Devina Joshi
Advertising

ASK, and you shall receive

The ASK Group, a player in the financial advisory space, is out with its first-ever commercial, which urges people receiving wrong financial advice to go to the experts

When in dire straits, getting the wrong advice can often be worse than getting no advice at all. And when it comes to money, wrong advice can ruin you, says the new communication from ASK Wealth Advisors.

ASK Wealth Advisors is the newly launched service from the ASK Group (which was earlier known as ASK Raymond James). The company has unleashed its first ever TVC for its wealth advisory division, urging its target group (TG) – high net worth individuals (HNIs) – to avoid taking wrong advice from institutions that don’t necessarily understand their needs.

Prashant Colaco, managing partner, Purple Spinach, the agency for ASK, says, “Most of our TG is serviced by banks and financial advisors who don’t really understand their financial requirements. Customers end up buying things they don’t need.”

ASK, and you shall receive
A man visits a saloon
ASK, and you shall receive
Flooded with the wrong advice
ASK, and you shall receive
The truth, revealed
ASK, and you shall receive
'We understand you'
Purple Spinach was faced with the dual task of establishing ASK as a player in the wealth management space and quelling the competition, particularly global banks.

The ad opens on a shot of a man visiting a saloon. Before he has had the time to think, the barber seats him on a chair and begins offering him all sorts of hair care products, from styling gels to lotions. Each time the man declines a product, the barber whisks out a new one. Finally, assuming that the man is there for a haircut, the barber takes out his equipment. The frustrated customer pulls off his wig, revealing a bald pate. The barber finally understands that the man has come for just a shave. The voiceover concludes that often, financial advisors don’t understand a customer’s needs and flood him with unnecessary services and schemes. Then the ASK Wealth Advisors’ super appears with the tagline, ‘Customised Solutions for a Lifetime’; the MVO claims ASK offers advice only after in-depth analysis of a customer’s needs.

According to Ranjit Shetty, head, marketing and communications, ASK Wealth Advisors, the ad aims to establish a thrust towards more holistic financial planning, as opposed to purely investment planning, which is what most banks tend to do. “We had to bring that differentiation forth,” he says. Shetty says banks tend to push either their own products or a limited number of other services for which they receive a commission. “Usually, banks tend to represent very few mutual fund/investment companies, and consumers often lose out on other lucrative opportunities,” he says.

However, Shetty admits that ASK may well have ‘asked’ for too much at this point. “Our brand isn’t very big,” he says candidly, “so we used a humorous parallel to create recall.”

Since ASK’s audience is HNIs, an optimum mix of business and English news channels is being used to air the ad, including CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, NDTV Profit, CNN IBN and NDTV 24x7. English movie channels STAR Movies and HBO are also being used as is Neo Sports for spots during the Indo-Pak cricket series.

The ad has been produced by Full Circle Communication and directed by Sanjeev Chaudhari.

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com