CFP Commercials Spark Controversy Among The Planners They're Supposed To Help Hot
Even a fairly innocent review of the new ads is triggering a backlash that would surprise the upper-middle-class target audience of the commercials themselves. (Read the comments.)
Are these commercials supposed to help CFP practitioners increase their business as the expense of other industry professionals? Definitely.
Will they work? Who knows.
Could the CFP Board have handled the added fee -- no matter how small it might appear in dollar terms -- a little better? Definitely.
Planners feel that the ad campaign and the fees to pay for it were pushed through without their consent. A more transparent process might've gone a long way toward eliminating that perception.
Interestingly, the CFP Board says it's sharing the cost of the $9 million ad campaign by dipping into its reserves.
But if there are 62,000 registrants out there paying an extra $144 a year, that provides $8.92 million a year in added revenue right there. So the cost-sharing aspect of this may be a little overstated.
Either way, if the ads work, the controversy may go away.