With the retirement market set to explode as baby boomers increasingly leave the job market, it offers great opportunities for banks and financial institutions to tap into the most lucrative demographic in history. To that end Bank of America is launching a new ad campaign called “help2retire,” setting aside between $15 and $20 million over the next four months to get it going.
“Help2retire” launched on Monday, and it will be seen on billboards across the nation as well as on television and in print media. The campaign will start with print media to begin with this week, with television ads to follow soon after.
The basis and content of the ads will entail directing consumers to get together with an advisor from Merrill Lynch to work out the numerous details of their retirement. One major issue alluded to is the conversion of a Roth IRA, which has added a lot of confusion and uncertainty to people, and so makes a good topic to focus on to generate business.
Taking into account their Merrill Lynch unit, Metz siad they’ve added the ability to offer investment along with their advice. “The bank didn’t have an investment on the advice side unto itself and Merrill Lynch didn’t emphasize retirement at all in its marketing or advertising campaigns. They never did an explicit campaign around retirement. They focused their advertising on advice and the thundering herd,” said Metz.
After the campaign, which is only part of what Bank of America wants to do, as they will continue to focus on growing its retirement business throughout the year and beyond. Analysts like this move as it taps into the largest source of capital in the country and world, and when the year is over the giant financial institution is expected to increase its managed retirement assets to huge levels as a result.
Other benefits looked for in the campaign is for consumers to tie in Merrill Lynch with Bank of America in a co-branded way so they are considered a single entity doing different business. Merrill Lynch has been somewhat lost since they were acquired by BoA, as focus has been more on the bonuses and lawsuits than what they add to Bank of America.
Research from the company shows about $330 billion in retirement assets alone are set to rollover in 2010, making it a very lucrative market to service and manage. The focus on the Roth IRA comes from the fact that over 13 million households in the United States qualify to convert their Roth IRA this year.
Along with getting the Merrill Lynch name back out there, their strength as financial advisors is considered a “major differentiator,” added Metz.
Once the campaign gets rolling, later in the quarter a sign will be set in Times Square which will prompt people to use their cell phones to text message them about wanting “help2retire,” which will then be seen up on the billboard.
“This campaign is all about personalization,” Metz said. “We want to interact. We are also going to be doing a similar initiative online on a website. We want to emphasize all channels.”
With all the negative publicity surrounding other sectors of the industry, this is a good one to focus on, and the money is staggering that is potentially available to be serviced by those in the industry. This could really help the growth of Bank of America during the year, which will otherwise offer little opportunity in other financial areas.
