With a bungee jump, CFP's $12 million ad blitz reboots lighter tone

Time to retire the financial planning industry's aging fictional ambassadors.

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards said Monday that it's ditching its sober-toned advertising campaign of the past two years featuring "Cal" and "Valerie," a retired married couple worried "if we have enough to last." Replacing them is an edgier spot showing a younger client being strapped into a bungee-cord harness by an attendant who hasn't bothered to notice that the rope he's offering has been cut in two.

"Are you sure you're qualified to do this?" the fictional client asks. (He doesn't have a name.) 

The scene then pivots to a financial advisor's office, where the customer breathes a sigh of relief after learning he's working with a certified financial planner. 

"CFP professionals are committed to working in your best interest," intones the voiceover before launching into the campaign's new tagline: "That's why it's gotta be a CFP."

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'More bold'
CFP Board CEO Kevin Keller said the organization's marketing pushes coincide with the federal tax return filing deadline (this year, April 18). That's because it's a time when people are more likely to be thinking about their financial situation.

Around this time of year, television, radio and websites are also replete with ads from brokerages, banks and other financial service providers. By using an ad with an edgier tone, Keller said, the Board is hoping to "break through all that."

"That's what led us to be a bit more bold than 'Cal' and' Val'," he said. The silver-haired couple appeared in commercials replete with golf clubs, tennis rackets, beach chairs and festive drinks.

The Board, whose certification is the gold standard in the planning industry and is held by more than 95,000 advisors, plans to spend $12 million on its campaign this year. Most of the money will go to the TV spots that run through May 21. Related ads will appear in online searches and social media sites throughout the year, and there will also be a small radio campaign.

The TV ads will run on broadcast networks including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, as well as streaming services like Prime Video, Hulu and HBO Max. Sports fans will see the commercials on CBS during the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds of this year's NCAA March Madness tournament on March 23-26. They'll also be on ESPN's SportsCenter on March 24 and the CBS Sports Network all week.

The latest blitz hearkens back to the less-serious tone of the board's campaign during the 2016 World Series. One spot featured a non-CFP "planner" who made a big display of his supposed credentials only to reveal at the end that he's actually a rave DJ. 

Charles Sachs, the chief investment officer of Miami-based Kaufman Rossin Wealth, an accounting and wealth advisory firm, said there's little value to the CFP designation if the public can't understand what distinguishes it from scores of other titles used by people who call themselves "advisors."

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Sachs said he had heard anecdotally from some of his firm's planners that clients now expect to work with CFPs.

"One of our more senior guys is now sitting for the test, because he has been asked, 'Hey Dave, why aren't you a CFP?" You've been doing this for more than 20 years," Sachs said. "So he's getting some pressure from that end."

Pay your dues
The Board ran its first ad campaign in 2011, paying for it with a $145 annual fee increase on members, whose annual dues jumped to $325. Member skepticism about the need for marketing also spiked.

Dues have since jumped to $455 a year, including a $100 increase last spring. The new fees include $15 for public awareness campaigns, the first time that part of dues has risen since 2011.

Some planners think that's a tad excessive. In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Michael Kitces, a founder of the XY Planning Network for financial advisors, asked what CFPs thought of the new ad spot.

Colin Meeks, a certified financial planner at Baltimore-based Maryland Financial Advocates, wrote: "cut my dues in half and no more commercials. in 22 years of being a CFP i think i've been asked "are you a CFP" less than 5 times." Meeks couldn't be reached for comment.

Other responses were supportive. "Love it! Short, simple, to the point, and funny," wrote Andy Andrews, a certified financial planner at Naples, Florida-based Heritage Financial Consultants. Andrews said clients have become more likely in recent years to check if he has a CFP credential. 

"I think largely because of this advertising, people know what a CFP is," he said. 

Since 2011, the CFP Board has spent roughly $150 million on ads designed to convince the public they're best off working with advisors who've met the experience, testing and education criteria needed to qualify as a certified financial planner. In this year's campaign, 61% of dollars are going to network TV, 15% to streaming services, 11% to website advertising, 7% to search engine ads, 4% to social media sites and 2% to radio.

The Board has relied on research firm Ipsos to measure the effectiveness of its public awareness campaigns. In a poll from April 2015 of 602 people with between $100,000 and $1 million to invest, Ipsos found that 34% of respondents listed the CFP mark as a top standard for the planning industry.

The figure was up from 17% in the first year of the Board's marketing campaign, in 2011. This year's push, aimed at clients between the ages of 35 and 64, was devised with the help of Nashville-based marketing firm The Buntin Group.

Advisors can't qualify to become a CFP unless they have a bachelor's degree and have worked at least 6,000 hours in the industry or served at least 4,000 hours as an apprentice. They then must pass a 170-question multiple-choice test and go on to fulfill continuing-educations requirements for as long as they hold the certification.

One of the CFP Board's primary goals is to give the public a means of distinguishing the most-competent, best-qualified advisors. Its "Let's Make a Plan" online database lets potential planning clients look up the names and contact information of certified financial planners working nearby, but a Wall Street Journal report in 2019 found the repository didn't provide information about customer complaints or advisors with criminal or regulatory problems. Joe Feese, a CFP Board spokesman, said the database now includes information on disciplinary and bankruptcy proceedings.