Barron's Lipper Quarterly - Procter & Gamble

Paging Mr. Whipple. Can Mutual funds be sold like toilet tissue or toothpaste?

BY J.R. BRANDSTRADER.

Picture, this: It's Father's Day and family and friends are gathered around the tube to watch the u.s. Open. Suddenly, Dad is tapping his feet to the Chambers Brothers, stars from a long, gone era of pop music. It's no flashback; Fidelity Investments is using the group's 30 year old "Time Has Come Today" tune to pitch mutual funds. on television.

Tom Dougherty, a branding consultant who cut. his advertising teeth on Procter & Gamble accounts, is now offering advice to SEI, a Philadelphia company that manages funds for banks. Dougherty, who's an CEO of Stealing Share, Inc., believes that people make choices based on who they think they are.

Thus, he asserts, funds that can tap into this self-identification will attract assets. Asked how a bond fund could possibly speak to anybody's psyche, Dougherty replies that, if branding can get people to care about a particular soap, it should be able to make them care about a particular bond fund.

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