Featured Case Studies

American Beacon Advisors are a multi-manager family of mutual funds that historically has specialized in serving the institutional market. American Beacon came to JCPR for help in building its retail presence almost exclusively through a public relations program. JCPR was tasked with raising retail investor awareness of American Beacon’s diverse funds, and educating its new target audience about the company’s unique “manager of managers” approach.

JCPR implemented an integrated program to promote the investment knowledge of American Beacon’s executives and sub-advisors, while spotlighting individual funds with notable performance and/or unique approaches to securities selection. Through consistent media exposure in an array of investor-focused publications and channels, JCPR positioned American Beacon as a leader in providing the retail market with direct and low-cost access to institutional-quality manager selection and strategies. 

The coverage JCPR has produced, including targeted profiles of individual funds and managers in top-tier outlets like Barron’s, Financial Advisor, Wall Street Journal, Investment Advisor and Morningstar.com, has enhanced American Beacon’s visibility among retail audiences as a leading provider of mutual funds representing a spectrum of asset classes and strategies. As American Beacon expands its product line, JCPR has coordinated additional communications initiatives, including an annual press event showcasing the firm’s market outlook, to establish it as an expert source of investment knowledge and insight.

Aston Asset Management is an institutional-based investment management firm dealing in mutual funds, which are sub-advised by 15 distinct institutional money managers. Aston’s challenge for JCPR was to substantially increase audience awareness and brand cohesion of their funds through earned media.

With these goals in mind, JCPR designed a focused program to leverage the expertise of Aston’s sub-advisors and establish Aston as a premier investment management firm offering access to institutional-quality services. As a result of our strategic efforts, the public profile of Aston’s sub-advisors has significantly increased, and awareness of Aston’s mutual funds has risen. 

By securing ongoing, high-quality media exposure in top-tier publications, JCPR has positioned Aston as a premier source of investing expertise in the mind of its audience. The tone of the news stories generated by our team, including feature profiles of sub-advisors in targeted publications such as Barron’s, Financial Advisor, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Investment Advisor and Financial Planning, continues to positively reinforce investors’ perceptions of Aston’s mutual funds and separately managed accounts.

Direxion is a provider of leveraged index funds, ETFs and alternative-class fund products for investment advisors and sophisticated investors. Direxion came to JCPR seeking to increase the visibility of its offering and undertake a significant educational effort to ensure that information about its products was accurately disseminated and clearly understood, especially as it introduced new products into the marketplace. 

JCPR designed a strategic communications campaign to educate audiences about leveraged and alternative-class funds, and promote Direxion’s expertise in the investment needs of advisors and investors seeking to execute dynamic, active strategies. JCPR’s efforts positioned Direxion as an innovative leader in providing unique and sophisticated investment tools for today’s markets.

Through strategic media placements in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Financial Times, Financial Planning, Institutional Investor and Investor’s Business Daily, JCPR has helped to significantly raise the profile of Direxion’s executives, and establish the firm as a recognized industry thought leader. Ongoing brand and reputation management supported educational efforts as Direxion successfully launched the first 3x leveraged ETFs, consisting of 22 funds over an 8-month period, as well as alternative strategy mutual funds that attracted $400 million in less than a year. The educational nature of media coverage generated by our team continues to positively influence audience perceptions of Direxion’s funds.

HighTower is the first open-source, advisor-owned financial services company serving high net worth and institutional clients. HighTower came to JCPR to help them establish a distinct brand and communicate its unique value – a truly differentiated business model.

JCPR introduced HighTower to the financial industry, clearing up any misperceptions about the firm being “just another start up” and establishing the company as an innovative leader with a unique model that could best meet the needs of advisors and their clients. Through extensive media outreach that yielded high-profile national print, broadcast and trade publication coverage, JCPR helped develop a HighTower brand that put the firm at the forefront of a national conversation about the breakaway movement, even though the firm had not quite grown into a national player.

HighTower CEO Elliot Weissbluth says, “JCPR was instrumental in helping raise awareness about the HighTower brand in ways that supported our efforts to build our business and attract the industry’s top financial advisors. There’s no question that JCPR’s efforts are directly tied to increased revenue and profits for HighTower.”

Our efforts continue to support HighTower’s growth objectives attracting both financial advisors and new clients to what is now known in the financial services industry as “the HighTower model.”

RBC Advisor Services (RBC AS), a member of the Royal Bank of Canada family, provides custody, brokerage and wealth management solutions for RIAs serving high net worth clients. JCPR’s mandate was to help raise RBC AS’s profile among select advisors at a critical time in its expansion.

JCPR designed a campaign to promote RBC AS’s storied history in supporting advisors and leverage the strong global RBC brand. The campaign delivered high-quality exposure in influential national and industry media outlets, and has differentiated RBC AS’s solution. Through strategic placements and proactive messaging, we successfully generated substantial positive publicity for RBC AS in the critical period following its acquisition of a major RIA servicing business. 

The angle of our ongoing media coverage, from an Investment Advisor cover story to a Wall Street Journal Online column, continues to distinguish RBC AS from larger mass-market platforms and provide it with a unique and compelling industry voice. As a result, RBC AS has experienced enhanced visibility and increased credibility as a premier partner-of-choice for elite advisors serving sophisticated clientele.

RiverNorth Capital Management, LLC, is a boutique investment management firm specializing in unique alpha strategies across multiple asset classes. RiverNorth seeks to identify and opportunistically capitalize on market inefficiencies within complex yet promising markets, including closed-end funds and fixed-income. Its strategies are available through RiverNorth Funds, including the RiverNorth/DoubleLine Strategic Income Fund and RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund.

JCPR was initially tasked with raising RiverNorth’s profile across multiple target audiences, and expanding awareness of its flagship RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund through comprehensive public relations. JCPR was able to utilize the expertise of RiverNorth’s experienced investment professionals and the outperformance of the Core Opportunity Fund to position RiverNorth as a thought leader in closed-end fund investing with a unique offering – the only open-end mutual fund in the country focused on closed-end fund investing.

JCPR consistently promoted RiverNorth’s unique approach and specialized expertise in high-quality media outlets, including an appearance for Jeffrey Gundlach on CNBC’s “Strategy Session,” and articles in Barron’s,The Wall Street Journal and other leading publications. RiverNorth also demonstrated thought leadership in a variety of outlets, including Forbes, InvestmentNews and Crain’s Chicago Business.

JCPR’s campaign significantly enhanced RiverNorth’s visibility among investors, financial advisors and planners, broker-dealers and plan sponsors.