Seeing the Glamorous Side of Finance

“Glamour stock” is, of course, a term of art, and while glamour stocks do occasionally pay off big, a diversified portfolio is a better idea.

Is Wall Street (the industry and/or the place) glamorous? Has it become more or less so over time?

Wall Street is a good example of the relation between glamour and horror. From a distance, it suggests easy money: wealth somehow conjured out of the air. A less simplistic but equally glamorous idea is wealth gained through special insight and the ability to spot patterns no one else sees. These are alluring ideas that attract individual investors and a steady flow of talent into Wall Street jobs. But they also suggest what has always frightened people about finance. It seems like some kind of trick or gambling, disconnected from “real life” or “real business.”

Will visual persuasion become more important in the economy in the coming decades?

Absolutely. We are increasingly a visual culture, where visual persuasion and visual literacy are essential. I recently participated in an online discussion of visual persuasion in politics. One of the other participants, Martin Gurri, noted that people watch 6 billion hours of video on YouTube every month and that Facebook contains 250 billion photos, making it the “largest repository of images in human history.” Whether created by amateurs or professionals—or the many people who fall somewhere in between—digital images are integral to the way we communicate, whether or not we literate sorts acknowledge it.

By training and background, financial advisors are likely to be more adept with words and numbers than with visual imagery. Any tips on building skills that would help them thrive in an increasingly visual economy?

A financial advisor whose skills lie elsewhere shouldn’t aspire to become a graphic designer or visual artist but, rather, to rely on the division of labor and hire professionals when those skills are needed. But you can still train your eye. It’s mostly a matter of paying attention and looking carefully at things you might otherwise glance at. Also, when you find yourself moved by an image (including moving images), think about why. Look again, more closely. Pinterest is a good tool for both finding images and collecting them. It allows you to create private boards, so you don’t have to share what you’re doing with the public if you don’t want to.

For financial professionals, what’s most important is simply understanding that the visual can be a source of real economic value. It isn’t simply fluff. That message goes back to my 2003 book, The Substance of Style. In that book, I talked about the concept of “standing out and fitting in.” We use aesthetics to signal two aspects of identity: distinctiveness and group affiliation. If you’re designing a magazine cover, you first have to know what sort of magazine it is. A bridal magazine will look more different from a hot rod magazine than it will from its direct competitors.

One reason that ads for financial advisors look so much alike, I think, is that it is important first and foremost to be credible. Distinctiveness is secondary. The question is whether you in fact have a distinctive brand identity and, if so, how you might show that within the visual conventions of financial advertising. Traditionally, the way to do this is to show your picture, both because that’s simple and because “it’s me” is in fact the brand identity of most advisors, and clients do care about who’s handling their money. (When Charles Schwab the company was just starting out, they discovered, quite by accident, that ads showing Charles Schwab the man generated a much higher response.) But if you offer something special, such as serving a specific client population, maybe there’s a way to signal that.

Financial advisors need to pay attention to what’s happening with infographics and the visual display of quantitative information, which has become a huge growth area. Demand is outstripping the supply of people who can present quantitative information well, and financial advisors who are used to explaining complicated concepts to clients may have insights that, working with graphic designers, they can share this way.