Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels

How to win an award

  • David Butcher
  • Business, Communication, Marketing, Success
  • No Comments
Award season is pretty much over – replaced for many people by Christmas party season. If 2019 wasn’t your year, if you’re fed up with coming second or if you don’t like smiling through gritted teeth you might want to read on. I’ve been a judge for some financial services awards for a few years...

Readability in investment communications

  • David Butcher
  • Business, Communication, Marketing, PR
  • No Comments
Readability in investment communications Our research shows that many investment businesses produce thought leadership and content with comparatively poor readability scores. So there's a huge opportunity to improve readability and, in the process, boost engagement with clients. You can get hold of our report by clicking the Research tab above.

The one risk investment businesses struggle to manage

  • David Butcher
  • Communication, PR
  • No Comments
The investment management sector is pretty good at managing investment risk. But they score less highly on emotional risk. When was the last bit of investment communications you really enjoyed reading? When you really cared about what was happening? It might be because investment communications rarely offer the reader any emotional risk. Novelists call it...

Get some personality

  • David Butcher
  • Communication, Marketing
  • No Comments
Get some personality My first footballing hero was Crystal Palace winger Vince Hilaire. A genius with a ball, wearing the coolest kit. What more could an eight year old boy want? Fast forward several decades and my cultural tastes have expanded. So has my reading list. It's full of work things - the financial media,...

We’re institutional, it’s different over here

  • David Butcher
  • Business, Communication, Marketing, PR
  • No Comments
We’re institutional, it’s different over here There’s some £6 trillion squirrelled away in a huge variety of funds, trusts, shares and policies. Over half is the institutional market – mainly public sector pensions, corporate pensions and insurance funds. But, while institutional investment attracts the majority of assets, it’s served by a minority of communications experts....

“UK’s worst fund manager shuts up shop”

  • David Butcher
  • Communication
  • No Comments

The 2017 headlines were not kind when Jayesh Manek closed his fund management venture.

Active communications for active funds

  • David Butcher
  • Communication
  • No Comments

“Investors are giving up on active funds”, says the Irish Times. “A bear market would be a death knell for active funds” (Bloomberg).

‘Cause we were never being boring’

  • David Butcher
  • Business, Marketing
  • No Comments

Why is it that some 100 million people saw Avengers Endgame in the first weekend alone – and the Game of Thrones finale gripped the English speaking world – but the endless story of money just passes people by?

Financial branding needs Soul, with a capital S

  • David Butcher
  • Deadline, Plans
  • No Comments

There is a band from Oakland California called the ‘Tower of Power’. For over 50 years they have been one of the funkiest bands on the planet.

Why do PRs have ideas and marketers outsource ideas?

  • David Butcher
  • Success
  • No Comments

When I worked solely in corporate communications, I’d spend an hour or two a day on story ideas.