Ad Campaign Of The Year is awarded to the most innovative and attention-grabbing advertising effort by a fund industry player.

State Street Global Advisors

State Street Global Advisors launched its $4.5 million television ad blitz in the spring, with commercials starring PGA Tour pro Camilo Villegas. Using a “Precision” theme, the campaign was designed to appeal to high-net-worth investors and fee-based advisors and draw them to SSgA’s SPDR ETFs line. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF hit $100 billion in assets this January, becoming the first ETF to garner.

One spot has Villegas crouched on a lawn, examining grass. It then cuts to Villegas telling the child mowing his lawn that he needs to cut another eighth of an inch. The SPDR symbol then appears with the tagline “Precise in a world that isn’t.”

The golf theme was no coincidence. “Obviously, I’m not the first marketer to realize that golf has a great demographic for financial firms to target,” Gary MacDonald, chief marketing officer, told FII at the time.

The spots were played heavily during all of the PGA majors and other PGA events. The Gate Worldwide partnered with SSgA on the ads.

OppenheimerFunds

OppenheimerFunds focused on global investing opportunities in its “Globalize Your Thinking” campaign, becoming one of the pioneers among funds to use QR codes (barcodes read by smartphones), which directed investors to a microsite dedicated to the campaign and a quiz testing investor’s global investing knowledge. Oppenheimer partnered with Euro RSCG Worldwide and Optaros on the $12.4 million campaign.

Much of the campaign was online, with a mobile-phone specific website and YouTube videos dedicated to different global investing themes. This structure allowed Oppenheimer to respond quickly to major global events—a particularly important feature for a campaign focused on global investing that launched at the dawn of the Arab Spring. Print ads were in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist and The New York Times.

Over the first 10 months of the year, ads drove 391,000 page views to Oppenheimer’s site. Financial advisors who saw the ads said they were 77% more likely to recommend Oppenheimer’s global and international equity funds, and 61% more likely to recommend its global and international fixed-income funds, according to Oppenheimer’s internal research.

John Hancock Funds

John Hancock Funds launched the first advertising campaign to focus solely on its mutual fund lineup in February. The campaign was launched because of the firm’s image problem with advisors, who thought of insurance rather than mutual funds when they heard the name ‘John Hancock.’ The campaign was created with ad agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, and included television, print and online ads. It cost between $5 million and $7 million and used the tagline “Who Knew.” Hancock’s four- and five-star Morningstar-rated funds were a focus of the campaign. For example, one spot noted: “You trust your experience, your instincts, and the numbers...and let's not forget Morningstar.”

TV ads ran on Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox Business and during key college football matchups on ABC, CBS, ESPN and ESPN2. Print ads ran in publications including Financial Planning, Investment Advisor and Registered Rep. As a result of the campaign, Hancock saw a 50% rise in advisors who said they would recommend Hancock funds to their clients.