The first time I heard the term “financial products” was in the early 1980s. I found it odd.

I was writing an article about fixed income derivatives for the newsletter of a major bank. The product manager I interviewed referred to them as “products.”  I pictured boxes stacked on a shelf at Food Emporium, like Swiffer pads and Rice Krispies.

I’d always thought of products as things that were made in factories, transported by truck and sold in stores and auto showrooms.  A product had weight and substance—it took up space. If you used a product up, wore it out or accidentally dropped it in the toilet, you’d buy a new one.

Not so a stock, or a mutual fund, or a fixed income derivative. You can’t hold a mutual fund in your hand, wear it to the office, or serve it as part of a satisfying and nutritious breakfast.  Indeed, when you invest, you are buying something that doesn’t really exist, at least not in a physical sense. Whatever its performance in the past, your earnings will hang solely on what happens in the future.  If your investment evaporates like an icicle in July—well, there are no guarantees.  Buyer’s remorse carries a steeper price.

Purchase a smartphone or a tennis racket, in contrast, and you can feel reasonably certain you’ll get what you’ve paid for. True, calls sometimes get dropped, and strings may come undone with the first hard volley. But if that happens, you’re likely to have some recourse—especially if you paid extra for an extended warranty. Past performance pretty much does predict future results.

Small wonder that I wasn’t the only one who initially stumbled over “financial products.”  Before the early 80s, the coinage was all but unheard-of: Recently, when I searched for the term in the New York Times’ online archive, I found that it has appeared 1,185 times since 1981, but only seven times between 1851 and 1980.

Which leads one to ask: How did investments become products?

In fact, investments are products and always have been.  The dictionary defines product as simply “a thing produced by labor.” Chopin’s preludes, Shakespeare’s plays, and all 145 episodes of How I Met Your Mother are products. So are derivatives and mutual funds.

By the early 1980s, deregulation, heightened competition and the ensuing proliferation of offerings had impelled the financial industry to borrow the techniques and vocabulary of consumer marketing. “New-product groups at the major investment houses have a relatively brief history,” the Times reported in 1982. “Now, like ice cream, shampoo or frozen-pizza companies that depend on new products for survival, many investment banks are setting up groups of people to work full-time overseeing the development and marketing of…new or at least improved financial instruments.”

Financial products, of course, are intrinsically different from shampoo and ice cream, and it’s not just because they’re not stacked on shelves.  But a product is still a product.  At HNW, the marketing content we create for financial clients is always based on a clear understanding of the client’s positioning—who the client is, what it stands for, how it adds value. The positioning may be anchored in a key strength, such as the client’s research capabilities or its global footprint. Or it may grow out of the client’s understanding of its customers’ needs and aspirations.  But ultimately, the positioning traces back to what the company offers its customers—investments, information, insights and advice.

It’s been 30 years since I first heard those things referred to “products.”  Admittedly it took some getting used to. Today, I can’t think of a more appropriate term.