Could all of the educational efforts mutual funds and trade associations like the ICI have put into educating the public on mutual funds be insufficient?

You could certainly wish for more funding for education after viewing CNBC’s squawk box confusion over the difference between stocks and derivatives.

Before stepping into a recent Senate Finance Committee vote, Barney Frank was interviewed by a CNBC trio about the merits of letting shareholders set pay limits for TARP Fund recipients. The first dude came back with an off-handed statement about just letting the board of directors and senior executives of a TARP company sort things out.

Why get the shareholders involved? According to the ICI Fact Book, a shareholder is “An investor who owns shares of a mutual fund or other company.” Barney had to remind the fellow that shareholders are, literally, owners of a company; and, as such, are obligated to play a role in corporate governance.

The best was saved for last, when a squawk-boxer, said to Barney, “It seems to me that you’re dealing with a model (shareholder voting) that no longer works. We don’t have mom and pop sitting at home holding these shares. These shares are primarily in mutual funds and the ownership is a derivative instrument.”

Of course, without broad-based common stock shareholder participation, a good chunk of the equity markets — and still another $12 trillion — can vanish over night. Well, even if mom and pop are sitting at homing holding the shares, they still have ownership rights; even if they own shares of mutual funds only, they have the right to pressure the Fund board on matters of equity investment policy. This right, ensures, for example, that company selections have robust shareholder participation on stuff like, I don’t know, executive comp.

“These shares” confuses traditional equity investing with credit default swaps, options, and other derivatives. Whether it goes up or down, a stock is a real, tangible asset — unlike the derivative.

Squawkbox, heal theyself. You can download your free copy of the ICI Fact Book here.

By Charles O’Neill, Diversified Management Resources, Inc.

As published in Money Management Executive – 11/17/08

All it takes is an historic “adjustment” in the financial markets to remind marketing directors how vulnerable their departments and budgets can be. As revenues drop, they’re painfully aware that inquiring Chief Financial Officers want to know: “Can’t we downsize and make do with less?”

Just as with every other business function, a company’s investment in marketing inevitably follows the market. In this market, many companies will be inclined to view their marketing budget in particular as largely expendable – a luxury rather than a necessity in a time when shareholders are cashing out and wholesalers seem to have little they can sell.

Slashing marketing staff and programs won’t help companies address a primary concern, as highlighted in our recent survey: to find ways to stand out from the competition through more effective marketing communications. In fact, cutting too deeply may trigger a crisis in communications, hampering a money manager’s ability to offer distributors and investors the timely information and reassurance they’ll need if they are to stay the course. Poor marketing support and communication leads to loss of more customers, with a consequence of further revenue erosion down the road.

Regardless, whatever the outcome and duration of the current crisis, in all but a handful of money management firms, tomorrow’s marketing budgets will be leaner than today’s.

What’s to be done? Through our survey, Helping Asset Managers Stand out against the Competition: the Role and Use of Technology in Marketing, more than 100 marketers and other industry professionals representing 58 companies told us they do have specific ideas about steps their employers will likely take to reduce expenses. Some of the answers are predictable enough; others are surprising.

Naturally, headcount is the first line item executives scrutinize when revenue forecasts won’t support current expenses. Most of our survey participants said their company would defer hiring of additional staff and hire fewer contract or temporary workers. When the survey was taken, admittedly before the current market collapse, less than 20% predicted cuts in the full time staff.

Their answers also told us that there will be a renewed focus on operating efficiency overall, but particularly in the marketing departments. This would be accomplished through outsourcing and automation to reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of their communication efforts.

Outsourcing
The survey results and further discussions with senior marketers and executives told us that cost concerns may propel outsourcing to a new level. John Drachman of The Drachman Group says, “Marketing directors will aggressively reorganize their key internal administrative and creative talent to maintain critical functions in-house while outsourcing the rest.”

Using freelance creative talent is nothing new. John and other industry consultants predict that entire core marketing functions—like product development, sales literature program maintenance and marketing research—will now more commonly migrate to 1099 employees or agencies. This might be done to manage overhead costs while improving results, as outsourcing can provide access to more highly skilled experts on a pay-only-as-needed basis.

Use of Automation
Most marketing departments are using marketing technologies, and likely doing a great job with them for content management, web development and management, pod-casts, email, and much more.

Nonetheless, some standard marketing department activities are still ripe for automation.

Survey participants told us that on average nearly 40% of their staff resources are focused on purely administrative or production functions. The scope of the potential savings available through more comprehensive automation of literature publishing, for example, is impressive when you consider that many companies regard each full time employee as representing up to $200,000 in overhead cost. Maybe some of that overhead allocation for marketing production would be better spent where it will have direct impact on customers.

Michael Zimmer, president of Fluent Technologies, our survey sponsor, noted that more than half of the companies told us they produce their time sensitive communications—such as in-depth fund commentary and quarterly plan reviews– manually, through desktop publishing. Most marketers are unsatisfied with the timeliness and accuracy of vital performance communications prepared this way. Reengineering this process, through use of automated database publishing tools readily available today, may reduce costs and administrative headcount while delivering product stories to the market faster and more reliably.

Will outsourcing and more efficient business process be enough to keep marketing programs intact through the current market collapse? From today’s vantage point, the answer isn’t certain. What is certain is that the most successful marketers to emerge from the crisis will be those who are more creative, not only about the themes and content of their marketing communications, but also about how the work is done.

Charlie O’Neill runs Diversified Management Resources, a marketing and executive search firm. He also runs Money Management Executive’s job board, www.mmecareers.com Contact him at coneill@dmrfinancial.com. The report cited here covers several topics of interest to money management marketers and executives. Order a free copy online through Fluent’s web site.