Products September 22, 2011

Putnam Creates Adviser-Dedicated Web Site

Putnam Investments has launched a Web site dedicated to helping advisers better serve their clients.  
Reported by

Putnam said the new site (www.putnam.com/advisor) was developed in alignment with its strategy of continuing to expand its web-based technologies to help financial advisers and their clients achieve their financial goals.

“We want to provide advisers with an intuitive, yet highly sophisticated set of customized resources that dynamically integrates and presents data, analysis, and thought leadership,” said Bill Connolly, Head of Global Distribution, Putnam Investments.

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

The Putnam adviser site builds upon the company’s analytical tool, FundVisualizer, which provides portfolio modeling and side-by-side comparisons of multiple products. On the new site, FundVisualizer can now model entire investment portfolios from a universe of over 11,000 mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as well as provide head-to-head product comparisons.

With the updated version of Putnam FundVisualizer, advisers can choose and package an unlimited number of potential fund holdings, assign specific weightings, and adjust time periods as desired, in order to gain insight into the performance behavior and risk-return trade-offs of customized portfolios and their underlying components. Additionally, advisers can compare separately created portfolios of their own design. The portfolios can utilize Putnam or non-Putnam product solutions.        

Along with portfolio modeling capabilities, the new Putnam site will allow the adviser community to join conversations on Putnam’s social media sites, including those on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/putnamtoday) and Facebook, (http://www.facebook.com/PutnamInvestments).  A feedback component will also be available to advisers visiting the site will be able to rate content, such as portfolio manager commentary. Also, the Web site will provide advisers with a sense of what their peers are viewing most on the site, including what investment issues and client-related topics are of most interest – displayed through a visual “tag cloud.”   

The Putnam site will also provide advisers with practice management and thought leadership resources to help in their day-to-day and long-term planning work with clients.

Diversions September 22, 2011

Scientific Shocker – Men Drool over Women and Cars

It may seem obvious – but the fact that a car and a woman have the same psychological reaction in men means a lot for marketers.  
Reported by

The advertising world has been banking on this scientific discovery for decades – sex sells.

A professor of marketing at the Kellogg School at Northwestern, David Gal, has published a paper in The Journal of Consumer Research, called “A Mouthwatering Prospect: Salivation to Material Reward.” Gal set out to determine whether a desire for material goods would be on the same physiological plane with physical needs.  Turns out they are indeed on the same plane and cause the same reaction – drool.    

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

As part of his research, Gal used two groups of undergraduate males.  He told one group to imagine what they would do to “win a date” with a dream girl.  The other group was told to think about getting a haircut.  With these images fresh in their heads, both groups were shown pictures of sports cars.  The group that had been thinking about women salivated more.  (How was the saliva gathered, you may be asking?  The men had rolls of cotton swabs in their mouths, which Gal weighed after the experiment to determine how much saliva they absorbed.)   

Gal concluded that, “All objects of desire, whether biological or non- biological, activate the same general reward system in the brain. Salivation might merely be the consequence of the activation of this general reward system.”   

«