Independent broker-dealers have long been content to remain known quantities inside the industry while allowing their advisors to build their own brand recognition among retail investors.
With a first-of-its kind marketing campaign, LPL Financial aims to shift those relationships. In response to demand from its advisors for better public awareness of the LPL name, the firm is taking to the airwaves this weekend with a minute-long spot featuring the actress Anna Kendrick.
The ad features Kendrick, whose film credits include the “Pitch Perfect” and “Twilight” series, pulling an almost blanket-like sheet of grass through the streets of a large city. The spot makes a glancing reference to the old saying “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” following a series of questions beginning with the phrase, “What if you could?”
“What if you could have the greener grass on your side?” Kendrick ultimately asks. “With LPL Financial, you can. Because when it comes to your finances, your business, your future, the only question should be: What if you could?”
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LPL’s spot is scheduled to run starting this weekend during CBS’s airing of the PGA Championship in 16 local markets. The ad, along with 30- and 15-second versions, plus a “behind the scenes” video, can also be seen on YouTube and other social media platforms. Separately, the campaign will feature print and digital spinoffs in various business, business and lifestyle outlets as well.
That missing ‘know’ factor
In a LinkedIn post announcing the spot, CEO Rich Steinmeier said LPL has been “quietly” building a world-class wealth management firm for more than 36 years. With more than 29,000 advisors, it now boasts a larger headcount than any of its direct competitors.
“But the ‘know’ factor … well, we’ve got some catching up to do there,” Steinmeier wrote.
Christa Carone, LPL chief marketing and communications officer, said LPL’s brand is still playing “catch-up” following the firm’s decades of growth.
“This is just the beginning of an investment that establishes our brand to be as powerful as the services we provide,” she said in an email.
LPL has long positioned itself as a home to advisors seeking to break off from large Wall Street mainstay firms to gain more freedom to run their businesses as they see fit. The trouble is that advisors who may want to leave, say, Morgan Stanley and Merrill may have clients who prefer the association with a big-name wealth manager.
The research firm Cerulli found in a report from April last year that nearly 40% of affluent clients who have an investment advisor prefer the advisor to have an association with “a large, national organization.” Less than 20% of the respondents to Cerulli’s survey said they’d rather work with advisors who own and operate their own local practices.
“These overall preference levels present a bit of a challenge to emerging registered investment advisors and independent broker-dealer advisors, as they rarely possess high levels of unaided awareness among prospective clients in their periods of critical advice need,” Scott Smith, director of advice relationships at Cerulli, said when the report was released.
Carone said LPL’s own internal surveys have found that seven out of 10 of the firm’s advisors would like the LPL brand to become more familiar to clients.
“The campaign is designed to help their clients feel even more confident in their advisors’ partnership with us,” Carone said. “Having a strong partner is increasingly important for advisors, and we’re here to enable their success by ensuring their clients and prospects know LPL and the support we give advisors and institutions.”
In the IBD world, anonymity is often deliberate
Phil Waxelbaum, the founder of the recruiting firm Masada Consulting, said LPL is far from the only broker-dealer with little in the way of brand recognition.
“It’s Osaic, it’s Cetera, it’s Kestra, it was Commonwealth, it’s Cambridge,” Waxelbaum said, running down a list of LPL’s independent broker-dealer rivals. (LPL announced plans in April to buy Commonwealth Financial Network later this year for $2.7 billion.)
Ameriprise, Waxelbaum said, is one of the few independent broker-dealers that has managed to build a nationally recognized brand. And St. Petersburg, Florida-based Raymond James has also shown progress in its push to become a household name beyond its initial base in the southeast.
Waxelbaum said many independent broker-dealers deliberately positioned themselves as behind-the-scenes players as a way to attract breakaway advisors.
“The point was that if you’re going independent and you’re escaping the big box brand, is there much appeal to join a different big box brand?” he said. “And the obvious answer is ‘no.’ So there is a little bit of shifting here, particularly with the torrent of breakaway advisors from the wirehouse channel.”
Jason Diamond, the president of the recruiting firm Diamond Consultants, said he sees no downside to LPL’s decision to popularize its brand. He said it doesn’t really matter if clients really are unwilling to move with advisors to lesser-known firms, or if advisors merely think they are.
“It’s a valid concern, even if advisors just think it’s going to be potentially an obstacle to moving,” he said.
Anna Kendrick an inspired choice for spokesperson
April Rudin, the founder and CEO of The Rudin Group marketing firm for wealth management companies, said LPL in many ways faces more obstacles to a successful branding campaign than many of its direct rivals. Raymond James, for instance, has long had advisors working from buildings that bear its names; even independent advisors at Raymond James tend to put the firm’s name front and center on their websites.
LPL firms, by contrast, often merely note their affiliation among the disclaimers at the bottom of their websites. Rudin acknowledged one option for the firm might have been to scrap its name entirely and start over with something new. LPL’s broker-dealer rival Osaic did just that in 2023 when it changed its name from Advisor Group.
But Rudin said LPL — whose name derives from those of two previous brokerage firms, Linsco and Private Ledger — already has some name recognition.
“So they are doubling down on that,” she said. “They are leveraging the brand recognition they have. And even having no brand recognition is better than having negative brand recognition. And they certainly don’t have negative brand recognition.”
Rudin said Anna Kendrick was an inspired choice for a spokesperson in the ad campaign, which was developed by the marketing company Zambezzi. The young actress is in some ways the antithesis of the typical clients featured in many financial service firms’ marketing.
“It replaces the retirement ads with an old couple walking on a beach and replaces the old stock photos of what investors look like,” she said.
Jason Friedman, the founder of the lead-generation service AdvisorFinder, said LPL may eventually have to go beyond an advertising campaign.
“I think if they’re trying to compete with the wirehouses, you have to look at what wirehouses are doing,” he said. “They have stadiums named after them. They have golf tournaments named after them. They have bank branches in a lot of places, not to mention that they have been around, in some cases, for more than 100 years.”
Campaign could help push LPL’s direct employee channel
Waxelbaum said he thinks LPL would be wise to let advisors who prize their independent status to decide just how much they want to embrace the LPL brand. The best approach, he said, would be to say: “You’re not going to have to splash the label across your web page or your stationery or anything else. But if it’s going to be helpful to you, we’re going to make it so that it’s a presence.”
Carone said that is indeed the firm’s plan.
“As always, our clients’ brands and relationships come first, and they can choose to use our branding as they see fit,” she said.
Meanwhile, a stronger national brand will be an asset as LPL seeks to build out its channel for direct employees, Linsco by LPL Financial, Waxelbaum said. LPL started Linsco in 2019 to give advisors a way to offload even more administrative functions to a larger firm while gaining more time to spend with clients.
Waxelbaum said LPL pitched Linsco as a way to obtain “all the employee benefits with advisor self-branding.”
“Now they’re going to up the game, and they’re going to say, ‘You’re joining our version of the Thundering Herd,'” he said, referring to Merrill’s nickname. “It’s a decision to accelerate growth in the employee channel, and it’s a necessity.”
