Articles & Insights

The Financial Marketers' Alliance hosts what is arguably the world's largest repository of articles and research in the financial services marketing industry today. Through a partnership with "The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing," FMA members may view hundreds of financial marketing articles.

ARTICLE LIST

08/16/2007

VERBATIM: A DISCUSSION WITH BRET SANFORD-CHUNG, SMITH BARNEY DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING & COMMUNICATIONS

Author:

Bret

Category:

Research

Description:

In March, Bill Wreaks, publisher and chief analyst of The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing, met with Bret Sanford-Chung, senior vice president, director of advertising and marketing communications for Smith Barney, to discuss several topics, including her thoughts regarding the company’s newly launched branding campaign, the role of an ad agency in today’s environment and the general direction of financial services advertising and marketing today.

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08/16/2007

IN THE USA, MULTI-CULTURAL ADVERTISING IS EXPLODING: FINANCIAL SERVICES STEPS TO THE PLATE

Author:

Brian

Category:

Research

Description:

The pace of general-market advertising in financial services has rebounded strongly from the doldrums of 2001. But the industry is still lagging behind many others in its efforts to tap into the explosive growth of the buying power of minority consumers.
America’s largest banks and investment companies have spent more advertising dollars than most other sectors of the economy over the past several years. Financial services firms have digested the late-1990s wave of mergers and acquisitions to focus their marketing efforts on retail banking and brand-building. The pace of general-market advertising in financial services has rebounded strongly from the doldrums of 2001. But the industry is still lagging behind many others in its efforts to tap into the explosive growth of the buying power of minority consumers.
A host of long-standing cultural and institutional challenges have combined to make financial services late to the party in multicultural marketing initiatives. But a catch-up movement is under way, and multicultural marketing is slowly becoming a key element in campaigns supporting retail banking and products such as checking accounts, mortgages and life insurance.
...

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08/12/2007

A CUT ABOVE: A HIGHER GROUND APPROACH TO FINANCIAL PUBLIC RELATIONS by Fred Pfaff

Author:

Fred Pfaff

Category:

Marketing

Description:

If there is a flipside to deregulation, it is that differentiation keeps getting harder to find in financial services. Megabrands expand product lines to become every customer’s one-stop shop, so everyone feels obligated to sell the same range of services. Subsequently, a new product is not on the market a month before copycats are offered by a dozen competitors. And by all signs, competition is only going to intensify.

Consolidation continues in virtually every service sector, and independent alternatives are on the rise. Within each sector, there are twice as many companies operating as there were 10 years ago. As the noise level escalates exponentially, the pressure mounts to create more meaningful connections with increasingly indifferent customers, often with an inadequate budget to do it correctly with conventional advertising. That means that multiple communications forms and opportunities must be utilized, especially “noncommercial” messages that slip through the promotion filter. Increasingly, that will mean using marketing and public relations but with a different approach. Now that the opportunities for news are not so expansive — there are fewer outlets, up-to-the-minute timeliness pressure and an emphasis on “big” — the temptation is to make marketing and public relations a matter of persistence. More news releases, more calls, and more parties are needed, in other words, more noise. All too often the result is undifferentiated firms with fleeting visibility.
...

source:

The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing

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08/12/2007

WAR BONDS: THE FINANCIAL AD CAMPAIGN THAT SAVED THE WORLD by Kip Fry

Author:

Kip Fry

Category:

Research

Description:

In 1944, Timemagazine ran an ad that must have grabbed many people’s eyes. It included a picture of a gritty soldier in fatigues and helmet, obviously in the middle of a battlefield. He has a grenade in his hand, its pin firmly locked between his teeth. In a moment, he will pull the pin and lob the grenade behind enemy lines.
It’s a stirring image. Maybe even disturbing. But in the midst of a war, it is something that almost must be expected.
Read on.
...

source:

The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing

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08/12/2007

FOLLOW THE VIEWER: A USER'S GUIDE TO 21ST CENTURY TV by Sean Cunningham

Author:

Sean Cunningham

Category:

Media

Description:

To get the most from your brand’s highest stakes marketing investment this year, follow the viewers. That may seem so obvious it shouldn’t be the lead of a marketing journal article. But you’ll have to circumvent decades of legacy thinking to follow this advice. The pace of change in TV advertising practice has been significant, but it still lags the real-time dynamic pace in which viewers are reinventing television. Viewers can take advantage of explosions of choice and easy manipulation giving them irrevocable control of their TV options. Advertising needs to be approached on these terms. Today, viewers are leading advertisers to a more powerful medium that gets closer to the people who matter most to brands and, ultimately, closer to a sale. A marketer’s most powerful tool turns out to be the viewer’s perspective because advertisers won’t connect with consumers and seize a bit of their attention if they don’t plan and buy “passion-based TV.”
...

source:

The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing

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