Schwab ads' message goes for a tone of 'candid and real'

0 Comments | USA TODAY, January, 2006 | by Theresa Howard

NEW YORK -- Even as the stock market is becoming giddy again, Charles Schwab's latest ads treat investing as serious business.

Schwab has given a somber tone to its ads that aim to pry dissatisfied customers away from big investment institutions such as Morgan Stanley and online trading companies such as e-Trade.

It's a departure for the company, which has a long history of taking on the institutional brokerage houses by using humor. In a recent campaign, for instance, Schwab showed a manager at a fictional competitor telling sellers to put "lipstick on that pig" to make an investment look good. It was a knock on the big boys sometimes perceived as promoting investments that benefit them more than their customers -- and the ad was banned from CBS.

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