In a previous post, I explored the early uses of stock photography. Now let’s look at the factors that led to its widespread popularity today and the creative challenges that have arisen as a result.  In the mid-‘90s, agencies and studios moved en masse to digital design and production on Macs and PCs. Now-quaint magic marker sketches for creative presentations were tossed out the window – the digital design era had arrived, and stock photography was given a wide-open door to grow opportunistically.

Part 1: How we got here – The use of stock photography has profoundly affected the field of creative communications over the past decades. I thought it might be interesting to explore the factors that led to its adoption, the challenges its use presents to designers, and ways in which marketers and communicators can avoid the more obvious stock photo pitfalls and best integrate it their work.

If you follow digital media consumption habits even slightly then you’re aware that the popularity of online video has exploded. Your wealth management firm can’t ignore the potential that it offers to engage site visitors and to help tell your story. So how do you decide about where video might fit into your firm’s marketing?

A friend of mine who knows that 360 does work with financial advisory firms told me he had read a study recently that showed that fewer than half of Americans trust the financial advisory industry, and he wanted to know what I thought about the findings.

In my last post, I explored the ways in which prospective wealth management clients evaluate firms and make decisions using both sides of their brain — the left, or rational, side, and the right, or emotional, side. In this post, I’d like to focus on the right side of the equation.

We make decisions everyday that are relatively inconsequential: medium latte or large cappuccino? Take the tunnel or the bridge? Run out for lunch or eat at the desk?  But other decisions we make carry more weight, and few are as important as deciding who we trust to manage our money and our financial future.

According to the most recent count, there are approximately 80 million young people in America today who were born between 1980 and 2000, making them the largest generation in American history. What’s more, over the next several decades, they are expected to inherit some $30 trillion in assets from their parents and grandparents. These facts are well known.

I’ll admit it, I’ve been obsessed with investing for a long time. My introduction to the stock market came through individual stocks, and I got lucky right off the bat. Twice in the late 1970s, I wrote an annual report for a tech company on Long Island that paid me in shares of their stock rather than cash, and the shares I received for $3 and $4 in successive years were worth $21 when the company was acquired by National Cash Register in 1980.