In the asset management world, investors generally don’t pay any attention to an investment strategy until it hits the three-year mark. Institutional investors and the consultants who serve them are particularly leery about strategies without an established track record. The same is true in in the advisor space, as Morningstar waits for a fund’s three-year anniversary before assigning a [...]
Typically, customers most value timely content that relates to what is going on today. If you’re an asset manager, your investment commentary helps inform financial advisors by explaining what is driving the market this month. If you’re a financial advisor, your explanation of newly finalized tax rules helps clients understand its relevance to them. But there’s a place for [...]
In a prior post, we discussed the nature and development of a firm’s media-facing core messages. (Quick recap: they are things you can actually say to reporters during an interview. They can’t sound like advertising. They should differentiate your firm in the competitive landscape.) Reporters and editors are external audience you are trying to reach—and so are your clients. [...]
RIA marketing pros would do well to learn about the SEC’s new Investment Adviser Marketing rule. This post focuses on the new rule’s relevance to original content, media interviews and social media. Testimonials, endorsements and third-party ratings—all key focus areas of the new rule—are topics for another time. The new Marketing rule applies to RIAs, not Registered Investment Companies, [...]
Whether you talk to the media weekly or once in a blue moon, you should have a trio of top-level messages about your firm to guide your media interactions. Those key points—what we call a message triangle—keep you focused when you are talking to a reporter. If it’s a phone call, have them in front of you, written out [...]
Anytime the markets shift dramatically near quarter-end, communications teams at investment firms face a time crunch. Commentaries and fact sheets have to get out the door, both to meet shareholder statement schedules and to support investors’ confidence in how well the firm is coping with volatile conditions. Right now, those communications professionals are dealing with a double whammy: communicating [...]
When a CEO departs unexpectedly, it’s probably breaking news, and a crisis-communications effort is needed. When a CEO departs in a planned succession, the news may still be big, but here there’s much more opportunity to help shape the story. In both cases, the news itself creates an opportunity (or necessity) to say something important about the company. For [...]
Recently when exploring a reporting platform, I raised an eyebrow at a $25 million ad-equivalent value assigned to two weeks’ worth of media mentions about a small firm. Probably few people take such numbers particularly seriously—especially when an ad-equivalent figure is more than a company’s entire annual revenue—but what about some of the other metrics made possible by the [...]
Anyone who writes investment commentary on a regular basis is familiar with the need to convey similar themes in different words. Think back to 2017. Quarter after quarter, the direction—of almost every kind of asset—was up. It was an “everything working” market. Then 2018 looked like more of the same, after investors shrugged off a rough patch early in [...]
I once received an email from an awards organization letting me know a client had won an award titled “Best Asset Manager in Wisconsin.” The award-giver apparently overlooked the fact that this client is based in Massachusetts. But not to worry! The awards program simply changed the title of the award to “Best Asset Manager in Massachusetts.” If I’d [...]
