You might have seen the ad below come by on Bloomberg TV and elsewhere. It is an institutional offering aimed at the Broker-Dealers – so far nothing out of the ordinary.

The interesting thing is that many of the advertising to Retail audiences uses the same kind of selling points, imagery, audio and even marketing channels (such as Bloomberg TV). We could swap out the BofA brand at the end of the spot to be a multi-asset trading platform aimed at Retail investors, and one would be none the wiser about the underlying differences.

What would have worked better here is for BofA to address and name the target audience and use specific language to address their needs. With many of the needs of Brokers being similar to the higher end of the retail market and with both ends of the market going after the market between institutional and retail (not BofA in this case though) it’s very important to remember to specifically name your target audience, whenever you advertise.

Now, it might be argued the target audience will know this is for them – and that might well be the case – still it’s better to be specific in order to garner maximum interest.