In Financial Ads, the Dream Comes Down to Earth

In 2006, at the peak of the real estate boom, Ameriprise Financial unveiled an ad campaign targeted at baby boomers featuring the late Hollywood bad boy Dennis Hopper. “Your generation is definitely not headed for bingo night,” Hopper cackled in one of the spots. “You are going to turn retirement upside down.” It concluded with a fictitious beneficiary of the company’s advice sailing off on a turquoise sea in a huge catamaran.

What a difference a recession makes. Images of retirement promoted by financial companies have changed dramatically since then. Gone are the spots with youthful-looking 60-somethings enjoying their lakefront second homes or sipping chardonnay at their vineyards. Too many real investors have lost their savings in the market and will be working for many years to come. “You aren’t seeing a lot of images of dreams and aspiration and idealistic notions of retirement and self-actualization,” says Mick McCabe, chief strategy officer for Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, a New York ad agency whose clients include Vanguard Investments. “What you see instead is more pragmatic and measured.”