Brut is launching a $5 million marketing effort aimed primarily at institutional investors in an effort to highlight the strong relationship the alternative trading system has with traditional brokers.
The new campaign includes a redesigned corporate identity, the company's first national print advertising and a new Web site, as well as collateral and internal communications materials.
The media buy supporting the ad campaign will be concentrated in the autumn of 2001; a budget for 2002 is yet to be determined.
Richard Schenkman, Brut's chief executive officer, explains: "ECNs have used the promise of electronic execution to pit their clients against the broker. Initially, the cost savings inherent in this approach were enough to sway many investors. But fund managers and other institutional investors are increasingly seeing the limitations of making decisions without the benefit of research and other value-added services that traditional brokers can provide."
The company's new advertisements, created by New York marketing services firm Chadwick Communications, focus on situations in which expertise is at an absolute premium. One details the specialised, painstaking training chefs in Japan must undertake in order to prepare fugu fish, a fabled delicacy so dangerous it is forbidden to the Japanese royal family. Another ad relates important information that would be vital if one were confronted by a bear in the wild.
The ads will appear in major financial services publications including Institutional Investor, Barron's, Securities Industry News and Pensions & Investments. Brut will also seek to reach institutional investors in publications such as The Economist and The Financial Times and in targeted geographic media such as the Southampton Press and The East Hampton Star.