The Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) Value of Advice campaign featuring the anti-hero Dazza has been well received to date, achieving a 35 per cent level of awareness among consumers according to feedback compiled by the professional body.
“It has been a very effective campaign as far as consumers are concerned. We’ve had some really good statistics on this, with something like 150,000 Australian consumers now more likely to talk to a professional financial planner,” said FPA chief executive Jo-Anne Bloch.
The level of awareness gained with the public ranks at the high end of the generally acceptable rate of awareness band for advertising campaigns of between 20 and 40 per cent.
“When the ads were shown we got this great spike the next day on the Find a Planner page on the website, and 77 per cent of the people who visited the website actually downloaded the Good Advice brochure, so we are generating a lot of interest,” Bloch explained.
Additional statistics gathered by the FPA show the Good Advice website has received in excess of 25,500 unique visitors and that the Find a Planner page on the site generated around 65,000 searches. Furthermore, 90 per cent of first year supporters believed the campaign had been worthwhile.
Despite concerns from some quarters of the financial planning community that the FPA campaign was not doing enough to counter the campaign of the industry superannuation funds, Bloch felt there was no need to approach the argument head on.
“What we need to be doing is demonstrating the value of advice. Our Value of Advice awards are doing that very well and we need to be putting more examples on the table of what the benefit and the value of advice is,” she said.
“We might need to look into the cost of advice and explain to consumers that, irrespective of how you pay for advice, this is what you get for it. That’s what we need to be focused on, not a bashing exercise,” Bloch added.
She acknowledged industry super funds were a valuable product in a range of diverse products FPA members are able to offer their clients but said she was disappointed that their campaign appeared on the surface to be anti-advice, a point she had raised with one of the industry fund’s financial planning arms.
