Marketing Intelligence by Iain Johnston

So what is it with Fund Management firms?

Why when they have access to obscene amounts of money, do they skimp on the marketing? Why, oh why, oh why is so much fund management advertising complete rubbish?

Case in point: on my walk to the office each morning. Three poster sites, right next to each other on a very busy road junction. They must be premium priced sites given massive traffic volumes and often stationary vehicles mean people have time to take in the ads properly.

And yet the contrast between the use of the three sites could not be more stark.

First Mumford & Sons’ ad for their debut album (for those like me who haven’t yet encountered them they’re a West London band).

Simple, to the point, no fuss, direct. Good. Small site, horrendous backdrop, but good use of space. I imagine their audience get the point pretty quickly – if you know them, you probably want their new album.

Second, is this huge hoarding.

It’s colossal. You can’t miss it, right on the busy junction. Excellent site.
Terrible advert. Just terrible. I walk past it every day. I’ve studied it carefully, and for ages had no absolutely no idea what it was trying to say, to whom, or why. I assume “Licence to Perform” is some vague reference to James Bond, but then they feature a car in the picture (which is out of focus so we can’t really see from a distance what it is) which has no connection with JB – no Aston Martin or Lotus.

Ok so they are not targetting me (or are they?) as I am not a fund manager. So I asked my mate, who is, and he has no clue what the poster is about either, though he did start puzzling over exactly what model the out of focus cars are.

Only by getting up close could I even work out which so-called brand it was supposed to be promoting – bet you can’t from the picture above? By getting up close, you can make out in the top right hand corner a web address, and the actual company name is in the bottom right hand corner, although it is from most vantage points obscured by the palm trees (in London?) or the traffic lights.
It’s for Ignis – I’ve provided the link to help them as I am not sure they’ll get many leads from the ad. I have tracked them down on the web - at least their SEO is working - and if you go searching beyond the disclaimers you can unearth that they have at least attempted to explain on their site the idea behind the campaign.
We have all heard the adage “I know I waste half my advertising spend, but I don’t know which half”.

I am sure the intent behind this as was not to waste the whole 100%, but you have to wonder.

And the third one on my walk to work:

Brilliant. Simple. To the point.