The faint whir of an air conditioner fighting San Diego’s perpetual spring warmth was the only sound as I scrolled through the Finovate recap emails.
Another one. Another company promising to solve a problem that’s been around since the first guy realized he could sell advice. This time, it’s Intention.ly, a growth consultancy and marketing agency for financial services outfits, touting their shiny new Advisor Brand Builder (ABB) platform. Founded in 2021, they’ve already landed on the Finovate stage. Impressive hustle, I’ll give them that.
But here’s the real question, the one nobody in the PR machine wants you to ask: Who’s actually making money here, and is this new gizmo solving anything more than a marketing department’s need for fresh buzzwords?
Intention.ly, according to Joe Steuter, Partner and Chief of Client Strategy, tackles the age-old headache of brand differentiation. Apparently, financial services firms all sound, look, and act like carbon copies. Shocking, I know. He paints a picture of advisors, RIAs, fintechs, and the like drowning in a ‘sea of sameness.’ And, of course, they need to measure ROI. Because that’s what investors want to hear.
Steuter claims traditional branding is a drag – slow, expensive, and often done by folks who don’t quite get finance. The alternative? A quick-and-dirty template that leaves everyone looking and sounding identical. ABB, they say, cuts through this Gordian knot. It’s a faster, smarter path to an ‘authentic, differentiated brand’ built on who they are, who they serve, and why they matter. All the right phrases are there.
The ‘AI-Powered’ Panacea?
So, how are they doing it better? The pitch is a familiar one: deep financial services expertise plus technology, creative strategy, and execution. No generalists here, they insist. Their team has ‘decades’ of experience (the number always gets fuzzier with these startups). ABB, their star attraction at Finovate, promises to condense a years-long branding process into weeks. Weeks!.
It’s an ‘AI-backed experience,’ naturally. Because if you’re not using AI these days, are you even trying? But hold on, they’re quick to add it’s not just an automated template. Oh no. It’s a ‘guided discovery, industry-specific intelligence, AI-assisted brand development, and human expertise.’ It builds a brand foundation – messaging, visual identity, a guide, assets, and website direction. All faster, all more substantive, and apparently, all incredibly differentiated.
‘ABB condenses that process into a guided, AI-backed experience that can build a brand foundation in weeks.’
It sounds… a lot like what every consultant has pitched for the last twenty years, just with more AI sprinkled on top. The devil, as always, will be in the execution and, more importantly, the results. Can this platform actually imbue a generic financial advisor with a truly unique voice, or will it just churn out slightly shinier, slightly faster-produced versions of the same old jingle?
Who’s Paying for This Digital Polish?
Intention.ly’s target audience is broad: growth-minded financial services firms. Think independent RIAs, breakaway teams, broker-dealers, asset managers, banks, insurance giants, and even other fintechs. For individual advisor firms, ABB is supposed to be a fast track to credibility. For larger enterprises, it’s a scalable solution to brand a whole host of advisors without ‘forcing ever.’ The ‘ever’ is cut off in the source material, but I suspect it implies ‘forcing them to be generic.’
But let’s circle back. The core problem Steuter identifies – the ‘sea of sameness’ – is real. The financial services industry thrives on trust, and trust is built on perceived competence and, yes, differentiation. When everyone sounds like they’re selling the same product with the same platitudes, it’s hard for clients to find the ‘right fit’ – or for firms to justify their fees.
My skepticism, honed over two decades watching tech fads ebb and flow, kicks in when the promises get this grand. ‘AI-backed’ can mean anything from a glorified spell-checker to actual, complex neural networks. ‘Industry expertise’ is a baseline expectation, not a differentiator. And ‘speed to market’ often translates to corners cut and authenticity sacrificed.
Intention.ly’s Advisor Brand Builder is trying to strike a difficult balance: speed versus substance, automation versus authenticity. If they can genuinely deliver a platform that helps advisors craft compelling, unique narratives quickly and cost-effectively, they might have something. But if it’s just another layer of digital polish on a fundamentally commoditized service, then it’s just another expensive vanity project for firms desperate to feel modern.
And let’s not forget the ‘who is making money?’ question. Intention.ly is selling a service. Their clients are selling financial advice. If Intention.ly’s platform doesn’t demonstrably lead to more clients and higher fees for their clients, then the whole exercise is an expensive, albeit pretty, distraction. The true test isn’t whether it can build a brand in weeks, but whether that brand actually builds business in the long run.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What does Intention.ly’s Advisor Brand Builder do? Intention.ly’s Advisor Brand Builder is a platform designed to help financial services firms quickly develop professional brand identities and marketing narratives. It uses a combination of guided discovery, industry data, and AI to create messaging, visual identity, and brand assets, aiming to speed up the traditional branding process.
Is Advisor Brand Builder truly AI-powered? According to Intention.ly, the platform incorporates AI for brand development, guided discovery, and industry-specific intelligence. However, the exact nature and depth of the AI implementation would require further technical scrutiny beyond their marketing claims.
Can this platform make a financial advisor stand out? Intention.ly aims to achieve differentiation by helping firms articulate their unique value proposition and create a cohesive brand identity faster than traditional methods. The effectiveness in making an advisor stand out will ultimately depend on the quality of the client’s input, the platform’s output, and how well the advisor use the created brand assets.
