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Communicating through the volatility: What's different this time
Transcript of April 14, 2025, conversation with Jody Lowe and Pat Allen
Jody: Hey Pat. You and I have been around a lot of investment communications and in this world for a lot of years and I think we can agree that last week was like none we've ever seen.
Pat: Hey, Jody. Right, it’s been a roller coaster.
Jody: That's for sure. So many nervous investors, both retail and professional investors, struggled with the wild markets, and investment communication professionals mobilized to respond.
Sir John Templeton once said that the most dangerous words an investor can say is: This time is different. But the Wall Street Journal didn't seem to agree last week because over the weekend, they posted a story that said, “President Trump's tariff mania is rewriting the investment playbook.” Yeah.
And in your blog post this week, you argue that from a communications standpoint, this time really might be different. So I really wanted to chat today on this super timely topic. So thanks for taking a few minutes to talk with me.
Pat: Yeah, looking forward to it.
Jody: Can you just start by describing what was the standard playbook? You've spent a lot of time communicating through volatility in a number of your roles in the past and certainly with us at the Lowe Group. How would you normally respond in the past to periods of extraordinary volatility?
Pat: Right, well, this is different. This time feels different in so many ways. And which is unfortunate because there was a script. Volatility is a feature, not a bug of investing. So when markets turn rocky, most firms have a standard response to reassuring clients and helping. And by clients, I also mean financial advisors reassuring their clients.
So, the core story is that you stay invested in order to benefit over the long term. Many of the market's best days happen right around the market's worst days. And those who try to time the market need to get two calls right, right? When to get out, when to get back in. It's better just to stay in. So firms typically maintain a library of charts and narrative that they rely on to support the story.
Jody: So what's changed now though? What's different today?
Pat: Well, you mentioned the Wall Street Journal’s point, right? From our perspective, it's different this time for so many reasons. First, there's the catalyst itself, it's tariffs. That's not a story that anyone has been prepared to talk about. The banked communications that firms have on how markets have historically performed during recession, right? Recession was an anticipated story for several years. And there is a lot ready to go. Should we have a recession, there will be a lot ready to unleash on that. Same is true for how the market performs in inflationary periods.
But there's been no reason to be prepared with how the economy or how the market responds to tariffs. It's just like, this is an old story, a super old story, but this is new territory.
So, and what's more, which is what I think the Wall Street Journal and others are commenting on, is that the story has been somewhat chaotic, confusing. There have been reversals in direction. None of that helps when you're trying to work with investment strategists and portfolio managers to get something out the door. Super short shelf life. And then there's a concern that all of this, the bond market’s reaction, the declining value of the dollar, all of it, that this is bigger than a periodic market drawdown.
So, in other words, something new to talk about and also super uncertain, not just a periodic thing, but uncertain and unknown. Then, you know, the post gets into—so it was a long post—lots of other considerations.
For firms with ETFs, they have a greater responsibility now for communicating with self-directed investors. Historically, the focus has been on preparing communications for advisors to use with their clients. And remember that mutual funds price just once a day, and that's after the market closes, right? But you can watch your ETF go up and down and up and down all day. And if you don't have the support of an advisor, that can be very anxiety-creating.
And, investing is just a much more ubiquitous topic now. CNBC used to get some criticism for having the drama on all day, but actually they just program for about 14 hours a day. Social media platforms, they keep going all day and all night. That doesn't mean the communicator needs to work around the clock, but it doesn't mean that there's more to listen to, to understand what people are saying and worrying about, because paying attention really helps tune subsequent communications.
But you and the Lowe Group media team know better than anybody about how many more outlets that are out there today to monitor and also for an asset manager to conceivably share their perspective on.
What are you seeing?
Jody: Well, that is really true. The world really has changed. It used to really be just traditional media and broadcast media. You know, maybe a few bloggers would be on our list for outreach. But today it really has changed. You know, what we're paying attention to is that there are influencers and these influencers themselves may be financial experts, they may be podcast hosts, they may be journalists. But there are people that other people are paying attention to and they're creating their own content, and they may have a podcast, and then they're posting on social media and other people are quoting them.
So, you know, again, people we’re paying attention to, you know, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson, Animal Spirits podcast, Chuck Jaffe. And then there are advisors and strategists that are widely followed, like Josh Brown and maybe David Kelly at JPMorgan or Michael Antonelli at Baird. They've all grown their following and are influential in their own ways.
And then there are industry experts that are sort of quasi-journalists, but also widely followed. There are book authors and things like that. Christine Benz at Morningstar, Wade Pfau, Michael Kitces. They all crank out their own content. They host their own podcasts and many of them, you know, are regular sources for media too. So our clients often want to be in front of those people as well. It really expands who we need to reach, especially in periods like this.
Pat: Yes, right. In periods like this where everybody wants to get out there and say something, right? So, you know, back in the great financial crisis of 2008, there were a lot of stony faces in the financial news, you know, trying to make trying to make sense of what was happening. They were establishment. They all came up through the ranks. They measured their words. They understood they needed to be responsible about what they said about the country's financial system.
Today there are many more faces, not just the ones that you mentioned, Jody, and they all tend to be more tradfi as well. But there are more faces, more personalities in social media. They're colorful. They're animated. They're communicating to get attention, to promote sharing and followership. And they're part of the mediascape too, because they're educating investors. And some of them are super responsible as well.
And, some of them take some leaps that maybe not everybody would agree with. This can be mind boggling for people who've been in the industry or, you know, have sort of stuck to traditional reading habits or information consumption habits, but some investors are going to know the social media personalities better, and they may not even recognize the name of Jerome Powell or Jamie Dimon.
Jody: So true. Right. It's so true. Right. And those people are moving quickly in short form. You write about that in your blog. I find that so true. We and communications professionals we work with really need to think about that. That audiences are getting used to that. That they want to see short form videos. They want to respond to social posts. It's not just putting a long blog or a white paper on your website anymore, right? That was the old playbook.
So what are the components of the new playbook in this environment?
Pat: And before we even do that, just to say, there are more responses right now, right? More possible responses to volatility. It's not just stay invested. For our clients, for investment communicators, there's this opportunity to use this volatility to suggest a diversification and get away from the drama of the public markets. Perfect. We have product for you. It's private equity or bitcoin or even just non-US. People working for asset managers, advisory firms, or just civilians on Reddit, some of them are talking about, okay, let's talk about much more than we ever heard before, tax loss harvesting.
So, there could be multiple objectives for the market volatility communications, much more than there have been. And the last thing I would mention before we get into the new playbook is this polarization that's been out there for a few years. And it's realistic to assume that it's part of these communications. I mean, we work in, we work at the core of what everybody's talking about and everybody's talking about the economy, the markets, and there is a political overlay, right? And disagreement. You're going to have divisiveness either way.
People are looking for, at the extreme, people are looking for agendas in everything. So, you people who look at communications through a political license, through a political lens, communicators need to be aware of it. For some, and I have seen this, a firm's use of “Liberation Day,” which is what the president called the first day of the tariffs, just the use of that term could be considered provocative or telling about a firm's agenda. So, it's really treacherous territory right now.
Jody: So, you know, what's your advice? We talked about that, but you know, are there things that people should be thinking about differently now?
Pat: Keep me keep me on track! It’s not so much that things are new, it's that the emphasis has changed. And at the top of the list, I would put a trusted brand. This is such a confusing time when the industry's most prominent firms issue forecasts and then revise the forecast. We all know what goes into these, the work that goes into creating a forecast and then to revise the forecast hours later, which is what Goldman Sachs did last week.
You have to expect investors to be confused. I mean, who isn't confused? And they're confidence shaken. So number one is to bring yourself as a trusted, a brand with integrity.
Assets-wise, it's everything you talked about, Jody. It's the quick take narratives, it's charts. And actually in the charts, I would say there is a potential for misunderstanding.
Years ago in more innocent times, every once in a while an asset manager would create a chart and others would yell “chart crime,” and everybody'd sort of have some fun with it and the chart would get corrected. Today, don't dismiss the chance that somebody could be reading something into it. You have to be really careful with your charts. Make sure that the point that's being made is easy to see and understand and believe in. Video shorts, of course, you know, anything that's quick to produce and distribute off your own domain. Some of these communications, like I said before, they're not going to have long shelf lives and they're going to need to be replaced with something else. You create something then you run back to the front of line and you create again.
Jody: Just to wrap this all up, people are used to operating and have communicated in one way for so many years. If there was just one thing that you could advise investment firms to do differently, what would it be?
Pat: The first thing I would say is I just want to acknowledge that all of this is happening at the least optimal time for somebody responsible for creating investment communications. April 2nd was Liberation Day. The days immediately following the end of the first quarter when everyone is looking to the marketing communications team for updated data.
So, combine the updating season with the volatility and how just how irregular it all feels. This is not the time to have the headspace to dream up something new or to innovate. Communicators really need to be in production mode.
But having said that, I'm going to I'm going to answer your question. Because it's something that we’ve talked about and we think a lot about. You know, when there's a plane crash, airlines pause their advertising, right? In times like these when the markets are so volatile. I'd really like to see more situational awareness on social media and a pause on what is in the queue that scheduled to be posted. There's an opportunity right now. I mean never has it been—we call it a teachable moment—there's never been an opportunity to engage in a really authentic way as right now.
You know, the original idea of social media was that it was a conversation and people are out there looking for insights. You know that I pay a lot of attention to the asset managers on LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube. I follow them along with a lot of other investment industry accounts. And in the feed, it's just jarring to be reading along about everybody talking about what's happening and then to see some promotion. It's a disconnect and I don't think it reflects well.
I miss the days when more firms posted incremental market insights—a specific comment from an interview. I don’t mean “We're going to be interviewed” or “We've been interviewed,” but actually the extraction of a specific insight from an interview or a data point, something that could make an impression on somebody scrolling through their feed that could help shape their perspective. I think that could really help show that a firm is paying attention to its clients and that they're in the mix. You know, of course they are and that they're relevant to what's being discussed. That's the one change I’d make.
Jody: With the pace of change, that's really good advice, Pat. You can just sort of see how important it is to sometimes pause and really think carefully about what you are going to post right now, right? Just to maintain that, like you said, that reputation, that authority, and the quality of your brand with your customers, right? Getting that right is so critical.
Well, Pat, thanks again. It was really a thoughtful post this week. I really liked it, and thanks for taking a few minutes to talk with me about it.
Pat: Of course. Well, communication shows you care, right? That's what we've learned over the years. You just have to care. You may not know the answer. Just care. And of course, I think us doing this shows that we care.
Jody: Yeah, we do. We definitely care. Have a good day. You too.
Public Relations.
What does FurtherFaster mean for Public Relations?
PR is really important to helping our clients get where they want to go. It gets you further first by helping you craft the messages that your clients and investors really need to hear to connect with them.
You know, we really believe in Gini Dietrich's peso model. This is the model that puts together paid things like advertising and direct mail, earned PR—that's what we do, shared things like social media, and owned—your website.
All of those things work together to elevate your brand. And of those four, we really believe that PR is probably the most important. It gets you there faster because our clients want to be seen and known in the media that are important to investors. Publications like the Wall Street Journal and Barron's, TV programs like CNBC and Bloomberg, and important industry publications like Pensions & Investments, and Ignites. We work hard to get our clients in there and get them earned coverage. They’re authorities.
It also gets our clients onto stages where they're able to meet with and see and have the authority on those stages to talk about topics that are important to their customers.
And then PR helps us take their content, the editorials, the articles they write, and we try to get those into publications like industry publications or editorial pages where they can really truly be seen as the experts in their area.
So all of those things working together really do help get our clients further faster.
Can you help us with crisis communications?
I want to talk to you a little bit today about our reputation and crisis management services. What are we talking about? An SEC investigation, maybe a data breach, the loss of a key executive, or a full-on crisis, workplace violence, a natural disaster.
Reputation management is all about trust. In financial services, our clients place their trust in us. And that reputation and that trust can be lost in a day. So how we manage through difficult situations can really be make or break our companies.
So, what we do is we drop everything. We assemble a team, your executives, your communications leaders, perhaps inside or even outside legal counsel. We gather all the facts, and we think carefully about who needs to be communicated with and when, and maybe if at all.
Sometimes you may be preparing for negative news that never materializes, and in that case, you want to craft a comment and have it in your back pocket just in case it becomes public. Other times you may be facing a situation where you're going to have to be proactive and reach out to either clients or more broadly to the public or to the media. In all cases, we work hard to manage your reputation so that you can maintain that trust. And after the dust settles, we work hard to try to get our clients back out there to help rebuild the reputation that they've had.
So in all cases, reputation management is about really carefully managing through to maintain trust and help you get through difficult situations with your reputation intact.
How do you place content with a publication?
Before starting on a fresh piece of content or editing a piece of existing content, we will discuss with our client the goals that they have. One goal that we hear a lot is that they're hoping to get a piece placed externally in a media publication. So if that’s one of our goals, we will talk a little bit about what editors are looking for. That can include the length of the piece, your take on a specific topic, and the tone of how the piece is written. After that, we'll talk a little bit with the client about the audiences that they are hoping to reach.
With the audiences in mind, our media team, after everything is finalized and compliance approved, will then pitch the content externally for placement, finding a publication that has the audiences that are most important for our clients.
After it is pitched and placed in an external publication, our clients will often ask how they can get more eyes on that specific content. We’ll often suggest that they post on social media, tagging the publication as a way to get more eyes on the content that they have worked so tirelessly to create.
Media Relations.
What does FurtherFaster mean for Media Relations?
In the context of our media practice, the Lowe Group’s Further Faster ethos takes on several dimensions. It means being able to quickly get up to speed on complex organizations and their differentiators. That's where our financial services backgrounds come into play. And then knowing just where to go with the pitch.
Faster also means making sure that your spokespeople are ready when opportunities come up. Before they do, we will have gotten to know them, train them on how to handle themselves in an interview, and train them on how to pivot to those key messages that we helped you develop.
Faster also means being efficient with your senior people's time. Whether it's a single broadcast hit or a full day of meetings in New York or at a conference, we sweat all the details because we know that's how you make sure that they walk away feeling that their time was respected and productively spent.
Now, what about further? That can mean casting a wider net to tell your story. Our relationships with major print and broadcast outlets run deep, but we also understand the power of trade publications, niche podcasts, and influencers in many markets.
Further is also helping you do more with those hard-won media outcomes. So, leveraging them to get additional coverage, teaching your spokespeople to answer questions in a way that's not going to give your compliance officer indigestion so that you can amplify those outcomes on social or even teaming up with our colleagues in Lowe Group's digital marketing practice to help you ensure that your media campaigns are integrated with your marketing and lead gen programs.
What do financial services pros need to know?
Our media training puts a lot of emphasis on understanding where reporters are coming from. As the former editor of several capital markets publications, I can share that reporters tend to be smart, curious and overworked—which means you can go a long way toward building a relationship if you can prove yourself to be a resource. I'd say they tend to be more literate than numerate.
So that means maybe don't share that fancy chart or the 3D implied volatility surface you brought with you. Instead, tell them a story about the biggest tail risk that investors are facing and how it compares to 2008.
Now, what reporters are not, at least the good ones, is your friend or your stenographer. And that can come as a bit of a shock to senior people on Wall Street who are used to bending markets, not to mention people working at a more junior pay grade, to their will. So, a reporter may ask a shockingly basic question or an impertinent one and we can't guarantee that they read that research report of yours that we sent them several days ago, or even your bio for that matter.
What we can promise is that you'll be ready even if they're not. You will have their background, clips of some recent stories, a list of questions they're likely to ask, and more often than not, a little bit of color on their interview style that we've picked up over the years. More importantly, from your media training, you'll be prepared to handle those tough questions and to pivot to the key points that you want to make.
Content Services.
What does FurtherFaster mean for Content Services?
I guess the starting place with further faster when it comes to content is furthering your business goals and making sure the process doesn't bog you down. When we start a content engagement, we start with an assumption that there are people in your organization that have interesting things to say. That's almost definitely true.
Think of all the conversations you have on a regular basis, your business leaders and subject matter experts among each other with clients and prospects, others in the industry. There are people in your organization who are thinking thoughts that your audience wants to hear. And in order to capture those thoughts, write them down, get them out the door in whatever format makes sense for the purpose. We need to come in with an understanding of your business, capture the confidence of the person that we're talking to so we can have a conversation that can get at the interesting material, right?
Get beyond just what is the value proposition of the business line say that we're that's relevant to the conversation at hand and get to what might mean something to a center of influence who could pass along your content to a third party of mutual interest say a prospect of yours. That's a good test by the way about a topic. It's something I raise sometimes when I'm on the phone with somebody who might be an author of a bylined article, you know, how can we frame this topic in a way that's going to educate without being too salesy? It's going to make a difference for your business and further your business objectives.
So the key thing is to understand your audience and then whatever the context is, whatever the type of material, to make that process easy, sensitive to compliance restrictions, sensitive to your brand voice, and get it out the door. That's FurtherFaster.
How do you help with presentation decks?
Okay, the big thing about PowerPoint presentations is that they can be awful. PowerPoint is a tool, and it's a tool that can be used in an unlimited number of terrible ways.
Whether we're talking about a slide presentation in front of a bunch of people, or using PowerPoint to produce a presentation book or some other kind of leave-behind or follow-up, we need to use the tool in a way that delivers the message in a way that the audience cares about and will connect with.
So like anything else, any other piece of content, that starts with understanding the audience. Say it's a presentation, an in-person presentation. Who's going to be in the room? What questions do they have? What knowledge base are they starting with? What are you trying to convince them of? How do we structure it in a way that leads them from one idea to the next, one idea at a time? Sometimes with the takeaway on every slide and an emphasis on how that takeaway leads to the topic of the next slide, so people feel comfortable and taken care of, so people aren't distracted by what you have on the screen and have that material conflict with what you're saying with your words. So critical.
And, it has to look good too. And that doesn't necessarily mean fancy. That might mean really minimal. But everything about how it looks needs to be consistent with the message that you're delivering with your words.
The same, of course, is true if you're using PowerPoint to leave behind materials, presentation books, as I said. In that case, you can accommodate a lot more words, but the same use of the tool applies unless you're using it to develop something that maybe your design partners would be better to do in InDesign. You're using this tool for a reason, and it's to deliver information in a structured way that takes ideas one at a time, does it in a visually engaging way, and makes people feel at ease.
That connects beautifully with the message development we do at the heart of every engagement, certainly with any piece of content, and it connects to our media practice as well.
How does the message triangle relate to content?
Usually, the hardest part about a content activity is not the writing itself, but rather the idea and framing the idea in a way that doesn't accidentally break the implicit contract you have with your readers not to sell too hard to them. This is especially true in a blog context. Nobody wants to come to your blog and read about your value proposition again and again. They just won't come back.
That doesn't mean that you can't fold in reference to your value proposition in discussion of, say, your process. Or, connected to your views on the industry.
There's lots of ways to take your key messages, and we develop those in our media practice, say, for journalists. And those messages for journalists needs to be expressive or connected to your value proposition, but certainly not overwhelmed by it because journalists don't care about helping further your business. They care about what you have to say about the industry that connects to a broader story, a broader trend, something new, something that their readers care about.
And you can think like that and find ways to express what you have to say that does connect to your value proposition in just about anything that you produce.
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Digital Marketing.
What does FurtherFaster mean for Digital Marketing?
I can offer three reasons the Lowe Group's digital business can help you go further, faster.
Number one, we're familiar with the people you want to engage. Whether they're financial advisors, institutional investors, fund selectors, end investors, your sales team, the media, people who use the media. You're in a complex business and it takes years to understand these channels and how to effectively reach them and communicate with them.
We understand. You're not going to need to burn up a lot of time explaining things to us.
Number two, digital has to get things done. There has never been a time when more has been expected of digital marketing leadership and of your team overall. You'll save time working with a partner who understands the expectations and can focus on helping you deliver on them, even as everything, face it, business priorities, technologies, reporting structures, everything tends to be in a constant state of flux in digital. One of the reasons we like it!
Number three, and this is the further part, if you're like most firms, you're trying to pull out the stops, trying to win the hearts, minds, eyeballs, and engagement of clients and prospects. This is such a competitive realm. Many find that there just aren't enough hours in the day to do your work, stay current with what everyone else is doing, and then think of ways to innovate.
Luckily, that is part of our job. When we work with you, you can count on us knowing what's out there, what's been done. And more important to zero in on where we see opportunity for you based on what we understand, based on what you've told us, your firm's objectives are. We know you're special and we're going to be obsessed with surfacing ways for you to stand out.
So, we specialize in your audience, we understand what's expected of you and our intel will keep you fresh on point, maybe a little ahead, ideally a lot ahead. It's all pretty high level, but you'll find lots of detail on the rest of the website.
Can you help us with our analytics?
Our specialty is pulling together everything you do, website, email, advertising, social, and helping you look at its aggregate effect in a single dashboard. We work with you to establish goals and KPIs that are tailored to your firm's objectives, whether it's driving meme acquisition, advisor engagement, content downloads, maybe it's heightened visibility in search, heightened traffic from search.
You know, I've been fortunate to work with many firms over the years, firms that are in the same space you're in, trying to engage similar audiences, working with similar partners to drive website traffic to what are often very similar strategies or product pages. When we look at your analytics, we know what to look for. There are patterns and there are anomalies that we quickly pick up on, and we know how to address and optimize.
What's working? You know, that's the essential question, isn't it? Our goal is to help you be more effective in getting to that answer. There's nothing more fun and really nothing more satisfying than helping a marketing team get a handle on the analytics that are available to measure the results of their hard work, to inform strategy development and refinement, and to report to the business, and to ultimately drive growth in the business.
How can you help us with social media?
Social media is a key part of every client's digital strategy. Each client tends to have different needs, and at Lowe Group we're happy to help collaborate wherever you and your team need help. We can support the work in a range of ways, from the development or refinement of strategy, and even in some cases, the execution too. Social media objectives can be high level, as in we just want to raise awareness or be seen in the mix. This discussion also involves an evaluation of the social networks likely to be most appropriate or effective for your brand.
In other cases, social is part of an overall campaign with distinct objectives that could include building followers or driving clicks. At Lowe Group, our work includes establishing profiles, building out follower strategies, and managing editorial calendars for organic posting. We can create and run paid social campaigns if that's what you need too.
For everything we do regarding your social posts, we'll provide you with analytics and insights to enable you to measure the effectiveness of the work.