The Fidelity Frog?
On the heels of my last post about Super Bowl advertising (thanks for all the comments!), I have noticed a new development at Fidelity. Account holders may have noticed an unusual graphical addition to Fidelity.com in the past few days: A small frog icon.
The Fidelity Frog appears in two places: the navigation bar, right behind the "Contact Us" button, and on the Contact Us page itself, pointing at the link which says "Email a Rep." (visit the Fidelity Observer mirror to see what it looks like)
Is this the new Fidelity mascot? Why have a frog? Does it make the site more fun to use for customers who happen to be under the age of 10? Does it suggest better service, investment advice, or retirement planning? Has Fidelity outsourced customer service to frogs in a foreign country? Is the frog going to replace Paul McCartney as Fidelity's new pitchman?
And why a frog, and not, say, a dancing dollar bill? Is it because "Fidelity" and "Frog" start with the same letter? They are both green?
Help me understand this one!
Read this post on the Blogger mirror -- Reader comments sometimes appear there that won't show up on this page. You can leave comments on either page, I'll read 'em all!
The Boston Globe is reporting that Fidelity and Amazon are partnering to sell Fidelity mutual funds through Amazon.com. The details are here. There is also an active Fidelity minisite on Amazon, complete with a Fidelity blog that looks like recycled advice from Fidelity magazine. Read
Kris Frieswick of The Boston Globe Magazine published an analysis of Fidelity Investments on February 19. There are a couple of angles Frieswick explores -- ranging from Fidelity's migration of offices and employees to other parts of the country (its headquarters is in Boston) to ... Read
You may have spotted it in the 4th quarter, or maybe not -- it was only 30 seconds long, and no humorous hook, like 75% of the ads during The Game. Read
Earlier this month Fidelity Observer talked about various types of mutual funds that invest in foreign stocks. Read
The Fidelity Frog was an old advertising symbol for Fidelity money market funds. There have been frog statues at the Fidelity headquarters for years (at least...I used to know someone that worked there). I have no clue why they've popped back up on the Fidelity homepage; maybe they're worried about it drifting into the public domain or something.
Ah -- thanks for the clarification, dclounger. In the 20 years I've been a Fidelity account holder, this is the first time I've seen or heard of it. That's the problem with these things that only insiders or a certain group of customers know about -- when they roll it out to everyone else, it can cause confusion.
A suggestion for the Fidelity employees reading this (and I know you do!) hyperlink the frog to a little "history of the Fidelity Frog" page, or even better, an explanation of what it's doing on the website (e.g., guiding people to customer service)
from the July 2002 BizWeek article on Abby Johnson:
"For the company's annual Christmas "follies" a couple of years ago, the elder Johnson put 25 live frogs on his desk and videotaped a spoof ad for a fictitious Internet company called Frog.com. The name was a reference to a famous Fidelity symbol. Little frog statues grace the lobby of Fidelity's executive suite because the animal was once used as the advertising symbol for Fidelity money market funds with the acronym "Fidit.""
T
Speaking of linking to history/about pages! I had a heckuva time trying to find out why this Blog chose Fidelity as its topic! I eventually found it via the date archive to find the first post.
I couldn't find it under "Fidelity Investments", the intutive choice, because it was categorized under investments. There were no easy links to an "About Fidelity Observer" or "Why Fidelity?". I'm not sure if its because you're part of pfblog.com but this would really make new readers feel better!
