“You can transform your communications group to a marketing powerhouse in 18 months!”

"Because of the Internet, building a brand is no longer a top-down discipline," Dave Swanson told the audience.  "You just can't set the brand anymore.  Your customers are determining what your value proposition is."

The evolution of marketing in the investment management industry was one of the panel discussions at the ICI (Investment Company Institute ) General Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C., in May.  The session was covered in a recent article on Ignites.com , where Dave Swanson, principal and founder of SwanDog Strategic Marketing was quoted:

"Marketing should be viewed as a business function and shouldn’t be shoehorned back into marketing communications, said Dave Swanson,"there’s a real call for reexamining the commitment for marketing” at most investment management firms, he said. “It’s getting tougher out there. It’s time for a more intellectual, informed approach to marketing data, analysis, targeting and segmentation.Marketing should have a higher profile than it typically has in most investment management firms. It should be viewed as an equal to sales and not merely as playing a supporting role", Swanson added.