A highlight of the Marketing Wealth Management summit in Toronto last week was seeing Tony Gurnsey, Wilmington Trust’s chief client advocate, discuss the evolution of the industry.

He compared the dynamic between the financial advisor and the wealth management firm to the relationship between a jockey and horse. Twenty-five years ago, he says, clients were more often drawn to a firm (the horse). Today, clients’ loyalty is with the advisor (the jockey). To take the analogy further, if the jockey changes horses, the client won’t stay with the horse, but rather follow the rider.

I hadn’t seen Tony speak before this event, but he came across as a vet to the wealth management business who wasn’t talking from a theoretical point of view but one shaped by many years in the business. The perspective he has about client loyalties is refreshingly real. He pointed out a dynamic that most wealth management firms (and their marketers) are all aware of but resist fully acknowledging.

Some of HNW’s own research digs a little deeper into this dynamic. We polled some 600+ advisors, at B/D and independent firms alike, to get a sense of how their marketing efforts have evolved since the recession began. A telling statistic was that almost half of them (more than 50% at brokerage firms) say they are now putting more emphasis on their “personal brand” than their firm’s brand. Is this intuitive? Of course. Advisors can control their own reputations by their actions and how they conduct their business.

What should the executives and marketers at wealth management firms do about this?

Embrace the dynamic. Top producers are not courted and recruited (i.e., “poached”) by organizations so aggressively because of an assumption that SOME of their clients will follow them, but because almost all of them will, as has been demonstrated time and time again.

Feed the horse. If the clients follow the jockey, that doesn’t mean the jockey can’t be tempted to follow the horse. There are countless ways firms retain and grow top talent (compensation, better products and services, tech infrastructure, etc.). What can the marketing department do to keep the advisors happy? Start by localizing certain marketing communications controls. Marketing should provide great content and convenient distribution tools for advisors, but let the advisors have some control over which clients get what materials.

At this very same conference, for example, a marketing VP at a large brokerage firm complained that the compliance folks put the kibosh on some kind of “Happy Halloween” announcement to his clients. The concern was that certain religious or ethnic groups might find it objectionable. Really? This is a good example of where decentralizing the communications decisions, and putting some control back in the hands of advisors, can go a long way. Marketing can ensure that the content is on brand and appropriate, etc., but let the advisors customize those communications and decide for which of their clients and prospects it would be appropriate. As firms struggle with the social media question, this same paradigm has to be followed for any hope of real adoption and effective use among advisors.

Empower the jockey. Our clients are CMOs and VPs of marketing. Their clients, in a manner of speaking, are the advisors. The advisors are the lifeblood of the wealth management firms. Like it or not, their clients’ loyalties are to the jockey—so listen and respond to what they are asking for. Consider the “Triple Crown” of advisor marketing: strong content, customization and convenience.