This is such an imaginative time to be a marketer and especially a digital marketer. As busy as we know the next few weeks will be for most, here's hoping that you can find some time to follow the links below to some outstanding content that collectively aims to describe what marketers will be working on in 2010.

We're counting on your liking predictions as much as we do because our next post is devoted to them, too. We’ll be publishing Rock The Boat Marketing's 2010 predictions for digital marketing at asset management companies early next week—subscribe to our RSS feed now or please remember to check back then.

Broad Marketing Trends

11 Smart Marketers Shared Their 2010 Predictions is a MarketingProfs round-up from a motley group of marketers representing agencies, consulting firms and a municipality’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

Examples: One of the ad hoc panelists says that tailored campaign microsites with unique URLs will be abandoned, and social media networks will become destination sites/pages for product launches. Another expects 2010 to be the year when the practice of allowing Sales and Marketing to operate as separate, conflicting silos ends once and for all, due to an urgency to get online and social marketing right. In a statement that a few commenters push back on, a third predicts "2010 will be the year that 'true' mobile marketing takes off."

Social media silliness will give way to private social networks. Video will become increasingly important for selling higher ticket items that require repeated exposure and graduated commitment to complete the sale. As video becomes commonplace it will make sense to develop content creation processes that simultaneously lay down all three types of media (video, audio and text). Those are among the 5 Bold Marketing Predictions from direct marketing consultant Clayton Makepeace’s The Total Package Web site.

Email And Contact Strategy

In keeping with the season, there’s an evergreen quality to a few of the email predictions on EmailInsider (e.g., opt-in processes will become friendlier and landing pages will convert better). But writer Chad White’s comments on how ISPs evaluate engagement metrics when making deliverability decisions and the expected heightened use of email preference centers are worth your attention.

Let’s include a few forecasts in this post on predictions. Almost half (48%) of businesses are increasing overall marketing budgets next year, according to a StrongMail survey reported on this Research Brief on Mediapost.com. Email and social media are two channels that offer high ROI, StrongMail notes.

Source: 2010 Marketing Trends Survey, StrongMail

Marketing Automation and B2B Marketing Predictions for 2010 were written by Eloqua's Steven Woods, whose book Digital Body Language we’ve recently read and highly recommend. Now that companies can learn so much from customer and prospect behavior online, expectations of physical meetings are being reset, Woods says.

"In 2010, in sales organizations we will see a rapid recognition of the new reality that buyers are less willing to take an initial call from a vendor salesperson with an assumption of only exchanging basic information,” says Woods. A more productive first meeting should be the benefit of getting to know a prospect's online profile.

Brand

“A brand can’t just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement,” writes Brand Keys’ Robert Passikoff in his top 10 brand and marketing trends for 2010 on PizzaMarketplace.com.

Oh and also, according to Passikoff, “Consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit."

Online Creative

8 Experts’ Predictions for 2010 gathered by iMedia Connection provide creative agencies’ views of what will work next year. Experts from Razorfish, Mediasmith and others say that “Want better marketing? Create a better product” will be a relevant theme, and better products will determine the brands likely to succeed. As for agency work, effective execution of ideas won’t cut it—“agencies need to help clients build brands that do something” as opposed to just helping them formulate effective messages.

Social Media

If 10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010 is your first exposure to Mashable.com, the exceptional social media blog, make it a two-fer. Read founder Pete Cashmore’s survey of what’s going on and what’s coming and then find time to browse Mashable. The demand for real-time information, location-sharing and the “voluntary erosion of privacy” are among the trends Cashmore names.

The Church of the Customer offers a too-short Out/In list. Blogger Jackie Huba's thesis is that social media will get boring in 2010 as businesses seek to integrate social media into business functions. That means policy-writing, and business goal and team alignment.

When you think about it, why do we have to go to a separate site just to search? One of the 5 Social Media Predictions for 2010 on this Social Media Today list expects Search to be phased out as a separate function next year—“users will receive meaningful, personally relevant search results within the context of whatever they are currently doing.”

See you back here next week for Rock The Boat Marketing's 2010 marketing predictions for asset manager digital marketers.

Are you trying to reach financial advisors? Search and financial news sites are the most frequently used media channels by independent financial advisors, according to a study done by the Financial Planners Association (FPA) and Google.

“This is where you are going to reach not only the widest number of advisors but you’re also going to be able to reach them repetitively and with a frequency of exposure,” says Becca King, Research Manager, in a fascinating 18-minute video Google Business posted on YouTube this week.

Mutual fund, exchange-traded fund (ETF) and other marketers have long wondered where advisors spend their business time online and what works when marketing to them. Advisors are known to rely on quantitative screening when selecting investment products; this work sheds light on the qualitative research they do.

An interesting side comment is the report that corporate Web sites are more helpful to the small percentage of financial advisors who use them. But, the 518 advisors surveyed said it’s the search and financial news sites that attract them, and they find the sites plenty helpful.

(Maybe it's because we agree that we don't take particular offense to the conclusion of this Google-co-sponsored study: “Financial advisors are prompted to action by advertising.”)

More is said in the audio than is presented in the slides shown. For example, Jack Krawczyk, Google Industry Marketing Manager, listed the following five considerations for advisors when first being introduced via advertising to a product:
• Getting information presented in an attention-getting manner
• Brand or product image
• Believability of the messaging and product claim
• Technical information
• Application or strategy of the product

When making a final product decision, these are the four most important criteria, according to the study:
• Investment philosophy and process
• Company image and reputation
• Research and white papers
• Value and service

You might not agree with some of the recommendations regarding strategies to take advantage of the research—e.g., does technical information belong in advertising messages and if it did, wouldn’t it come with too much disclosure? Also, far be it from us to debate the FPA but we find the comments about financial advisors being technologically challenged at least three years out of date.

Overall, the video and work are definitely worth a look.

For more on asset management companies’ use of paid search, see our post Fidelity, iShares, T. Rowe Price Most Aggressive In Paid Search
 

Update: In my sugar haze, I inexplicably overlooked Fidelity, by far the largest paid search advertiser in our space, according to Spyfu.com! I corrected this post a few hours after publishing it.

I have a secret weapon that I use when I want to get something done. It’s called a generous bowl of Trix Swirls (whole grain, nr aturally). It’s not just for kids.

Having powered up on some Trix the other day, I set out to finally answer a question I always wondered about: Which mutual fund companies and exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers are the most aggressive in paid search?

Organic search success—how much traffic your site pulls in from search engines—is a function of many variables influenced by: the quality, quantity and uniqueness of your content, the size of your company, the extent of your online relationships, how your investment products are distributed, the number of your shareholders, etc.

If your site dominates search engine results on important keywords or if you're satisfied overall with the other marketing tactics you're using to support campaigns or raise general brand awareness, maybe you don’t need to compete using paid search.

What's important is that you understand the competition that's happening online. Trix isn’t just for kids and competing isn’t just for salespeople in physical settings. Mano a mano combat may not come naturally to mutual fund and ETF marketers. But, you've seen first-hand how the business environment has changed.

“Fat profits may be long gone for asset managers” was the headline on a Reuters report this week, with consultants and others concluding—as they have before—that revenue compression will force firms to be more competitive.

Paid search is a credible way online marketers can compete. Companies that pay for search traffic are expressing a vote of confidence—they’re not content to wait for a search engine spider to find what they have to offer or to work their way up the search engine results pages. The paid search advertiser is trying to making something happen.

Below we’ve used Spyfu.com to look up the top 25 mutual fund companies and the top 10 ETF providers in the broad investment management space. You can find a wealth of competitive information on Spyfu at no charge; a subscription will unlock the keys to much more. If nothing else, check out who's competing by advertising against your company's name. The Spyfu data isn't gospel, I have my doubts about some of the keywords reported and there are wide variations in the daily ad budgets. But our experience suggests that the reporting is sufficiently reliable to make some general conclusions.

 Source: Spyfu.com, August 6, 2009

Just nine out of 35 mainline financial services companies are availing themselves of a proven online marketing tactic. Make that 13 if you add in some advertising Spyfu says American Funds, MFS, Columbia Management and PowerShares did last year.

Look at the spending differences between the top four—iShares, T. Rowe Price, American Century and Vanguard. This isn't surprising. At times during my browsing it seems as if they are the only companies out there. Good for them—and when you go to Spyfu, you can see the reported estimated results of their paid campaigns. With such a measureable medium, they wouldn't be spending at these levels if they weren't encouraged with the results.

What about your company and what your company has to offer? We’ve written before (and download our ebook for additional commentary on content syndication) about the need to get out of your own house, to meet some people off your own site.

Paid search is an added expense that requires careful planning and testing. It would represent new work but it's work worth the consideration of serious competitors. For the energy boost, I (but maybe not your nutritionist) recommend Trix.

It’s been fun this week watching the growing social media success of State Street Global Advisors's exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketing. A SPDRS commercial introduced in June is getting uploaded to YouTube, as well as to other video-sharing sites, and commenters love, love, LOVE “the video.” (Note how the commercial aspect shrinks when the message is sufficiently appealing.)

Reviewers like the dogs, they like the accompanying song so much they want to buy it…and guess what else? According to their comments, some say they might even give State Street a look.

Watch the commercial for yourself and then let’s bat around some thoughts.

 

What was State Street’s added expense for distribution via You Tube et al?
None, its production costs were unaffected. On the flipside, at fewer than 10,000 combined views as of this writing, it’s hard to claim that their added reach has reduced the expense.

Still…In “letting their content go free” (a social media maxim), the commercial is embedded on a Russian site, a Spanish site and a site that offers basic French lessons, among others. Now, it belongs to the world—and the video views are coming from markets that would be cost-prohibitive to buy into.

What’s different about appearing on television versus YouTube?
The question is too simply posed, maybe, but think of the different context of YouTube. All television viewers are aware that advertisers pay for their time and, on some level even if in some small way, that can discount the impact of a message.

Every uploader of this video is endorsing it for its content—that’s different. The engagement of “users” in uploading, commenting and otherwise interacting with a brand message marks a transition point. Do you remember the Diet Coke and Mento’s stunt? That didn’t belong to the brand, that belonged to the users who took what Diet Coke provided and turned it into something else.

The SDPRs commercial is becoming an homage to dogs. Dogs, animals, lizards all have been the center of commercials previously. But, video-sharing makes it possible to adopt the animals featured.

Below is a screenshot of the Statistics & Data of the highest-viewed copy of the video (not the video we link to above). The video that appears on this page was recorded off a television showing CNBC somewhere in Illinois. It was submitted in the Pets & Animals category (where it's doing very well) and attributed to an entity called State Street SPDR Financial.

Will the added exposure help State Street justify the marketing spend to the number-crunchers, if necessary? (It's easy to imagine CFOs struggling with the soft-sell of this ad, but we seem to remember that State Street is contractually obligated to invest in SPDRs marketing support.)
While State Street no doubt anticipated the popularity of this creative among pet-lovers, we doubt that it was a target customer segment. One of the benefits of being on the Web today is the ability to target, and yet the SPDRs example shows that social media can be messy.

If your professional work gets submitted to a content-sharing (video or otherwise) site, you can expect multiple files—including copies lacking the professional quality that you originally delivered. You can expect people to impose their own organization—e.g., SDPRs might have preferred an investment-related category to pets and animals. There is no dictating or controlling which group or groups may become fans.

Viral distribution is a compliment to the content producer but it also represents more work. When content is safe at home on your site, you know where it is. When it's socializing, you have the added burden to keep track of it and how it's being received.

Still and all, as most CFOs will recognize, added unpaid positive exposure for a television commercial is all upside.

How will State Street evaluate the impact of its new-found attention?
The commercial itself does not include a URL to the site and only one of the video uploads does. Search for “dog commercial” and SPDR or “dog commercial and State Street” and you won’t find the advertiser’s Web site. Now the social Web’s embrace of State Street's content is competing with them!

SPDR Marketing may need to fire up a Google AdWords campaign to secure a place on the first page of search results. We couldn’t find mention of the commercial on either the SDPRs or the State Street site, but adding a search-optimized page with content about the commercial and the file itself would be an idea. Once related content is offered on the brand's domain, the Web analytics team will be able to track how many “dog commercial” searches drove traffic to the site. We’d manage expectations, though—the commercial itself and its afterlife is all about creating awareness. It may be hard to find a cause-effect in the site analytics.

Congratulations to all involved at State Street—there's no doubt that the puppy love will drive video views further. After having endured everything short of famine, drought and pestilence in the last year, investment marketing is showing some life again, isn’t it?

Web strategist and Forrester Research consultant Jeremiah Owyang this week wrote about the effect of letting a Web property get SNOWED—his acronym for Stakeholder Needs Overwhelm Web Experience Design.

That’s an issue that asset management marketers struggle with in trying to provide equitable support for multiple business lines—mutual funds, unit investment trusts (UITs), retirement plans, annuities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), separate accounts—sometimes in multiple geographies and seemingly always led by warring managers.

You may start by working with a single business in a single market as a beta test for a new, cool design. But what’s produced in the test stage is almost never what’s delivered once all the various stakeholders get their crack at it, is it?

Who knows—maybe the American Airlines case study that Owyang cites can provide a neutral starting point for you to start chipping away at this matrixed approach to Web work. For today let's consider a related but less daunting challenge that calls for you to use logic, reason and expertise to appeal to your colleagues in Marketing.

Here's an older video that brilliantly presents the problem. Thanks to Owyang for calling out to it in his post.

Like Microsoft, financial services marketers need to follow brand standards. Standards are created to control the effect of too many cooks following their own recipes. Standards preserve order, leverage enterprise investments and, not incidentally, they typically originate from Marketing! There’s no undermining the importance of standards.

But when communicating digitally, in small spaces, in quick bursts, there is a tightrope to walk between slavish adherence to rigid or narrow standards and fresh canvas expression devoid of all reference to the brand. When the branding is choking the effectiveness of the digital delivery, those of us responsible for leading digital strategies (and achieving digital success) need to speak up.

Here’s where we see the tensions surfacing:

• Online display advertising: The logo, the tagline, the line drawing of the corporate headquarters—all cannot appear on every frame of the ad. Not if you also have a message to convey. Something must give.
• Brand identity in widgets: In providing valuable information as opposed to marketing messages, widgets are almost the antithesis of online banner ads. Fight the reflex to weigh the widget down with intrusive elements. The available real estate will be even smaller when you're designing for a mobile phone application.
• Branding on Twitter: Your Web site is where you show off your brand plumage. The point on Twitter is to be conversational—you know, less about your firm as an entity and more about its place in the world. If you can do this, starting with your profile, your background, your phrasing of your tweets, you’re likely to attract more followers. (For much more about Twitter, see our Social Media directory.)

• Email subject headings: No doubt your approved editorial style is the result of a hard-working thoughtful committee that produced guidelines, all of which assume that communicators have more than 1 second to attract attention. This is not a safe assumption online. We could point to any number of examples but think of just the email subject heading, the thinnest of all communications and yet one of the most powerful.

  Marketers find comfort in the production efficiencies of re-using templates and subject headings yet lament about low open and click-through rates. It's common practice for asset managers to standardize on subject headings—to wit: "In The News," "Quarterly Commentary" and our favorite: “Another Update from Company XYZ.” Stop the madness! Creativity matters more in digital communicating, not less. Each email sent deserves its own unique heading.

We encourage you to take on the tyranny of the standards. Gather your analytics, collect some examples, including from other industries, and call a meeting to put the question on the table. “What room is there for our communications standards to be more flexible to support the business objectives we intend to achieve using digital tactics?”

Confronted with the facts, right-minded, well-intentioned marketers will find a way to reach a compromise.

Financial services companies, everyone is talking about you. You know that. But lately, the drumbeats are getting louder for you to starting talking for yourself.

We know that you’ve had any number of preoccupations—serious and steep revenue declines cascading into budget cutbacks, lay-offs and business reorganizations. But it’s been a year since Bear Stearns and six months since Lehman Brothers, plenty of time for surveyed investors and pundits to reach a consensus: Financial services companies need to be heard from.

Consider the commentary from the last few weeks alone.

"Out of sight can mean out of business," according to Nielsen IAG, which tracked a 13%-plus decline in year-over-year ad spending on financial services and insurance from 2008 to 2007. Spending dropped 23%-plus in the fourth quarter alone.

Citing the data shown in the chart below, a March 19 report from Nielsen links reduced spending to reduced confidence in an organization.

Eight percent of Americans today have full confidence in banks and financial services companies compared to the 31% confidence level expressed as recently as 2006. That’s according to a consumer poll sponsored by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE)/RT Strategies and reported on March 20. Other findings:

• 44% said they had heard something from the industry but felt more negative after hearing it. The survey sponsors said this suggests “that media coverage or advertising is shaping public opinion more than direct communication from the industry.”
• 11% said they’d heard something from the industry and felt better about the industry after hearing it. The sponsors says this suggests “that when there is authentic and credible communication, it positively influences widely held opinions about the industry overall.”
• 38% said they’d heard nothing directly from the industry at all.

Then there's the March 25 commentary from Steve Cone, now with Epsilon but whose resume includes senior marketing roles at Citigroup, American Express and Fidelity.

“The financial services industry has listened to the constant media yapping about how TARP participants should not market themselves anymore or pay bonuses to anyone, and even non-TARP concerns have been scared into silence,” Cone writes in a DMNews post. Cone goes on to recommend a six-step plan of attack for thawing what he considers financial companies’ communications numbness.

To be sure, it’s the rare company right now that has the appetite and wherewithal to launch a multimillion dollar advertising campaign like what Cone has been associated with. (One notable exception is Fidelity with its launch of a Guide to Personal Savings investor education program and television, print, online and outdoor brand advertising campaign. For more information, see the March 10 Investment News article.)

And, given the environment, some apprehension is understandable. It is possible to mis-step, as illustrated by research announced this week regarding consumer attitudes toward corporate sponsorships. Of 13 categories tested, banks and investment firms were the most likely to inspire "Less" confidence as a corporate sponsor, according to a Performance Research study.

If you’re responsible for digital strategy at your company, you may think that agitating for an advertising spend is beyond the scope of your duties. But this is a prime opportunity to lead by opening some purseholders' eyes about what can be done—indeed, what others online are doing—and how efficiently.

The company that doesn’t have the funds for a traditional media-based ad blitz doesn’t have an excuse. Banner ads, pay-per-click, online sponsorships, social media, search engine-optimized press releases and whitepapers all have potential for mutual fund companies, ETF providers and other money managers to use to start speaking up for themselves. The marketplace is saying it’s time.

Work and some recreation kept me from posting this in time for St. Valentine's Day. Hate when life keeps me from the computer. Without further delay, the sites I love and think you will, too:

1. Quantcast.com
Quantcast is a free service established for marketers, agencies and publishers to serve as a basis for media planning. If you're buying online ads, you may already be familiar with its data about media sites.

I love it because of the Web site traffic information that’s available about you and your competitors. But, don’t count on Quantcast (or Compete.com) for precision. If you’re involved in mutual fund or ETF marketing, you know the byzantine collection of Web sites, microsites, Extranets etc. that you’re responsible for, and your colleagues are no different. Quantcast data may over- or under-state competitor traffic.

What should be reliable is the information reported on the Lifestyle Summary tab: a list of sites also visited. Below is data about FranklinTempleton.com.

2. iMediaConnection.com
This is a very commercial site on the subject of interactive marketing, with much of the content authored by vendors. I, for one, think there’s nothing wrong with that. The site publisher does a good job of mixing fresh content and submitted content that’s been in the queue. The offerings may be broader than you need, but there’s a lot to learn from the articles, videos and podcasts.

3. Marketleap.com
Marketleap is not a site you’ll love for its looks. Then again, it’s been out there serving online publishers well before Web 2.0-designed sites were at the wireframe stage. Marketleap is a free, reliable way of keeping an eye on who your competition is for keywords, for tracking the popularity of links and for insights into how well represented your site is in search engines.

4. Delicious.com
Read an article, tag it using your Delicious account and you’ll be able to find it again even if you’re using another computer or browser. In addition to using it as a personal organizer of your notes, you can find content using Delicious’ search of others’ bookmarks and notes.

Frustrated by useless search engine results, many people favor this “social search” because user bookmarks can be a tacit endorsement of valuable content. Delicious offers lots of flexibility in organizing and re-organizing tagged content, sharing what you want and setting controls over what you don’t want to share. Another (relative) oldie, but a goodie.

5. SlideShare.net
Back in the day, I believed that the best content could be found doing filetype (*.ppt and *.pdf) searches on Google. But, that meant unnecessarily opening and closing a lot of university and government agency presentations with misleading slide titles. I’ll still search by file types but not until after I've checked out what's on SlideShare.

Thousands of content creators—many of them prominent names--upload their presentations to share on an array of subjects. Digital and other forms of marketing are especially well represented. You’ll learn something, if only it’s insight into how someone else presents a story. Note that this is a platform you could use for publishing content, too.

6. Twitter.com
OK, I’m the person who years ago sought to build a following among family and friends by creating "amusing" answering machine messages that I published daily. Who thinks that the letters to the editor are the best part of the newspaper (which I now read on the Kindle). And who tracks Google Trends as an RSS feed. I like to keep up.

Twitter isn’t for everyone but as marketers in one of the most commented on industries, Twitter should be for you. At the minimum, go to Twitter Search, search for some terms (your company name, products, portfolio managers) you want to monitor and add the RSS feed for the queries in your feed reader. (See a related post on what people have been saying about financial advisors.)

No doubt your employer’s Compliance department has rules for you to follow regarding posting company-related Twitters, but there is no harm in reading. You can’t be expected to do your job in a vacuum, and Twitter is one free, effective way to stay in touch with what an increasingly influential community is saying. The more you learn about Twitter, the more you'll see that it's much more than a Web site.

I use Twitter mainly to call attention to fresh Web content about two topics: digital marketing and the financial services industry. Naturally, you’re invited to follow me.

7. StumbleUpon.com
I discovered this site a few years ago while in the midst of a challenging Web site launch. It was right around that time when my mind split the Web into two for me—the work Web, which involved a lot of stressful CMS-related testing of the new Web site—and the Web I play on.

Sign up on StumbleUpon.com, select topics that interest you and prepare to browse the Web in the same way that you use a remote control to channel surf television programs. Every time you “stumble,” you’ll be taken to a Web page you probably haven’t seen before but could conceivably lose yourself in.

Your thumbs up or down on the content you see will be an input into the powerful recommendation engine that feeds subsequent content to “like-minded” users. This is very cool stuff and has significant traffic implications for you if your site publishes something that catches a StumbleUpon wave.

You may hear much more about Twitter but a report earlier in the month claimed that StumbleUpon has7 million users—or twice as many as Twitter.

8. ReturnPath.net
Email services providers tend to offer a generous amount of content on their Websites, but ReturnPath’s site is one of the richest. Lots of the typical whitepaper resources but also a good multi-author blog and podcast.

9. Webmaster Radio.FM
Free business-to-business Internet Radio that I recommend for Internet marketing, search engine optimization and advertising content. Some of the hosts take a while to start the show, others seem to be on permanent ego trips but hang in there for unequaled real-time commentary and insights.

Download the desktop application and, if you listen live, you can benefit from participating in the chat rooms. Or subscribe, as I do, to the podcast feeds.

10. Alltop.com
Alltop is a self-described "online magazine rack" that enables our best browsing and content snacking instincts. Above is a screen shot of Personal Finance but Alltop aggregates content on a variety of topics from a vast array of sites.

Enjoy but back to work--would the headlines you're posting on your content compel a browser to click for the rest of the story?

So, those are my random 10. I make a point of not pestering readers for feedback because I realize you're subject to Compliance restraints. On this topic, I'm making an exception and hoping you can find a way to post from a home computer and email account. What sites would you send belated Valentines to?

We could keep this up all the way to Sweetest Day...and maybe a week or two after.

As our nation’s elected leaders debate the financial bailout and investors anxiously reset their expectations of their investments and plans, financial services marketing and communications will face heightened scrutiny. It’s unknown how the current situation will be resolved or when. But, it’s a safe bet that there will be a hue and cry for greater transparency and disclosure from all money-taking organizations.

Transparency and disclosure? That implies Web-delivered. In these days how companies appropriate their Web sites and prepare content to be syndicated for use on other sites will be a differentiatior. The investment management industry has invested millions in time and effort to build out tidy publishing platforms capable of supporting product stories and investor account access. Now is the time to tap the speed-to-market capability afforded by these platforms to support a continuous stream of relevant communications. (“Relevant” is the operative word here—companies with emails in the queue touting Morningstar rating updates may want to rethink either their timing or messaging. Many believe the financial world changed last week.)

A commitment to communicating portends additional collaboration and creativity between Marketing, Investment and Compliance groups in order to achieve greater transparency and disclosure while complying with the regulations (which no one believes will become less stringent!). IT, too, may need to be drawn in as Marketing favors richer media over HTML-based messages.

Having listened to several asset managers’ market podcasts over the weekend, I’d submit the Wells Fargo Advantage Funds’ On the Trading Desk as a best practice for transparency. The September 19 podcast featured Peter Nulty, writer and editor of Wells’ daily and Thomas J. Pence, Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager, Wells Capital Management, and included a review of the events of the tumultuous week and an outlook. It’s informal, engaging, informative and shows none of the stiltedness that can characterize much of our regulated communications. I almost forgot that the producer was an investment manager—well done!

The following articles are a sampling of what the media has had to say in the last few days about financial services advertising:

• In Scary Times, Advertising Firms Offer Messages of Strength, September 21, New York Times
• Memo to Marketing: Cut the Bull From Wall Street Ads, September 20, Washington Post
• Financial Services Firms’ Ads Mum on Wall St. Chaos, September 19, Brandweek