Financial services
Why does financial services advertising all look the same?
Couples on docks. Grandkids on shoulders. A sunset. Now guess the bank.
By Michael Cruz · · 2 min read
The short answer
Financial services advertising looks the same because the category optimizes for not being wrong instead of being remembered. Legal review, risk-averse briefs and research that rewards familiarity all push toward the same safe images: retired couples, sunsets, handshakes. The fix is not to be reckless. It is to find one true, specific thing about how people actually feel about money and say it plainly.
The dock problem
Close your eyes and picture a retirement ad. There is a dock. There is a couple on it, somewhere between sixty-two and a very well-preserved seventy-eight. Someone is laughing at something that is not funny. Nobody on that dock has ever opened a brokerage statement and felt their stomach drop.
That image exists because it is safe. It offends no one, it passes compliance on the first round, and it tested fine. Which is the problem: “fine” is how you describe a hotel breakfast, not a brand people choose with their life savings.
Where the sameness comes from
It is rarely one bad decision. It is a stack of reasonable ones. The brief asks for “trust.” Research rewards what people already recognize. Legal removes anything that sounds like a promise. And by the time the work gets out the door, every edge has been sanded off by people each doing their jobs well.
Money is emotional, and the category keeps treating it as if it were rational. People don’t feel “financial wellness.” They feel dread when the market drops, pride when they pay off a loan, and a strange guilt about the latte they were told was ruining their future.
What to do instead
Find the specific feeling and build from it. Not “confidence,” but the particular relief of finally understanding what an expense ratio is. Not “your future,” but the moment you realize your kid’s college fund is a real number.
Then explain something. The most underused tool in financial marketing is simply teaching people. When you make a complicated thing clear, the clarity itself becomes the brand. That has been the principle behind our education series for E*TRADE for years: if a smart friend wouldn’t say it out loud, it doesn’t go on screen.
You can be compliant and interesting at the same time. It just takes more work up front, and a client willing to be the second-most careful person in the room instead of the first.
If you’d like help with this kind of problem, it’s what we do at Summer Friday.
