Financial service companies serve up big sponsorships at the US Open

Brooke’s Note: The US Open final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic got rained out again this afternoon [before finishing up later while I was walking dogs and making dinner], and I wasn’t happy about it. I consider tennis of that caliber to be a guilt-free way to watch TV during soap opera hour and I was enjoying the respite from work. What no weather could dampen, I noticed, was the barrage of advertisements from the financial services industry – and not exactly of the RIA variety.

The downer of the US Open for many people like me was to see Roger Federer – who had two break points in his semi-final to Novak Djokovic – go down in defeat. Federer is one of the great champions of any tennis era but he is also 29 and his opponent is only 23.

Each time Federer loses, it feels like a loss for older age and another confounding win for Youth.

Still I may have felt even more unsettled about my age by the Lincoln Financial advertisements that seemed to buffet me at every tournament water break. In each case, a young man was confronted by an older, puffier version of himself, who delivers a talking-to about planning for a financial future.

The actors in the ads bear no emotions other than matter-of-fact-seriousness and they look as spooked as I feel watching. They evoke a fast-forward passage of time that make you feel an intense desire to secure guaranteed income.

Lucrative products

The ads didn’t discuss a product but Lincoln Financial is all about variable annuities. It’s a reminder of just how lucrative these [almost entirely] broker-sold products remain – and of how successful they have been in these volatile markets.

With Baby Boomers aging by the day, guaranteed income has a nice ring to it. So much the better to sell it to the affluent, aging folks that still like tennis. The leading edge of the boomer wave turns 65 in 2011. Many of them are anticipated to have retirements that could last 30 or40 years

Prudential and ING were two other big annuity providers pumping through commercials.

The ads are weirdly devoid of any mention of annuities themselves but Tim Welsh of Nexus Strategy says that there is only one objective – branding. When people get around to buying an annuity, they’ll remember hearing those brand names from the US Open. [And, besides, nobody can understand annuities anyway without the benefit of a one-hour advertorial.]

Mega sponsor

The mega-sponsor of the event was JPMorgan Chase. Not only were both brand names plastered all over the courts but JPMorgan Asset Management CEO Mary Callahan Erdoes – rated by Forbes as one of the 100 most powerful women in 2005 — presented the winner’s check to the women’s singles champion Kim Clijsters of Belgium. Erdoes, 42, – in her highly East Coast establishment summer dress — looked a little shocked as her cameo role produced a giant bear hug from the sweaty tennis player.

JPMorgan Chase — like the annuity makers — survived 2008 relatively unscathed and has a big wealth management division. [It also stocks its advisors with plenty of proprietary funds. Good old Wall Street lives on.]

Perhaps closest to the RIA heart among the sponsors were TD Ameritrade and E*TRADE though their ads were targeted at the self-directed investor. The latter firm clearly saw the US Open as a worthy marketing opportunity because it rolled out more of its famous baby commercials as well as some of its older ones. One commercial has babies in a barbershop quartet intoning lyrics about getting rid of ‘big expensive brokers.’

Aside from the fact that this is just the kind of message RIAs would pump out if they could afford it, the E*TRADE commercials are also what we’re all looking for when we sit down to watch tennis rather than work on a Monday afternoon – some lighthearted fun.