At Morgan Stanley, I was Vice President in charge of marketing for retirement and annuities.  I was responsible – along with my team – for helping Financial Advisors gather retirement assets into instruments like IRAs, 401k’s or annuities.  Most of the clients we served were individual investors with an average of $1 million of investible assets (including retirement savings).  We also served corporations and small businesses who were looking for 401k plans for their employees.

We also supported the wealth and financial planning businesses, creating positioning and marketing materials to encourage clients to go through a detailed software-aided planning process.

Integrated Campaigns

In addition to business as usual support, we mounted several large-scale campaigns designed to create a 360-degree experience for financial advisors and their clients.  You can see examples of such campaigns on this page.  The IRA 2008 campaign, for instance, was composed of ads, signage, collateral, sales tools and other materials, all centered around the theme, “It’s time to bring your retirement vision into focus.”

In my tenure, we also introduced segmented direct mail campaigns to clients supporting ongoing contributions to retirement accounts.  See the case study, “Missed Opportunity” for more detail.