A bride surprised by her organist's song choice. A truck driver blissfully ignorant of roadway restrictions. These examples and more are the plotlines featured in FINRA's ad campaign to promote the agency's BrokerCheck, a free online tool providing access to every broker's employment history, certifications and licenses, as well as regulatory actions, violations or complaints, according to FINRA.
To drive home the message, marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather was chosen to develop the ad series, providing several examples of people taking action without conducting a background check, FINRA explains.
"People immediately go online to check out a new restaurant where they might spend $25 for a meal, but don't think to use BrokerCheck when they're handing over $2,500 -- or $25,000 of their life's savings or even more -- to an investment professional to invest," says FINRA chairman and CEO Richard Ketchum in a statement. "That has to change, and we hope this campaign will help."
The 15-second spots will run for five weeks on CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, ESPN, Discovery, The History Channel and HGTV, according to the agency.
Ads will also be featured in The Wall Street Journal and digitally on Bloomberg, CNBC, Fortune, Reuters, TubeMogul and the Undertone Network. Additionally, they can be seen on search engines like Google, Bing/Yahoo and YouTube.
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