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Let’s consider a hypothetical but plausible scenario. It’s February 2016 and you’re a writer in a marketing meeting to discuss the next batch of articles for your advisor publication, due for distribution in April. You’re kicking around topics and decide it would be great for one article to highlight the benefits of investing in corporate class funds.
Brilliant! Your company recently launched a mini-suite of corporate class funds and minimizing taxes is always a popular subject. Even though you want to position the piece as something advisors can share with their clients, you realize another benefit of the article is that some advisors don’t fully get the concept of a mutual fund corporation, so you can help sway them as well.
Your marketing manager pulls together some insights and data from partners around the organization, and builds the creative brief. You do a bit of extra research to flesh out the piece, craft an outline and then write the article. Your masterpiece makes the rounds until it’s finally signed off. Satisfied, you put this article to bed and wait for it to appear in the April publication.
Here comes the lemon
March 22nd rolls around and the Federal Budget declares that the tax-deferral feature, which is a significant benefit of corporate class funds and a big reason why people invest in them, is going to be eliminated. You panic but then calmly go online to understand the tax measure a bit better, to see if it’s as punitive as it seems. Yup, everyone’s talking about how this move will be a game-changer. Your article must go to print the following week. Back to panic mode.
Start making that pie
After consulting with your team, you proceed with the article, but you’ll remove the tasty bits about tax deferral and expand your focus on the remaining benefits of mutual fund corporations, such as the ability to shift income throughout the corporation so one class doesn’t take on an excessive tax burden.
You get more creative and collaborate with your design team to create a cool visual that illustrates the benefits of income reallocation. You’re still short on copy, so you venture out of your comfort zone and approach the head of your tax and estate team to get a nice quote about how corporate class funds are still useful in tax planning. Hey, this piece isn’t a disaster after all. Maybe it’s lost some punch, but you’ve managed to have a nice recovery from what seemed like a big mess, and you still get the article to print on time.
It’s natural to be flustered or upset when assignments don’t go the way you had expected, but keep at it and find new ways to make your work count. Sometimes your revised piece will end up even stronger than the original. Sweet!
P.S. We now have a hankering for lemon meringue pie.