Focus on Funds
Funds Take Fresh Approaches to Investor Communication
Investor communications are becoming more visual, fast-paced, and mobile-friendly. Frank Cooper, chief marketing officer for BlackRock, explains how funds can use these communications to help investors connect their financial health to their well-being.
Transcript
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs, ICI director of media relations: What if funds helped investors start thinking of saving the same way they think about taking their 10,000 steps a day? That’s one of the many ideas we got at ICI’s recent General Membership Meeting, where we talked about trends in marketing communication in the industry.
Frank Cooper, chief marketing officer, BlackRock: When you look at the well-being movement, we’ve got in there now fitness, we have in there nutrition, we have in there even mindfulness and meditation. So you are seeing things like fitness apps and Headspace, and this all seems intuitive to us now. But when people think about their money, they put it outside the circle of well-being, which is absolutely crazy. When you survey people and ask them, “What is your number-one source of anxiety or stress?”—it’s money. So, to me, the big opportunity for us is to think about how people’s relationship with money affects their overall sense of well-being.
Ortbals-Tibbs: Frank, is your goal that eventually people click on their BlackRock app the same way they do Headspace, or Fitbit, or whatever? They’re checking in on their accounts?
Cooper: Most people are not like that. It is much more around what gives you a better sense of control over how your money is affecting your life. That relationship with money doesn’t dictate this idea of a maniacal, relentless focus on accumulating more. It is about what is the right amount, how do you want to earn it, how do you want to give it, and how does that affect who you are. That’s the goal. It’s delivering this information in a way that people find convenient and intuitive. Most people get their information now on mobile devices, and the language of mobile is different from the language of desktop or any other language that we’ve seen. So, for me, it affects things like financial literacy. How do I teach financial literacy to someone whose eyes will glaze over immediately when they hear, “I’m going to tell you how to invest,” and “Watch these charts very closely as I tell you how to invest.” They will pass out right in front of you from boredom. But they won’t pass out if you put it in a format that’s familiar to them. It’s visual, it’s highly intuitive, it’s short form.
Ortbals-Tibbs: It’s fast.
Cooper: It’s fast. But if you deliver it in that format, and you follow those rules, actually people will ingest it, and understand it, and embrace it. All we have to do is shift our thinking a little bit and play in the spaces where people are today. And I think we have an opportunity to do something that really will make a difference in the world.