We commence this article with images:

We then continue this article with videos:

We then collectively ask – along with the nearly 100,000 other certified financial professionals out there:

WTF?! 

(Seriously, check out what they’re saying on Reddit).

Okay, enough with making you snicker. Here is some substance:

If you haven’t heard already, the most recent CFP Board campaign has caused quite a stir. If you want the backstory, here is a news story breaking down the fiasco. Overall, it isn’t pretty.

We are sure – based on what we’ve read – that this campaign is rooted in the idea that the young people this campaign is targeting want work-life balance. And we’re sure that this next generation of workers, post-Covid, are used to a certain level of flexibility and freedom. 

However, there is a fundamental issue with this campaign – the CFP Board seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about young people it wants to recruit, but it completely ignores the CFP Board’s most important stakeholder group: Existing planners. 

These are the people who, you know, pay dues to the CFP Board (in other spheres of business, we call these people “customers”). They are the people who spend their time having a real impact on clients’ lives. Based on the planners we interact with nearly every day in our business, they tend to work really, really hard. And they care a lot. 

And yet the campaign seems to suggest that planners are people taking bubble baths all day and sleeping on a couch with drool coming out of their mouth. How was that ever going to fly? 

Spoiler alert: It was never going to fly. We’ll end this near-rant with a few lessons we can all take away from this campaign:

1. Your Campaign Touches More Than Prospects.

By its nature, advertising is broad-based. Employees, existing customers, partners – they will all see the campaign. You need to consider all of these groups when you advertise.

2. See the Best in Your Audience – Not the Worst.

Not every campaign needs to be positive. But depicting the audience you’re trying to reach as lazy and indifferent feels … lazy. People want to see the best of themselves – not the worst – and it’s a marketers job to show how their product can make people their best selves. 

3. Not All “Bold” Campaigns Are Created Equal.

Every campaign that isn’t vanilla is going to have an element of risk to it – by nature of being bold, it’s going to create conversation. Even Fearless Girl – arguably the most impactful financial campaign ever – created some controversy and backlash. But you need to think carefully and intentionally – especially in the age of social media – about the type of dialogue you are creating. The conversation everyone is having right now about the CFP Board is … not a good one.

4. Testing, Anyone?

We get it – testing can bring the quality of work down by making a “campaign by committee.” However, it can also ensure you don’t have a gigantic PR disaster on your hands. We are not sure if the CFP Board went through testing on this campaign – but we’d be surprised if they did because the backlash would be pretty evident right away from exposing this campaign to existing planners.

5. “Versioning” is Not The Same As “Spray and Pray.”

We – and the rest of the people discussing this campaign – have admittedly focused on the worst images and content that are out there as part of the campaign. If you look at LinkedIn’s Ad Library, there are a lot of less “offensive” images that were part of the mix of the campaign. But these days, it’s all about “tossing things out there and seeing what works.” The problem is, you still need to be thoughtful about each and every asset you push out as part of the campaign. It seems, in this case, that there was very little thought. Spaghetti was thrown against the wall, and the wrong thing has stuck in our collective consciousness.

Hopefully we won’t have another one of these to cover in a while. See you back here next month.