In our June issue, we wrote a story detailing Ed Jones' new increased production expectations (“Jones Raising Production Expectations,” June 2010). It was, in general, a positive story noting Ed Jones' support in trying to lift the business fortunes of lagging advisors. Alas, we played out the trite theme of Ed Jones' long history, its no-nonsense approach to investing and, well, the firm's “squareness,” is how we put it. Of course, Ed Jones does play to this theme, about how the firm and its employees don't chase the hot dot.
And that's a fine theme. But we here at Registered Rep. erred in our illustration of the story. (See photo at right.) We put a photo of a geeky businessman, wearing an ill-fitting suit, carrying — unaccountably — a red piece of luggage. The guy looks like a rube or some sort of hayseed trying to affect sophistication. We wanted to illustrate the no-nonsense investing philosophy of Ed Jones and its FAs. The image failed. We regret that we chose it; our intent was not to poke fun at Ed Jones FAs. I received a few complaints via email, as did the author of the story. In fact, CEO Jim Weddle (who received nearly 20 complaints from angry FAs) called me and complained — in a polite way — and I agree with him: The photo was a bad choice to illustrate the story. Our apologies to Ed Jones employees.
Improvements to RegisteredRep.com: Going Mobile
Over the last few weeks, we have been tweaking RegisteredRep.com to make it more user-friendly. And, as a result, our traffic has been improving: Over 90,000 financial advisors are visiting the site each month generating over 400,000 page views a month. Our RegisteredRep.com “network” includes our Advisor Forums (where FAs gather to discuss products and investing strategies and to share gossip about firms), editorial blogs and news and analysis. We also feature The Independent Sourcebook for FAs who are researching independent broker/dealers. We offer, in a partnership with SalesGenie, the RegisteredRep.com Business Builder, the one-stop tool kit for growing your business pipeline and achieving your career development goals.
We've been working on developing a mobile interface to access our website via smart phones. To access from your smart phone, go to m.registeredrep.com. We'd love to get your feedback; on the mobile site there is a survey for your input on the new service, which is still in beta. In addition, we're working on a partnership with PR Newswire to offer news feeds on relevant companies and asset managers and to offer other financial data.
We thank you for your support. Drop us a line with your comments: 249 W. 17th St., New York, N.Y. 10011-5300. Or email us: [email protected]. Publisher Rich Santos can be reached at [email protected].
