By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 20, 2008

Financial advertising has always been about trust and stability, with a strongly implied promise that you -- yes, even you -- can make lots and lots of money. Give us your cash, the ads suggest, and our geniuses will take care of the rest.

This week, the gap between advertising's hopeful illusions and grim reality has seemed as vast as ever.

Until last Sunday, American International Group -- the failing financial giant that needed an $85 billion government rescue -- was running TV commercials in which precocious children discussed complicated financial strategies. "Does your retirement plan provide predictability of income and protection against market risk?" asks a little boy of his parents in one spot. Sure, came Dad's reassuring reply, we have AIG.

AIG's now-ironic slogan was: "The Strength to Be There."

Merrill Lynch once stood astride the Street with its bull logo and confident claim of being "Bullish on America." One of its old TV commercials showed a storm battering a picturesque farm, a generic metaphor for economic uncertainty. "To people who worry about the winds of change today, we'd like to say, 'We'll be there, with the strength and resources you can count on.' "

Well, you can't, of course. Teetering near ruin from bad mortgage debts, Merrill was sold at a fire-sale price this week to Bank of America.

This is all quite mind-boggling, in part because financial advertising has conditioned several generations to believe in the financial market's beneficence, logic and predictable returns. Sure, there were hiccups, but through advertising, financial firms could be counted on to calm everyone down. One academic study found that after the 1987 market crash, financial advertisers increased the number and frequency of their messages, goading terrified investors out of their fetal positions and back into equities.

TV commercials for financial firms tend to run on Sunday mornings and afternoons, which is when your higher net-worth individuals are watching public-affairs shows, football games and golf tournaments.

These ads have typically been stuffed with a certain kind of wealth imagery, a WASPy fantasy of Adirondack chairs posed beside upstate lakes, lazy sailboats and burled-paneled private libraries. For a long time, the stars were older white men in conservatively cut suits. The best remembered of these was the clench-jawed, bow-tied actor John Houseman, who touted Smith Barney with the we're-smarter-than-you catchphrase: "They make money the old-fashioned way. They uhrrrn it."

About the same time, Smith Barney's rival E.F. Hutton tried something daring and unusual in financial advertising: humor. "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen," went the ads that depicted the many ways people attempted to glean Hutton's wisdom, surreptitiously, from others.

To this day, notions of strength, trust and endurance are reinforced through corporate logos. In addition to Merrill's bull, there are whales (Pacific Life), a skyscraper (Transamerica), a giant rock (Prudential) and a pyramid (Fidelity Investments).

But the overall approach to separating people from their money has evolved since Houseman was scowling for Smith Barney. As baby boomers age, advertisers have been cajoling and nudging them for a piece of their retirement savings, tailoring their ads to flatter the sensibilities of this target market. The most famous of these might be Dennis Hopper's recent series of commercials for Ameriprise Financial.

"Some people say that dreams are like delicate little flowers," says the aging bad boy, standing amid an almost hallucinogenic field of flowers, as the '60s-era Spencer Davis Group song "Gimme Some Lovin' " kicks in. "Wrong! Dreams are powerful. Dreams are what make you say: 'When I'm 64, I want to start a new business. I want to make my own movie.' " Wrapping up, Hopper makes no mistake about which cohort he's addressing: "Flower power was then. Your dreams are now."

Fidelity tried a similar trick not long ago with Paul McCartney, in an ad that enumerated all of the ex-Beatle's various life roles ("Poet. Father. Frontman. Producer . . . ") before counseling, "The key is, never stop doing what you love."

The newest New Age approach has come from Charles Schwab & Co., which features animated (literally and figuratively) investors ranting about the hassles and injustices of investing. They are, in some respects, anti-ads: "How much do you have to invest these days to earn some respect?" asks a perturbed young man in one. "I mean, my broker takes forever to return my calls, and when he does he has, like, two seconds to talk. I realize the guy has bigger fish to fry. But does he have to make it so obvious?"

What now? Advertising executive Tom Score says these sorts of "image" campaigns are nonsense at a time of crises and calamity. Score, who handles financial clients at KDJ Advertising on Wall Street, says he is advising something that sounds almost shocking. He thinks advertisers should level with people.

"You have to talk straight with your customer right now," he says in an interview. "Give them the facts about what's going on. They're lost and need help. Get out a pen and write them a letter. This is about education. It's not about tag lines and pretty pictures."

Sure. Or you could wind up like Washington Mutual, the Seattle banking company that has been teetering from its mortgage losses. WaMu recently promoted an offer of free checks and free ATM withdrawals by showing a group of rival bankers who are so upset by the offer, they contemplate jumping off a roof en masse.

Funny, that's no longer funny.