First Union's Evergreen Ads Tout History, Performance

Evergreen Funds, First Union Corp.'s $56 billion-asset mutual fund family, unveiled its first television advertising campaign Saturday.

The national campaign, aimed at individual investors and at brokers, is airing on cable networks including CNN and CNBC during daytime business shows.

The two 60-second spots each devote 45 seconds to promoting the fund family's brand name and image and the remaining 15 seconds to plugging its performance record.

The ads focus on themes first seen in Evergreen's current print brand campaign, which began last year. Evergreen, which ranks 22d among U.S. fund families, is trying to create a brand apart from First Union, its Charlotte, N.C.-based parent. First Union already has a broad-based corporate campaign under way.

One Evergreen television spot uses simulated business newscasts to demonstrate the financial information overload that plagues investors. The ad then touts Evergreen's ability to distinguish itself from the herd on the basis of its 65-year history.

The other spot focuses on volatility in the markets and again underscores the benefit of dealing with a company with experience.

The commercials use the tag line, "first family of funds," stressing that Keystone Funds, which Evergreen acquired in 1996, was founded in 1932.

In 1998, Evergreen spent roughly $4 million on advertising. This year the fund company is likely to spend three times that amount, said Ruth Papazian, director of marketing communications at Evergreen.

The campaign will run indefinitely and is designed by Publicis & Hal Riney of San Francisco, an Evergreen spokesman said. Hal Riney is also responsible for First Union's campaign.

But Evergreen is going to have to push hard to catch up with fund companies like Fidelity Investments and OppenheimerFunds and a host of others that are already familiar to television audiences.

"It's going to take a long time before one relatively unknown company becomes known," said Charles B. Wendel, the president of Financial Institutions Consulting, a New York branding consulting firm.

"They're going to have to be consistent in their advertising, and they're going to have to back it up with performance," he said.

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