From damage control to category leadership: rebuilding an asset manager’s media presence

Challenge

A fund family engaged us after a run of articles about senior executive departures. In practical terms, that coverage was the firm's media profile — there was very little else in the record to balance it, so anyone researching the firm found the same story repeated.

A second, larger ambition emerged as the engagement matured: the firm wanted to be understood as a leading manager of alternative investment products, not as a house defined by one legacy specialty.

Research and assessment

We looked past the news cycle at what the firm had that its coverage didn't reflect — a long-tenured investment team and a decades-old track record in specialty and alternative strategies that long predated any of the executives who had left. Turnover in the executive suite said nothing about the people actually managing money, and that distinction was the opening.

Our assessment was that the firm didn't need a response to the departures story. It needed enough substantive coverage of its investment expertise that the departures story stopped being the first thing anyone found.

Solutions

We worked first to displace, then build, in a program that four phases over several years:

• Phase one — displacing the story. We developed and executed a plan to generate positive coverage of the investment team, products and services, creating and placing content on the firm's specialty strategies and its expertise across alternatives, U.S. equities, emerging markets and fixed income. We media-trained selected portfolio managers, then pitched interviews and placed market commentary.
• Phase two — one research asset, many uses. We wrote a comprehensive whitepaper on index construction in a major asset class, then extracted a series of shorter articles from it for placement. The full paper worked as a door-opener with journalists, giving them a reason to interview and quote the firm's professionals. We adapted the same material into a client-facing presentation that the wholesaling team used to open advisor meetings — one research investment serving media relations, content marketing and sales.
• Phase three — extending the mandate. The firm expanded the engagement to cover its wealth management division, where we created content and pitched its strategists and planning specialists for interviews. We also secured coverage of two investment-team acquisitions, including the acquired managers and their funds.
• Phase four — category leadership. As the firm pushed to establish itself among the top alternatives managers, we secured coverage of its largest alternative strategy fund and a profile of the founder and the firm's origins. We have continued to support the launch and positioning of its newer structured and downside-protected product line.

Results

Within a year of retaining us, the firm had moved past the negative coverage and was generating regular, positive coverage of its investment professionals and strategies.

Its people, products and services appeared in leading national business publications, industry trades and broadcast outlets.

The firm's alternative assets grew substantially over the engagement, supported by significant coverage of its newer product line. Firmwide assets grew by more than one-third during the period.