Are asset managers just wasting their money on TV?

Lucian Camp is a financial services brand consultant, copywriter, author and blogger.

Not long ago I wrote a piece about the number of investment trusts simultaneously taking the leap into TV advertising.   A year or so later, I realise that wasn’t even the half of it.  What can only be described as a horde of investment advertisers have recently taken the same leap onto television.

It’s true, as I said in the last piece, that my fondness for programmes on obscure cable channels that no-one else watches and where it costs pennies to advertise may give me a false impression.  But honestly, there are so many that quite often they have to cram two or even three into a single commercial break, in a way that I always thought wasn’t allowed but I guess is unavoidable with so many jostling for airtime.

There are far too many to attempt a full list, but a top-of-mind selection includes AJ Bell, Interactive Investor, Fidelity, Artemis, Pension Bee, St. James’s Place, Hargreaves Lansdown, Standard Life, something called AGT Investment Trust, Trading 212, HSBC with a really dire investment commercial that seems to be a deliberately dulled-down summary of their corporate Powerpoint presentation, Aviva, Witan, Vanguard, Wealthify and J.P.Morgan Personal Investing.

There are many things I could say about this investment tsunami, most of them fairly unkind as far as quality is concerned.  But I won’t go there, except briefly to commiserate with Hargreaves Lansdown who’ve clearly spent more money and gone to more trouble than any other five firms put together, but, most unfairly, ended up with a commercial that’s virtually incomprehensible and somehow curiously easy to ignore.

No, it’s not what I think about it all that matters, it’s what the viewers think.  Of course I don’t know, but I strongly suspect that if they think about it at all, they find it all pretty mystifying.

For us in the industry, our great advantage is that we start with some kind of basic geography of the marketplace already in our heads.   We sort of understand that Fidelity and Artemis are fund managers with large ranges of mostly actively-managed funds, and Vanguard is a fund manager with a large range of mostly passively-managed funds, and Witan and AGT are single closed-ended investment trusts (although we don’t really know why AGT’s logo says they’re called AVI), and AJ Bell and Hargreaves are platforms and Aviva and HSBC are big diversified institutions with asset management arms and to be honest I’m not quite sure what Trading 212 or Wealthify are.

But less than 1% of people outside the industry understand even a fraction of this, and without understanding a fraction of it I don’t really think you can make much sense of all the unfamiliar brands laid out in front of you.

Imagine – this will sound a bit odd, but bear with me – that somehow you’ve grown up knowing nothing whatsoever about the different kinds of cooker that are available.  And then imagine – this is even odder – that for some reason advertisers aren’t allowed to show what their cookers look like in their TV commercials.  And then imagine that every time you turn on the TV, you’re bombarded with ads for cookers that all claim to make food taste really good.

If you knew about cookers, you’d recognise that there are ads about gas hobs, electric hobs, induction hobs, gas and electric ovens, microwaves, air fryers, bottled-gas stoves, deep fryers, toasted sandwich makers, slow cookers and some really silly ones that only cook rice.   And you’d have a sense of which of all these kinds of cooker might be suitable for what you want from a cooker, and which ones you can safely ignore.

But you don’t know anything about cookers, and you haven’t a clue.  And in that situation, I strongly suspect you’d simple tune out and let all this advertising just wash over you.  It might leave you with a bit of name awareness, although you’d still be confused about why AGT’s logo says AVI.  But that’s about all:  otherwise, to be honest, I’m pretty sure that most of the advertisers are wasting their money.

So what’s the solution?  Well, to asset managers and indeed cooker makers that are determined to carry on with TV advertising, I think my top tip would be to give consumers something simple and clear to hang on to – and, in particular, to give them a sense of what their product is for.   I don’t really understand the messages about what it is, and anyway they all sound the same.  But if you tell me it’s to cut my tax bill, or give me a better retirement, or make my finances easier to manage, or help me avoid getting ripped off, or toast my sandwiches, or any one of a hundred things, that might just register with me.

Alternatively, a better idea might be to move away from TV altogether.  At the moment, there are simply too many brands confusingly jostling for attention, and it’s awfully hard not to get lost in the crowd.   Own something else – own anything else – instead.  And for goodness sake, AGT, please tell us why you’ve clearly put the wrong initials in your logo.