Selling the Organization

Branding for Investment Companies

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals


	December 2013


	Where are the Apples and Starbucks and Whole Foods of the investment world? Companies you know you can count on to deliver what you want consistently? That’s the essence of a brand, right? Standing for something consistent in the mind of the consumer. Given that investment companies are charged with delivering a product that is, by definition, inconsistent — investment performance — one might pose the question that is the topic for this newsletter, “How can investment companies brand effectively?” With best wishes, Liz Hecht Founder, Principal and Director of Research Print a PDF of this newsletter

Volume 3 | Number 10

In This Issue

Standing for Something Different

Differentiate or Die

The Enemies of Effective Branding

Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com

Standing for Something Different

This happened over 10 years ago and only now can I bear to think about it without a frisson of self-loathing. I had been hired by a European hedge fund manager to give a presentation during the company’s annual off-site and I found myself in a beautiful sylvan spot surrounded by fresh-faced new hires eager to learn about marketing as well as a few obviously skeptical veteran fund managers eager to be done with all this touchy-feely marketing stuff and get back to managing money.

I somehow let the topic drift away from the prearranged focus of the meeting — branding in general for investment companies — to the specific, thorny theme of branding for this particular hedge fund manager. To spark some audience interaction, I posed the question, “What does your company stand for? When people in the market think of your firm, what ideally should spring to mind?” After a really long silence, one of the new hires said, in a small, timid voice, “innovation?”

That’s when I knew I had lost control of the meeting. I soldiered on boldly anyway, still seeking answers to this big branding question, “What does your company stand for?” People said things like “integrity,” “a global footprint,” “research,” “risk awareness” and the like.

The reality is, most investment companies have not developed enduring brands. Some have tried and given up. Some never even bothered to try. Some succeeded for a short time, then drifted back into the sea of clichés that still characterizes so much of investment marketing. But a few inspired companies have created enduring brands — despite the complexities inherent in branding an intangible, volatile product that by law must wear the warning label, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

Here are five essential components for success in investment company branding:

1.	Define what you are branding. The firm, the investment strategy or both? For start-ups, the strategy and the company often are the same, but start-ups should consider their brand in light of likely growth opportunities. For investment conglomerates representing diverse global asset classes, the challenge of branding can be significant precisely because of this diversity.

2.	Stand for something different. Investment companies that say they stand for “in-depth fundamental research” or “a long-term view” concern me. Surely they know that all of their competitors make the same claims. And if they market their companies with zero regard for competitive realities, I reason, it’s also possible that they make investments with a similar lack of perspective. In all the years I have helped investment companies with branding, I have encountered only two firms without any source of competitive differentiation. Beneath the surface, there almost always is some compelling aspect of an attribute such as “in-depth research” that genuinely defines an investment firm’s competitive advantage in generating alpha.

3.	Verify external perceptions. Standing for something different is important, but it has to be something different that matters to your clients. Why did your clients hire your firm and why do consultants recommend it to their clients? If your answer is “performance,” that’s partly right. But what about how you generated that performance appeals to the market relative to approaches available from competing managers? What stories did you tell during a preliminary meeting and what ideas did you share in a finals that caused your firm to be selected for a competitive mandate? Interviews with clients, consultants, prospective clients, funds of funds, registered investment advisors and other consumers of a company’s investment products should be a required part of any investment company branding initiative.

4.	Create a brand that guides the actions of the firm. An effective brand isn’t just about logos and tag lines and advertising campaigns. It’s about how a company acts on a day-to-day basis, especially when the going gets tough. The brand might affect decisions such as where to cap assets under management, when to close an investment strategy, whether to avoid or pursue a certain type of investment, when to sell, the need to report malfeasance and if it makes sense to merge with a given suitor. One of the biggest compliments Alpha Partners ever received was a private wealth management company that told us the brand identity we helped it create ultimately steered the company away from a potentially disastrous merger.

5.	Execute broadly and be consistent. The key elements of a brand (see box below) are straightforward. But consistent, inspired execution is challenging; successful execution requires persistent effort by people who understand what the brand means and care about it. One of the biggest challenges to effective brand execution, I believe, is not lack of money or time; it is the human desire for diversity and change. Sticking to a brand requires commitment. You can’t have two brands and you must be faithful to your brand. (“No,” I assured the CEO of a mid-sized investment firm recently, “your company cannot have two tag lines. For maximum market impact, you must select just one.”)

Key Investment Brand Elements*


Internal Brand Components

•	A brand manifesto

	–	What the brand means

	–	How to act consistent with the brand

•	Execution of the investment philosophy and process

•	The infrastructure required to execute

•	Culture

	–	How clients are treated

	–	How employees are treated

•	Growth strategy


	External Brand Components

	•	Name, logo and tag line

	•	Description of the firm and specific investment strategies

	•	Client communications

	•	Research, articles and white papers

	•	Website and social media

	•	Email marketing initiatives

	•	Advertising, public relations & sponsorship

	•	Presentations and road shows

* This chart was initially presented by Alpha Partners at the 2001 Schwab IMPACT conference.

Through experiences such as that long-ago off-site, I have learned that “What does your company stand for?” is a question that must be answered from the outside in and the inside out, from the vantage point of competitor analysis and a clear understanding of diverse client views. Answering this question as a foundation for action requires the drama of a grand rollout combined with behind-the-scenes negotiations worthy of Machiavelli. It should not be broached casually when all people want is a few marketing tips before they hit the golf course.

Differentiate or Die

For inspiration, I recommend this classic on branding, Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition, by Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin. One of the lessons I learned recently while reading this book is that “you can’t overcommunicate your difference.” Many people, myself included at times, often find the consistency required for effective branding to be hokey or somehow overdone. As in, “Do we really have to have some branding element on our holiday card?” But the realities of intense competition and short client attention spans argue for erring on the side of too much repetition rather than too little.

Another classic in the field of branding is Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand, by David F. D’Alessandro with Michele Owens. Mr. D’Alessandro, the former CEO of John Hancock, accurately portrays the joys and frustrations of getting branding right for a large financial services firm and the obstacles along the way.

The Enemies of Effective Branding

A successful brand can define your company’s competitive advantage, impart a sense of mission to your employees, facilitate expansion, make it possible to charge higher fees and, if applicable, ultimately sell for a higher price. According to Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2013 report, “CEOs are placing greater emphasis on their companies’ brands in investor communications,” taking their brands seriously enough to report on their value over time to investors.*

But there are many forces aligned against effective branding. In addition to inconsistent and sporadic implementation, there is fear of commitment, absence of useful market research, the tendency to imitate, the problems always associated with too many cooks in one branding kitchen and still, even today, the erroneous belief that the value of the brand cannot be measured. Of course all these obstacles only magnify the opportunity for companies that are able to build a strong brand and reinforce it consistently.

* Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2013 report provides a look at the financial performance of the brand, role of the brand in the purchase decision process and the strength of the brand. Every year Interbrand applies its brand valuation methodology to rank the 100 best global brands. Interbrand does not rank investment management firms. But in 2013 eleven financial services companies were included in the top 100, including American Express, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, AXA, Allianz, Morgan Stanley, Visa, Santander and MasterCard.

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© 2013 Alpha Partners LLC	Alpha Partners LLC Marketing for Excess Returns® 1062 Oakridge Road South \| Park City, UT \| 84098

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October 2025

The Thinking Machine

The Thinking Machine tells the fascinating story of how Nvidia made the AI boom possible. Author Stephen Witt dramatizes how, by integrating two fringe strains of computer science—parallel computing and neural networks—a computer gaming company became worth more than Intel in late 2024 (and made CEO Jensen Huang’s personal net worth greater than that of Intel). The Thinking Machine also brings to life how Mr. Huang built an agile culture free of bureaucracy and politics, allowing his company to pivot at breathtaking speed in capturing the potential of AI.

April 2025

The Art of Uncertainty

Slashed spending by CEOs. Postponed or canceled construction projects. Jobs being cut and delays in hiring. “The unpredictability of President Trump’s stop-start trade offensive,” The Wall Street Journal noted on April 28, “is paralyzing companies on every front except one―taking an ax to costs.” Where will it all end? No one can know. And that’s why now is a very good time to read a book about the art of uncertainty. Professor David Spiegelhalter helps readers understand how humans have learned to measure, manage and survive the unknown. In addition to key insights about putting uncertainty into numbers, the author provides valuable lessons in successful strategies for communicating uncertainty.

January 2025

The Algebra of Wealth

Income. Compound interest. Investments. Debt. Taxes, Inflation … All play a role in building a profitable life. But so do character traits such as stoicism, focus and making the most of present time. In The Algebra of Wealth, Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur, provides expert advice on how to generate income and turn income into wealth. Based on personal experience and behavioral research, Professor Galloway offers vital insights that transcend the typical personal finance book, covering topics such as the futility of worry, treating expense management as a “rational obsession” and finding one’s true identity through hard work as opposed to pursuing a passion.

October 2024

The Money Trap

In this tale of Shakespearean proportions, Alok Sama describes his experiences working for one of the most prolific and audacious venture investment entities, SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Fund investments include ByteDance, Nvidia, Arm and Alibaba―along with legendary failures such as WeWork and Sam Bankman Fried’s FTX. At some point in his time as president and CFO of SoftBank, the author becomes aware of a plot to discredit him and a colleague―a plot involving surveillance of his family, a smear campaign in the press, bogus legal threats and even a honey trap. While hoping to learn who and why, the reader gets a fascinating crash course in early-stage tech investing.

August 2024

The Coming Wave

The Coming Wave describes how new technologies such as AI and synthetic biology are going to change the world. Not this year or next but over multiple decades. As a co-founder of two AI companies and the current head of AI at Microsoft, the author is well positioned to understand and communicate everything that can go right with the coming tsunami of new technologies―and everything that can go wrong. This book makes a compelling, heartfelt case for “claiming the benefits of the wave without being overwhelmed by its harms.”

February 2024

The Devil Never Sleeps

The devil is the potential for pandemics, climate change disasters, terrorist attacks and massive computer hacks. A leader in crisis management and homeland security, Juliette Kayyem documents in depth the perils of underreacting to the inevitable. By dismissing harbingers of doom as mere noise, countries and companies risk turning emergencies into calamities, local diseases into global pandemics and manageable negative events into existential crises. This book provides invaluable lessons on how to prepare for the devil, how to limit harm when the inevitable crises do occur and how to pivot in time for future disasters.

October 2023

Wealth, War & Wisdom

The reality of war never goes away. “Once every couple of generations,” writes Barton Biggs in Wealth, War & Wisdom, “an epic event occurs that destroys accumulated wealth.” The U.S., Australia and Sweden “have been lucky―so far―but in Europe, the apocalypse has happened in one form or another on a regular, generational basis.” In addition to tracking the fascinating history of the markets during WW II, this book explores two primary enemies of wealth during war: complacency (it couldn’t happen here, not to us) and failure to diversify by country and asset class.

August 2023

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

Destined to become a classic of economic history, Edward Chancellor’s book provides an intensively researched compendium of all the economic woes that can result from excessively low interest rates. Starting with the ancient origins of interest, the book moves to the unintended consequences of zero-bound (and even negative) interest rates, and concludes with the impact of ultra-low rates on emerging markets.

The Greater Whole

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals


	June-July 2013


	Most investment managers either fail even to mention the larger capabilities of their organization — or cover their organization in so much detail that they lose focus on the strategy slated for discussion. This issue of Excess Returns considers how to strike the right balance. With best wishes, Liz Hecht Founder, Principal and Director of Research Print a PDF of this newsletter

Volume 3 | Number 5

In This Issue

The Greater Whole

Lessons from TED

Communicating About Culture

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com/

The Greater Whole

This spring I broke my hand in a freak accident. When the cast was removed, I asked about physical therapy, which is one of the many services offered by the hospital where my doctor practices. “You can go to therapy, if you would like,” he said. “But it’s not required. Go a couple of times and see how you feel about it.”

Given this less-than-emphatic recommendation, I considered not going. But I am a diligent soul, so I went regularly. The therapy — massage, advice on pain management and exercises designed to improve flexibility — helped immensely. The entire experience shed light on an investment marketing problem that Alpha Partners has grappled with for many years. To what extent should the hand doctor (portfolio manager or product specialist) sell patients on the larger capabilities of the hospital (the services and skills of the investment organization)? How much airtime does the firm merit in a presentation focused on a single product?

All or Nothing? Getting It Right

Communication about the firm, in my experience, is doomed to failure through one excess or another: there is none or there is far too much. A team from a large, global, multi-product organization presents as if it were a single-product firm managed by five professionals out of one office, with no mention of organizational strengths. Or a team from a large, global investment company spends so much time telling the firm story that one leaves the presentation no closer to understanding the putative focus of the meeting: a single investment strategy. The watch, in other words, is barely covered because so much time is spent on the history and strengths of the watchmaker.

This all-or-nothing approach is prevalent in new business presentations as well as client meetings. How can investment firms get it right? Here are a few suggestions:

Be brief. Cover the firm in one or two pages with just a few key topic points. Every effective meeting has a specific purpose — e.g., ensuring that the audience understands the investment strategy you are trying to sell. And yet I often see situations where presenters never get a chance to present the product, so overloaded is their story with information about the firm (so many org charts, so little time). When time is up, they are still on the map showing all their offices and the size of their team. Or they might still be presenting the page defining their competitive advantages … you know, the one with eight bullets and eighteen sub-bullets.

Focus first on what matters most. Many traditional presentations fail not only because of excessive information about the firm but also because such information is front-end loaded. When I try to change this, I’m often told that it has to be this way because the salesperson or client relationship manager typically opens with information about the firm. This defies logic. The audience most wants to hear about the product from an experienced investment professional and the opening is critical; the opening is when you capture audience attention or lose them altogether. Why make your audience wait for the information of greatest interest? There are many ways that a salesperson can still play a meaningful role in the meeting without following this predictable, self-referential approach.

Connect the dots. Give brief examples describing how a single strategy benefits from organizational strengths. Perhaps the firm’s quantitative team adds rigor to an investment process that is primarily qualitative. Or maybe currency team insights assist in the execution of international equity and fixed income strategies. In covering information about the firm, such examples are rare and precious. Few investment companies take the time to develop, refresh and share examples of how the firm’s resources strengthen specific products.

Create a presentation focused on the firm for situations when its use is appropriate. Everything has its place and more than one or two pages on the firm’s history, culture and people have no place in a product presentation. Create a separate book and use these pages only in relevant situations — consultant meetings, for example, explicitly focused on education about the firm. If the firm book exists separately, its pages are less likely to creep into meetings where they don’t belong.

Teach investment company professionals how to communicate consistently and enthusiastically about the firm as a whole. As investment companies grow, more professionals seem to know less about the organization as a whole. The bigger the company, it seems, the narrower the focus of its salespeople and product specialists. While it makes no sense for these professionals to become experts in dozens of products, they still should be able to tell one consistent, powerful story about the firm. Perceiving the strengths of the organization might just help your team make the sale and expand cross-sell opportunities.

So what should my doctor have said when I asked about hand therapy? Maybe something like this: “We have an excellent physical therapy department in this hospital. The therapists do a great job and they can help you with the overall healing process. I recommend that you make an appointment with one of our therapists and go as often as you can until your hand feels better.” No org charts, no pages dense with bullets and sub-bullets and no over- or under-selling. Just a simple, heartfelt, knowledgeable suggestion that I consider another service within the larger organization.

Lessons from TED

“Speak at great length about the history of your organization and its achievements.”

— From “10 Ways to Ruin a Presentation” by Chris Anderson, the curator of TED*

Consultants often require it. Most investment professionals lead new business and client meetings with it. Too many presentations die a premature death because of it. I am describing the part about the firm in the typical investment company presentation: the number of employees and all the global offices and how everyone is organized. Of course this is important. Why then is it always so boring? Part of the answer can be found in a June 2013 Harvard Business Review article by Chris Anderson of TED: “As a general rule, people are not very interested in talks about organizations or institutions (unless they are members of them). Ideas and stories fascinate us; organizations bore us …”

Looking for guidance in developing a presentation or speech? In How to Deliver a TED Talk, Jeremey Donovan provides a concise, inspired framework for success based on TED presentations that you can view online.

* “10 Ways to Ruin a Presentation” appears as part of the article by Mr. Anderson noted above.

Communicating About Culture

Starting early in 2000, I can recall investment firms talking about the concept of culture for the first time — in other words, providing answers to the following questions: What is it like to work at this company? Why might you recommend this organization to others? How do clients experience a relationship with this firm and how is the firm organized to perpetuate positive attributes?

Answering such questions succinctly and well goes a lot farther than a discussion of your firm’s recently expanded “global footprint.” In a 2013 research paper, for example, Focus Consulting Group concluded that, “in the increasingly competitive landscape of active investing, strong culture is a legitimate way for firms to differentiate themselves.”

Emphasis on culture as a marketing strategy, however, may fall flat unless certain important criteria are met: brevity, relevance to the audience and current research to support claims of superiority (e.g., a study of how clients and employees view the firm). A strong firm culture is a powerful yet subtle attribute that should be less talked about than directly experienced and, ideally, explicitly validated through research.

Questions? Comments? Dissent? Click here.

Click here for other issues of Excess Returns.


© 2013 Alpha Partners LLC	Alpha Partners LLC Marketing for Excess Returns® 1062 Oakridge Road South \| Park City, UT \| 84098

October 2025

The Thinking Machine

April 2025

The Art of Uncertainty

January 2025

The Algebra of Wealth

October 2024

The Money Trap

August 2024

The Coming Wave

February 2024

The Devil Never Sleeps

October 2023

Wealth, War & Wisdom

August 2023

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

A Different Kind of Due Diligence

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals


	January 2012


	According to the dictates of their nature — not to mention commonly accepted best practices and, in some cases, the law — investment companies are compelled to audit everything. There are third-party compliance reviews and on-site due diligence visits and the annual GIPS verification, to name just a few of many required processes and procedures. Our first 2012 newsletter puts forward a different kind of due diligence not often formally practiced yet vital in running a successful investment business. With best wishes, Liz Hecht Founder, Principal and Director of Research Print a PDF of this newsletter

Volume 2 | Number 1

In This Issue

A Different Kind of
Due Diligence

Red Flags

A Hundred Little Things

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com

A Different Kind of Due Diligence

It is more than a decade ago and I am in a meeting with the CEO of Company X, an investment firm that wants to hire Alpha Partners for a sizable custom research project. His team’s numbers, he tells me, are "literally off the charts" and yet the consultant community "does not understand our investment process."

The proposal we later submit is accepted and off we go, keen on developing research insights that will help this company turn performance into asset growth. We schedule interviews with clients, consultants and former new business prospects and start reading everything we can about the firm, its asset class and its competitors. There is just one rather significant problem, I realize a week or two after we get started: we are working on the wrong project. Market research is not required to understand why this firm’s lead product has no traction. The source of the problem is all too apparent without the benefit of in-depth interviews: the company’s marketing literature is, well … no wonder consultants do not understand the investment process.

Things to Consider in Conducting a Marketing Audit

Let’s assume then that your investment company is being considered by a consultant, manager of managers or fund of funds with a well-defined marketing due diligence process. (In my perfect world, all consultants and multi-manager funds would have such a process. But even if they don’t, you will benefit by acting as if they do.) You want to pass the audit with flying colors so you conduct your own internal audit and/or ask a knowledgeable outsider to help. After all, it’s a new year, so what better time for a fresh, comprehensive look at your marketing literature? Here are some of the things you need to consider:

Reality. Does the marketing communicate what your firm really does and your true competitive advantages? Sometimes, we have found, a firm’s marketing documents and website do not tell a consistent story because there is no consistent story. There may be internal conflict. There may be disagreement regarding the best way to tell the story. Or certain aspects of the story may have become stale with the passage of time. In any case, you should fix the underlying problem — i.e., decide what story you want to tell — before you even consider changes to your marketing literature.

Quality. Do all of your materials exude quality in even the smallest details? This is important whether you are a start-up or first-time fund or a mainstream global firm with hundreds of billions in assets under management. Your marketing should convey respect for every little nuance that defines how an outsider experiences your firm — the hundred little things that add up to a client or consultant wanting to come back again and again.

Consistent Content. Is the story the same within and across all media — the website, RFP response or PPM and presentation book? Is content aligned across other documents such as client reports, quarterly commentary, press releases, newsletters and white papers? If you are a multiproduct firm that operates globally, are there perhaps inconsistencies that should be resolved across borders and product lines? And are there perhaps even inconsistencies within the same document — a Portfolio Overview on Page 22, for example, that conflicts with the Portfolio Construction Guidelines on Page 12?

Consistent Design. Consistent content counts for little if the overall look is inconsistent. I frequently conduct reviews where a firm looks inconsistent not only from one document to the next but also from one page to the next within the same document.

Personality. The highest-quality documents sometimes lack this vital ingredient. In looking at the website for a start-up firm the other day, I was struck by the clarity and vitality of the language and imagery. I know the portfolio manager for this company’s lead product from another life; he is a star, and I can sense his personality in the distinctive look and feel of the site. The site opens with one arresting message that immediately makes me want to learn more.

Proof. Are claims made in the marketing materials largely unsubstantiated? Or are the materials rich with proof in the form of examples, research validation, performance attribution and performance history?

Integrity. Finally, does the integrated sum of the parts translate into one greater whole? Do the quality, consistency, personality and proof provided by your marketing materials make people want to get to know you better and ultimately work with you?

When completed, our research for Company X did indeed point to a critical need for improved marketing materials. One consultant in particular commented heatedly and at length on the shortcomings of the presentation book. And while it was beyond the scope of our assignment, I personally issued a plea to the CEO for improved materials. "Your RFP responses are curt to the point of rudeness and certain key information in the presentation book not only is confusing but also flat-out inconsistent," I told him. After the meeting, he thanked me, in a decidedly lukewarm fashion, for my time. That’s the last I ever saw this gentleman and the firm no longer exists. His company may not have learned anything from this experience, but we did. We never accept assignments now without at least a preliminary review of a company’s marketing literature. By conducting our own marketing due diligence up front, we are in a better position to define what is truly required.

Red Flags

While working on this article, I ran some ideas by one of our fund-of-funds clients. "Does your team formally evaluate a fund’s marketing literature as part of due diligence?" I asked him. "Not formally," he said, "but of course it is considered. We view good materials as a prerequisite. Will bad materials disqualify a fund? No, but bad materials are definitely a red flag. We had a meeting with a fund last week, for example, and our researcher said his impression was that the firm was ‘not pulled together.’ This fund’s team had a difficult time communicating the highlights. We probably will schedule another meeting with them, but we feel a bit frustrated that we couldn’t accomplish what we needed during the first meeting. If their presentation had been better, we might already be considering the next level of due diligence."

A Hundred Little Things

Marketing expert Seth Godin shares our love of a Park City restaurant, El Chubasco. His blogpost about one of our favorite local eateries dramatizes why all the small details matter when running a business. When I stay up late editing a document for the third time to be sure that it is free of typos and wholly consistent with a related document, I sometimes now think of Mr. Godin’s comments about El Chubasco and feel less like a nerd and more like a successful businessperson serving other successful businesspeople.

Questions? Comments? Dissent? Click here.

Click here for other issues of Excess Returns.