TD Ameritrade’s quarterly offers have played a large role in their quest to increase deposits among existing clients. Ervin & Smith has been responsible for the concepting and execution of these campaigns, including the TaylorMade campaign above. The goal was to play up the giveaway items while tying them to the TD Ameritrade brand. This successful campaign featured direct-mail, e-mail and online components.

Ervin & Smith was hired to create a brand launch campaign and special events to announce and promote the joining of two powerhouse financial companies, TD Waterhouse and Ameritrade.

We created an integrated campaign to announce the new brand to TD Ameritrade’s 4,000 employees and the financial industry.

Ervin & Smith also planned an executed a media event to announce the new company and the new executive management team to Wall Street at the NASDAQ in New York and to major financial media outlets, including CNBC, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones.

The launch event garnered coverage from many major financial media outlets, including Jim Cramer’s Mad Money, CNBC, RobTV and Bloomberg TV, AP, Dow Jones Financial Wire and Knight-Ridder. Media impressions reached more than 16 million.

After developing capabilities for active traders to trade complex options online, TD Ameritrade wanted to promote this feature to the right audience. Because complex option traders are a niche group, Ervin & Smith developed a concept that only complex option traders would understand. The “butterfly spread” is a complex options strategy. Showing this idea in the form of a Rorschach blot created a clever visual that appealed to the desired audience.

TD Ameritrade hired Ervin & Smith to secure top-tier media coverage on the topic of long-term investing. The result was the TD Ameritrade Spotlight, an online reporter tip sheet that included surveys on timely investing topics and access to TD Ameritrade’s subject experts. More than 200 media placements in top publications such as Forbes and BusinessWeek were secured in the Spotlight’s first four months, greatly increasing TD Ameritrade’s national exposure among key audiences.

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In 2006, Ervin & Smith began work for TD Ameritrade to help deepen the financial relationship between women and money. Out of that initiative came the Save Yourself program in conjunction with financial expert Suze Orman.

Ervin & Smith’s research work for the program included several female-designed chat sessions, which helped to frame messaging and future marketing initiatives. The agency was involved in all areas of marketing and communications, including multiple versions of the saveyourself.com website, e-mail campaigns, print collateral and event marketing. In January 2009, Ervin & Smith worked with TD Ameritrade and Harpo Studios to create the financial sponsorship and programming portion of Oprah’s “Best Life Series.”