With 'Junxure' reboot a driver, RIA publication startup springs to life with Financial Planning magazine veterans, Franklin Templeton footing the bill and Suzanne Siracuse and Brian Hamburger on the board
Action! is a weekly digital and bi-annual print publication run by Suleman Din, and it won't sell subscriptions or advertising -- other than imputedly to its own AdvisorEngine unit
6 min read- Franklin Templeton launched Action!, a free RIA magazine focused on practical advice.
- Suleman Din, ex-Financial Planning editor, leads Action!'s content creation.
- Action! differentiates itself by targeting RIA support staff with 'how-to' articles.
- AdvisorEngine sponsors Action!, aiming to build a community rather than generate revenue.
Brooke's Note: Beware of any articles about publications written by writers at publications like RIABiz serving a similar potential reader base. This article covers the birth of another publication, Action!, entering into a world of advisor publications with stop-offs all along the spectrum, seeking to fill a niche that its founding editor espies. It is a publication that could be said to be owned by its only advertiser, AdvisorEngine. The question then might be whether having a single advertiser frees it up to say more or less than one with multiple sponsors. That ability to liberate a writer to write what they really believe often determines how effective a publication is in the long haul. For his part, Suleman Din is presenting the articles in the publication as conversation starters for the formation of a community. The common cause of said village is more interested in obtaining knowledge conducive to getting things accomplished than being entertained, the thinking goes. In that vein, I talked to Brian Hamburger who sits on the advisory board of Action! who says he was excited that it could be like a Harvard Business Review of advisor periodicals. I like the vision and I like Suleman as its executor. I'll just push back on just-the-facts journalism to say that readers process and retain information when it's delivered as a story. A story often dwells on a problem or conflict that "thought leadership" articles shy away from because it make them look like they are trying too hard to entertain -- at the expense of getting the best information delivered. At RIABiz we tend to err toward storytelling. That's because we know that even a whiff of a Soviet crop report makes an article go unread, which we deem unacceptable both as a matter of business and communication.
Into the teeth of a crowded and cloudy publishing market, Franklin Templeton is launching a new RIA magazine with an old familiar face at the helm and nobody asking for your money.
The $1.4-trillion, San Mateo Calif., money manager unveiled Action! at the Future Proof Festival, an event co-created by Advisor Circle and Ritholtz Wealth Management.
Ex-Financial Planning writer and editor Suleman Din is the sole staffer. Former Financial Planning magazine colleagues, Charlie Paikert and Sam Steinberger are producing free-lance articles.
"This is not a business, this is a community building effort that leads with content," Din says.
Action! is a free, subscription-based, weekly digital magazine but will also be delivered twice a year in as a print publication with content previously published online.
Unlike RIABiz and other financial publications*, Action! will not seek to break news or write business-to-business (B2B) articles.
Instead, it intends to hew to its title and write "how-to" articles about subjects typically neglected by financial journalists.
It has the non-advisor personnel at RIA firms in mind including HR, administrative and technology or what Din calls the "the people who actually get [stuff] done."
Community building
With cash burn high, WisdomTree offloads AdvisorEngine onto white knight, Franklin Templeton -- which could score big with forgotten Junxure
In that spirit, the articles will include a downloadable one-page check list summarizing action items. One initial article has the headline: “Yes, There is an Easier Way to Train Advisors on Technology."
In another marked difference, Action! has no revenue model. It will neither sell advertising nor will it charge for subscriptions.
The one heavily "advertised" brand will be AdvisorEngine, which is prominently splashed around the Action! website.
Franklin Templeton bought AdvisorEngine in 2020 and it is based in New York City and Raleigh, N.C. See: With cash burn high, WisdomTree offloads AdvisorEngine onto white knight, Franklin Templeton -- which could score big with forgotten Junxure
"It's sponsored by AdvisorEngine, and that's just where we are with that," says Craig Ramsey, AdvisorEngine’s chief operating officer. "We just want to build a community."
He called the publication Din's "brainchild."
Hot start
Story Timeline
The Nerd's Eye View blog by well-known advisor Michael Kitces may be the new publication's closest competitor in terms of mission. Kitces also digs into the nitty gritty of running RIAs, eschews advertising and builds community.
Still, he agrees that Din may have identified a niche.
"I’d concur that the needs of non-advisor staff within RIAs is broadly an underserved need," Kitces says. "Even as RIA firms just continue to compound and scale, which means more and more employees being added who have these needs.
"There are some solutions starting to crop up – most notably, Shaun Kapusinski’s “HIFON” group (which does have a lot of content and community and is probably closest to what you’re describing), as well as Matt Sonnen’s COO Society, and folks like Ron Carson have long had a track at their conference for the non-advisor support staff. But those channels are still relatively few and far between, so a media site for them seems like a(nother) good opportunity."
Action Orbit: Matt Ackermann, Integrated Partners, Chief Content Officer, Suzanne Siracuse, Suzanne Siracuse Consulting, Brian Hamburger, MarketCounsel, CEO, Doug Fritz, F2 Strategy, co-founder, April Rudin, The Rudin Group, Marie Swift, Impact Communications, CEO Sally Cates, Dynasty Financial, head of public relations, Amit Dogra, tru Independence, president, Stephen Dover, Franklin Templeton, chief market strategist and head of Franklin Templeton Institute Frank Paré, PF Wealth Management Group, president, Meghan Richter, Intention.ly, co-founder, Ritu Gupta, Bessemer Investment Management, chief compliance officer. |
It also overlaps Advisor Perspectives, which seeks outside content, albeit more investment oriented and Advisorpedia, the renamed outside content feed formerly known as Iris.xyz. The latter charges "sponsor" fees to run content.
The "community" is off to a hot start. Familiar RIA names from both the publishing and non-publishing realm are lending their time and names ton advisory board. See the collage, right.
For all of that, Din says he is the one staffer on the Action! payroll for now.
"It's still largely a one-man operation," he says.
Din previously served as technology editor for American Banker and Financial Planning before departing with several other staffers during the pandemic.
He joined AdvisorEngine and has the title of advisor intelligence lead.
A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School, Din reported for the Newark Star-Ledger. His coverage of the Asian tsunami in 2004 made him a finalist for the Livingston Awards.
Ramsey adds that AdvisorEngine is making a big push into the RIA industry after a period of behind-the-scenes rebuilding of its Junxure CRM software for "several years" and its portfolio management software.
He says it has reached a level of upgrade where it has won RIAs from the likes of Black Diamond.
AdvisorEngine began moving Junxure to the cloud in 2014 before adopting Amazon's cloud, AWS in 2016.
*Other financial industry publications include: Financial Planning, Wealthmanagement.com, Financial Advisor, CityWire, AdvisorHub, RIAIntel, Barron's Advisor, Investment Advisor.com, ThinkAdvisor and InvestmentNews,
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