In recent months you may have noticed how evening TV ad slots have
ceased to be the preserve of haircare and car spots. In their midst
comes a slick ad for Nasdaq, ’the stock market for the next 100 years’.
This is the world’s first TV campaign for a stock market and is part of
a pounds 10 million campaign co-ordinated by Nasdaq’s vice-president,
Ellen Taverner.
’We launched on TV in the US two years ago and it really put us on the
map,’ Taverner says. ’Our long-term strategy is to increase awareness in
the UK and convert investors over here.’
A high-profile TV campaign might seem the most expensive and least
well-targeted way of doing that. But Taverner claims wastage is not a
concern.
The ad is the work of the New York shop, Messner Vetere Berger McNamee
Schmetterer/Euro RSCG. Various versions, which actually toned down the
American influences, were tested in June last year but this was the one
the British public liked best.
Certainly, the prospect of making and losing vast sums of money
concentrates the attention span of the target market. Nasdaq attracts an
average seven million hits a day to its Website.
As share prices around the world dived last week, 14 million tuned
in.
’We had to put on extra capacity just to cope,’ Taverner says. At
present, between 10 and 15 per cent are coming from overseas but that is
likely to increase as a dedicated UK page is added.
Taverner, a Californian, has been based in London since she came over
for a single year’s secondment at a consultancy. She has handled
Nasdaq’s marketing here since 1990.
She married an Englishman and contents herself with one US skiing trip a
year. ’My friends in America claim that my accent is becoming British,’
she laughs.
But Taverner’s nationality has given her an important sense of distance
from the cosy British financial markets, and the courage to change the
way stock markets market themselves. Some day, maybe all financial
services ads will be made this way.
