Financial Services Case Studies

Victory Capital Management

Victory Capital Management: KeyCorp’s asset management arm with $61 billion under management and a family of 24 mutual funds.
Goal: Distance unit from stigma of “being owned by a bank” and raise visibility equal to a Wall Street firm.
Project: Analyst, Chief Market Strategist and portfolio manager media program.
Method: BlissPR media trained 36 spokespeople—including 20 analysts—and worked with them to develop key messages. We arranged interviews with top tier media for articles ranging from earnings and Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements to profiles of Victory Capital Management, spokespeople and funds.
Results: Victory mentioned in the media approximately 245 times per month or roughly 8 times per day. Media outlets include top tier media outlets such as Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, Associated Press, Dow Jones, Reuters, CNBC and Bloomberg TV.

Manning & Napier Advisors: a money management firm, based in Rochester, New York, has been a client since 2005. They have over $18 billion under management and are pioneers in lifecycle investing.
Goal: To build the trade and national media coverage for their fund family of lifestyle funds, and to build target market awareness of their expertise in the lifecycle fund area.
Method: BlissPR drafted themed monthly pitches, used extensive media contacts to position their spokespeople as expert market commentators, and organized several media tours.
Results: We have secured coverage in Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg (both wire and TV), Pensions and Investments, USA Today and CNBC. This includes profiles of their funds and key spokespeople.

AST Capital Trust: AST is a division of American Stock Transfer & Trust Company. They are an independent trust company that provide directed trustee, trust administration and back-office services to financial advisors.
Goal: Promote AST’s work with Collective Funds and ETFs.
Method: Collective Funds are a relatively new and unknown investment product. BlissPR’s role was to educate the media on the popular alternative to mutual funds and raise awareness of AST’s expertise in the trust business to target media. We drafted a white paper on the growing popularity of collective funds to educate both industry and the investment media.
Results: We secured coverage in key publications such as Investor’s Business Daily, FundFire, Pensions & Investments, Plan Sponsor and CNN Money, among other publications.

NYLIM: Asset management subsidiary of New York Life Insurance Company with $155 billion in AUM.
Goal: Attract new retail and institutional assets by building visibility for the NYLIM brand beyond the NYL agent population.
Project: GenX Survey on the investment attitudes and behaviors of a little-understood investor segment—GenXers, born between 1967 and 1981.
Method: Working with NYLIM, we analyzed the survey data, crafted media messages and developed a press release; offered media exclusives to the Associated Press and CNBC; and released results broadly to television, radio and major print media.
Results: Coverage increased from minor trade coverage in 2001 to more than 10 million impressions in 2002, the first year of BlissPR involvement. In 2003, results improved to more than 18 million impressions in BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, CBSMarketWatch.com, CNBC, Eyewitness News, Financial Times, Fortune, The New York Times, Ticker, Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Radio, US News and World Report and most major regional dailies.

KeyBanc Capital Markets: The investment banking arm of KeyCorp.
Goal: Rebrand the firm from a well-known brokerage arm—McDonald Investments—to a name more closely aligned with the corporate parent.
Project: Use the firm’s equity analysts and traders to help raise visibility through CNBC and Bloomberg TV appearances as well as commentary in Wall Street Journal and Barron’s.
Method: To kick off the program, BlissPR presented at the firm’s annual analyst offsite conference. The presentation covered the importance of public relations and how the program would work. BlissPR then matched analyst research notes with current news trends and topics to arrange media interviews.
Results: Within 6 months, the program was in full swing and the head of equity capital markets was pleased to see at least one analyst on CNBC each week. Within a year, KeyBanc often had a trader or analyst on daily. In one CNBC segment, BlissPR arranged to have 2 analysts on at the same time, giving the opposite sides of the coin perspective on 2 closely related industries—steel & autos—a rare-if-ever event for the network. To date, KeyBanc appears weekly on both CNBC and Bloomberg TV as well as in the Wall Street Journal and other top tier print media.

Bank of America: One of the leading U.S. banks by stock market value
Goal: To arrange two media tours and secure coverage in key target national, business and trade publications.
Project: Promote the Global Wealth Investment Management (GWIM) Division of Bank of America through a) their High Net Worth (HNW) philanthropy study and b) the introduction of their new Unified Managed Account (UMA) Product for the mass affluent market.
Method: We used the data in the study to pitch key target media, tailoring the survey data to the focus of the publication. With the UMA announcement, we pitched journalists who were already familiar with the concept of a UMA and used the media tour as a way to educate them on Bank of America’s GWIM Division and position their spokespeople as “go to” sources for the future.
Results: In the space of one week we arranged two media tours which included meetings with Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, BusinessWeek, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Non-Profit Times, American Banker, SmartMoney, Barron’s and the Financial Times. Each publication carried coverage on either the study or the UMA launch.