2020 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

Overall Excellence > Cross-Platform Package of the Year

Awarded to

Janet Levaux, Editor in Chief; Chris Nicholls, Design Lead; Ginger Szala, Digital Managing Editor; Melanie Waddell, Reporter

Entry details

Tipping Point: The industry speaks out for change after Ken Fisher's crude comments.

Issue or publication date: 11/25/19, 12/1/19
Publication name: Investment Advisor
Publishing company: ALM Media LLC
Website home page: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

The financial-services business is 15-20% female. At a recent event, investment manager Ken Fisher used lewd language and was called out for it on social media by several financial advisors. Our publication, Investment Advisor, and its sister website, ThinkAdvisor, led coverage of this news and brought more voices into the conversation about it.

As we worked on this news and our planned online/print package (“Tipping Point”), we decided to conduct an in-depth survey about these developments to get behind the headlines; we wanted to comprehensively assess the situation and its longer-term impact on gender relations/discrimination and what the industry must do to improve its treatment of women -- at conferences, in the office and beyond.

Our team actively and creatively pushed the poll on social media, sharing milestones as the tally of responses rose. This exclusive survey proved to be very popular. In one week, it attracted over 1,350 responses and 300 specific opinions on what changes the industry needs to make; also during this week, a financial firm announced its first code of conference conduct.

We then coordinated the online and print coverage of our pioneering findings, which revealed similar views of both men and women on many issues, and expert analysis. The resulting package included charts, a slideshow and a timeline; it was shared across social media by industry VIPs and at industry events (including one hosted by a rival publication). With this integrated approach, we maximized by the scope and resulting influence of the project.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

The readership of ThinkAdvisor and Investment Advisor includes financial advisors, investment advisors, financial planners, retirement advisors, asset managers, portfolio managers, broker-dealer executives and other financial-services professionals.

Our readers work with investor clients (usually with accounts of $50,000 or more) and provide them with a wide variety of financial services, including portfolio management and retirement planning. They are interested in reading about ways to improve their service offerings and learning about new technology, practice-management/business development and related concepts, too.

These individuals work in their own financial-advisory offices and are affiliated with broker-dealers such as LPL Financial or Charles Schwab; they also are based in branch offices of large broker-dealers such as Edward Jones, Raymond James, etc., as well as in branch offices of banks and other financial institutions.

Links to entry URLs

Please note: These URLs are only required for entries in the Online division categories, entries in the Design division categories that are specific to websites, entries in the Website of the Year category, and entries in the Cross-Platform Package of the Year category.

Entry URL(s), if applicable:
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/11/25/cover-story-tipping-point/
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/11/25/what-advisors-think-about-fishers-comments-more/
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/11/25/a-call-to-do-better/
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/11/25/special-times-special-report/
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/11/25/a-call-to-do-better-what-would-sallie-do/
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/11/25/cover-story-tipping-point-fisher-responds/
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/10/30/a-timeline-of-the-fallout-from-ken-fishers-crude-remarks/
https://twitter.com/ThinkAdvisor?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

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