When Montreal-based financial services provider Talvest Mutual Funds decided to make an aggressive move into the Ontario market, the upstart firm chose national newspapers as the vehicle for building its brand.
Now, that’s not exactly a radical move in itself. Just about every fund company in Canada can be found touting its wares in the business pages of The Globe and Mail or the National Post. But Talvest has taken that strategy a step further, creating a group of funds co-branded with the Financial Post Index (FPX).
‘It was a way to establish and build our brand with a very well-known media player in English Canada,’ says Sylvain Brosseau, Talvest’s vice-president of marketing. ‘It’s a win-win situation. We’re obviously trying to leverage our association with the National Post.’
The funds are based on the FPX, a market index created for the Post by Toronto-based financial experts Richard Croft and Evan Kirzner. (An index is a benchmark for investors – essentially, a set of stocks and other investment vehicles selected because their performance will reflect the overall performance of the market.)
Talvest launched its new offering in early December, with a sponsored supplement in the Post.
Croft analyzes the FPX in a weekly column for the paper, which Brosseau says makes the fund easier for investors to understand and follow. ‘It’s a way to easily keep track of what’s going on in their portfolio,’ he explains.
While Talvest has no say in the content of the column, it does advertise the FPX group of funds in the Post.
Ron Clark, senior vice-president, sales and marketing at the National Post, says that from the paper’s standpoint, the Talvest deal is essentially a licensing arrangement, bringing in both royalties and ad revenues.
For Talvest, on the other hand, the deal is primarily about brand association. The link gives the fund company instant credibility – a crucial commodity in its efforts to crack a new market, says François Lacossiere, vice-president, strategy with Talvest’s Montreal-based agency, Diesel Marketing.
‘Talvest gets to partner with a brand that’s well-known in the Canadian financial market,’ he says. ‘In launching your product, you build on the equity of the Financial Post. So the curve of credibility and awareness goes faster, and it’s easier to sustain after that.’
Newspapers play an integral role in Talvest’s overall marketing strategy. The company currently has a high-profile branding campaign running in the financial pages of the Globe and the Post, featuring the tagline ‘Life’s long. Be ready.’
‘It’s difficult for a smaller company to dominate one medium, and it’s even harder to dominate many media,’ Brosseau says. ‘So right now we’ve [focused on the national dailies], with a bold presence, full-page ads in colour – and that has created some attention.’
Brosseau says Talvest’s share of the tough Canadian mutual fund market has increased in all but two of the last 30 months. And with its Financial Post association, plus the ongoing branding effort, the company is hoping to continue building that share.
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