,” the author, Justin Basini, argues that trust building begins with managing risk and clearly communicating them as opposed to marketing products and services benefits.

It sounds simple enough, but it’s actually a fairly radical idea given the investment industry’s historical focus on product benefits, as opposed to managing risks, expectations and discovery of clients’ needs and objectives. 

To clarify, Justin is not saying that the industry shouldn’t discuss benefits.  He’s simply saying that there needs to be a more balanced approach to communicating benefits, as well as risks and expectations in a clear and simple way.

Unfortunately, this tendency to focus on benefits, as opposed to risks, was amplified during the recent economic crisis. 

Most crises’ start with a mistake, and either move into the social conscience as a conspiracy or incompetence.  For the entire investment industry, public perception moved directly from crisis to incompetence due to the complexity of the issue and the belief that business leaders simply didn’t manage risk appropriately or didn’t realize what they were getting into.

Top-down communications don’t work right now

The question then becomes, how do you deal with it?  Many firms continue to apply a “top-down” approach to communications.  Meaning, the CEO or spokesperson comes out with the corporate approved message.  The age of top-down communications, however, is dead (at least for the time being).  Messages now flow through numerous and sometimes unexpected channels.  As a result, marketing and corporate communications need to adapt.

You must empower and arm your entire company with the right messages for partners and consumers.  This is critical because society doesn’t trust the face of corporate America – the CEO.  They’re more likely, however, to trust their peers. 

What this also means is that for the time being, the trust challenge is not solved by differentiation but rather by whom and how your message is delivered. 

Making a difference and finding what you truly believe

Companies and the entire industry also need to prove to distribution partners and investors that they’re worthy of trust.  One of the ways you can do this is by recognizing and communicating what your role is in the global economy and what your responsibility is to your community and to people’s lives. 

In other words, how do you make a difference as opposed to how are you better or different?

It sounds risky, especially given the negative market environment we’ve just experienced, and finding that right message can be difficult, but in reading another interesting post by Steve Gardner, President of Gardner Nelson + Partners it’s clear that the companies that are willing to communicate what they really believe, no matter what the market environment, will be rewarded in the long run.

P.S. As this post was publishing I received an email about John Hancock’s new “Trust” campaign.  The ads are aimed at stressing the importance of trusted advisors with one boasting, “People don’t trust the market.  People don’t trust the economy.  People don’t trust the government. But you, they trust.” 

Seems we were thinking along the same lines.

I had the pleasure of appearing on a live interactive webcast sponsored by BrightTALK and kasina last week. I was a little nervous because the last time I was on live TV was back in 1982—to somewhat disastrous effect—but the great folks at BrightTALK and the TV technicians at the studio made it easy for me.

The subject was "what advisors do online," based on new research by kasina. In my presentation, I supplemented the kasina research with some tips for asset managers in making the shift from a "dot.com-centric world" to the "content-centric world" we're in now, where users no longer reach your content only through your home page but access it directly from a constantly changing landscape of search engines, email links, blogs, social media, RSS readers, mobile apps, content aggregators and more. I also used our new AAM site (which just happened to launch that morning) as an example of how asset managers can make their content one of the main pillars of their value proposition.

You can see the whole webcast below (it lasts about an hour). I also plan to discuss this idea of the content-centric world some more in a future post.

Even experienced designers can make unnecessary mistakes when communicating data visually. Nathan Yau, who posts the Web's most wonderful infographics on his Flowing Data blog, goes rudimentary today with 7 Basic Rules for Making Charts and Graphs. Accompanied by cute little illustrations like this one for Rule 1: Check Your Data, it's a must-read for young designers — and even a few older ones who sometimes get forgetful.

Big news on Tuesday as a federal appeals court ruled that FCC indecency laws are unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the ruling stated that the policies are

"unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here."

While this is mostly a safeguard for broadcast networks to avoid getting sued for "spontaneous vulgarity" - like Bono's f-bomb and the infamous Janet Jackson incident, there's a larger point to be made here. Traditional broadcast media are adapting to the changing times, by simply treating consumers like adults. Don't like the foul language? Switch to another channel. Worried that your kids saw some partial nudity? Explain it to them.

And, of course, the Internet has been doing this for years. The best thing about the digital world is that a user can find absolutely anything - which is also the worst thing. But somehow we've all managed to navigate the space without a rating system, censorship, warning labels, or ten-second delays.

This is not to suggest that there isn't a lot of scary, inappropriate content on the Web. There is. But even the much talked about "internet kill switch" can't make it go away. What the Internet has taught us, and hopefully traditional media has finally learned, is that people are generally mature enough to find material that's appropriate for them, without needing a nanny to shield them from what's not. Because ultimately, the reward outweighs the risk.