8 Mutual Fund Commercials From Way Back When

Some of digital marketing’s roots can be found in advertising. Before marketers went online, television and radio advertising is where many mastered media, audience selection and targeting, and developed a command of analytics. 

In that spirit—and because it’s Throwback Thursday—here’s a look at eight mutual fund commercials from yesteryear. 

The messaging, the style and the feel of most of these are a far cry from what mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers produce today. But, in the days before social and digital media, television advertising was the highest profile activity Marketing could engage in. These commercials and commercials like them were instrumental in driving what is now a $15 trillion industry.

Dreyfus, 1961

Based on the YouTube comments accompanying this Dreyfus commercial, a lion walking through the subway made quite a lasting impression in the pre-CGI days of 1961. It's interesting that the oldest commercial in this collection is the one that takes the most risk.

Dreyfus again, 1987

There’s a lot to love about this commercial promoting a Ginnie Mae fund, providing access once available only to the "moneyed few." My favorite part is when the actor needs to turn his back on the camera not once but twice to read the 800 number.

Fidelity, 1989

Maybe those were the good old days. This commercial message urges conservative investors seeking 10% money market fund returns to “call anytime day or night” to invest with Fidelity Spartan Funds. “But you must act now!”

Franklin Templeton, 1995

About 1 minute in to this collection of 1995 CNN commercial breaks, you’ll hear a fast-talking Mark Mobius promoting the potential of “developing markets” for Templeton Funds. 

Oppenheimer Funds, 1998

The IMDb says Gene Hackman's voiceover work for Oppenheimer Funds was done in 1998 but this Oppenheimer Funds commercial and others in its series have a very contemporary feel.

Kemper Funds (RIP), 1998

OK, Oppenheimer, I'll see your Gene Hackman and raise you one John Lithgow. Lithgow provides the voiceover for the Kemper Funds commercial that starts at 3:59. I'm partial to this work, which was launched when I worked for Kemper, managing "electronic communications."

T. Rowe Price, 2006

Here's a newer fund performance commercial from T. Rowe Price, and note the much longer disclosure.

Janus, 2007-ish

This Janus commercial was uploaded in 2007 and, if memory serves, might have aired right around that time. With a more complicated message than the rest of these commercials, this ad covers a lot of ground in 30 seconds.

As a final note, I felt a pang while searching for these videos on YouTube. The commercials that are out there have been uploaded randomly, and there's so much that can't be found. Is anyone other than the individual fund companies and FINRA (who has the most complete de facto archive, thanks to filing requirements) preserving this work for posterity?

Big News, Multiple Platforms: How PIMCO Addressed The Un-taper

Most of the time, exhortations to create asset management "newsrooms" are about content throughput and planning, overlaid on a commitment to communicate more frequently.

But make no mistake—to succeed in content marketing aimed at relevant, timely communicating, your team also needs to understand that some events require dropping everything. When the alarm sounds, you need the agility, the energy and the relationships in place to clear the decks and make the most of the opportunity.

This morning I'm admiring how PIMCO got the word out after the Fed's decision yesterday to delay tapering off on billions of dollars of bond buying.

Admittedly, it may be a lay-up to get Bill Gross on CNBC the day of a Fed announcement. And if the announcement had gone as planned, PIMCO's syndicating of commentary might have been less impressive. The firm already has significant content distribution relationships in place.

One Strategist, 2 Platforms, 2 Commentaries

Still, there must have been some hustling that went into the publication of two different Mohamed El-Erian pieces on two very different platforms—Financial Times and LinkedIn—on the day the news was made. Note the social sharing totals, which are the payoff for being on the spot when people are wondering what the heck just happened here.

In the meantime, guess what didn't get updated? PIMCO.com, which as of 10 a.m. Central had no fresh commentary related to the taper. Also and despite Gross's typical use of Twitter to make news (and he's doing that with tweets on Janet Yellen's prospects), the @PIMCO Twitter account has been used primarily for navigation, pointing followers to where the expanded PIMCO insights are.

I'd like to see the Website reflect the other-site content activity, or at least an embed of the Twitter stream. Also, the firm is missing an opportunity on LinkedIn. I wish the PIMCO company page, which has one-tenth of the followers that El-Erian has, would link to the El-Erian updates. As is, people going to the PIMCO site or LinkedIn company page (brand loyalists, ostensibly) are missing out.

Blurring The Lines Between Music And Investing

Quick, what tune comes to mind when you think of mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or investing in general?

Nothing, nothing at all? Me either.

In a sound-filled, even noisy world, investing (not trading) is distinguished by its hush. Walk into a mutual fund company, or a financial advisor’s office for that matter, and you’re likelier to “hear” silence than music.

While other businesses use music to communicate energy, optimism or whatever, music is not in the investment firm’s communications toolbox. Too bad, really. Music can add another dimension to an experience. (Not to mention its effect on productivity. If you take a closer look in investment offices, you'll see plenty of people wearing earbuds while they work.)

In the last few months, I’ve collected a few examples of efforts to pair music with investment topics. Is this the start of anything, do you think?

Shelter From The Bonds?

Let’s start with a marketing example—a Bob Dylan-inspired video on an unlikely topic. It’s entertaining, although TastyTrade was probably hoping for more than 60 views.

Branded Playlists

In August it was revealed that Spotify, the music streaming service, was beta-testing a follow feature so marketers could promote branded playlists. 

Ordinarily, the announcement might have fostered just more other-industry envy. Except that Morningstar’s Editor-In-Chief Jerry Kerns has already been doing something like that on Spotify. He’s been creating playlists to accompany issues of Morningstar Advisor.

Issue No. 36_Fund Distribution may be more relevant, but the tracks from Issue No. 35_Bonds will give you a better idea of how the playlist syncs with the focus.

To listen, log in to Spotify and find the jerrykerns account. According to the published numbers, there has been almost zero uptake on this, too. (To be fair, there's been zero promotion—I just happened to see a tweet from Kerns about it.)

The Rhythm Of The Data

Here’s what started me thinking about beats and financial data. The FMS Symphony created a “house-trance,” selecting chords based on the derivative of federal account balance data and a melody based on the federal interest rate data. For more, see this Revolutions post.

Just a warning, when you click on this link or on the image above, you may not love the “cheesy synth” and the volume is set high. But try to hang in there long enough to experience February through October 2008, at least. It’s a soundtrack for the financial crisis.

We have personal life tickers, is it so far-fetched to imagine an asset manager introducing soundtracks for investing over a lifetime? 

Music To Browse By

Do you remember when some early Websites experimented with audio files that auto-launched when visitors landed? There was a bit of a blowback and random Web browsing today is largely free of surprise sounds, including from ads.

Here's one business in private beta, righTune.com, that believes that background music can aid in achieving Website goals. You set the mood and they pick the background music. To my knowledge, this isn't being directed at investing sites. I mention it as an example of more music headed the Web user's way. I'll try to keep an open mind on this one.

Music and investing—do they have a future together?

Could An Advisor Community Form Around A PDF?

How can you ever hope to have a conversation when most of your content is locked up in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files?

That’s been the taunt from me and other people like me to mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers for the last few years. Breaking the PDFs wide open and distributing the content within was the only path to "conversation" that we envisioned.

But check out an app that I’ve been experimenting with. The premise of Readmill (for the iPhone and iPad only currently) is that each ebook or PDF can be a self-contained social network.

Here’s an expansion on the generic value of the idea, from the FastCoLabs blog post, which is where I learned about it last week:

“While most e-readers allow you to share passages or links to the book you are reading, and sites like Goodreads let you share what you’ve read, their implementations treat the book and the discussions around them as separate collections. Worse, these apps force users to venture into the distracting world of the open Internet when they want to share, making it hard to stay focused on reading.”

With an ebook or PDF uploaded to Readmill (online or via the app), iPhone readers can highlight a passage on the page and comment on it from within the book. Other readers of the same document can read the comments and add their own thoughts.

Is That All There Is?

Like you, I’ve participated in my share of content marketing campaigns featuring whitepapers, reports, ebooks, etc. as the deliverable. Sure, financial advisors responded, jumped through whatever hoops that were required (there’s less of that nowadays, thankfully), took the download and left as quickly as they came.

The process is always a bit of a letdown.

So, what did you think? How did you like that PDF? I’ve always wished that there was an unobtrusive way to follow up with those who downloaded.

This is the promise of the Readmill app: It can capture readers’ reactions, questions and criticisms, with the feedback adding to the value of the original document. (There’s no confusing the original piece with the comments, I hasten to add for my Compliance friends.)

I’m intrigued by how this could be used with the broad "advisor community." There are a few advisor communities online—LinkedIn groups, professional association sites, standalone forums and even ad hoc communities that can be found frequently commenting on publication Websites.

But none offers this utility. Could a piece of advisor-worthy content delivered in PDF and distributed using Readmill bring advisors together as sort of a quickly coalescing, friction-free book club reviewing a whitepaper on alternative investing, for example?

To advisors the benefit of participation is discussion with like-minded colleagues. To the PDF provider it's listening, learning and maybe even weighing in with follow-up questions.

A Demonstration

To get an idea of how Readmill works, I’ve uploaded a 14-page PDF—a free excerpt from the David Meerman Scott book News Jacking—highlighted it in three places and made a few comments.

In the first screenshot, you’re seeing the line I highlighted and then my comment. Others could add their comments to mine or create new comments elsewhere.

The second screenshot shows the prompt for feedback or sharing at the completion of the book.

I hope you can find some time to explore Readmill. Download the app. Then search for the Rock The Boat Demo. Add a few comments and let us all (or at least me, privately) know what you think about the experience.

This is probably too early and there’s some work to do before a Readmill content distribution could be ready to go. Would advisors’ comments have to be archived? Is archiving even possible? Most asset managers would likely feel more comfortable with a private label version library. I wouldn't think that this or the archiving would be a showstopper because Readmill makes the API available. Adoption would require promotion and use by more than one firm.

I could get worked up about this. Could you?