A national advertising campaign has lifted the reputation of the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA) members and the association, according to new research.

CEO Mark Rantall told the annual conference in Brisbane last week that research found consumers saw the campaign as “strong on appeal, attention-grabbing and providing a relevant message”.

“The advertisements worked well to promote a positive impression of FPA planners as hard-working, creating wealth and instilling confidence in investing,” he said.

The research found the campaign was reaching almost 80% of the TV target audience at least once.

He says the print media campaign reached almost 40% of the total Australian population and the online displays generated a click-through rate of four times above the average for the financial services industry.

It generated more than 20,000 unique visits to the FPA website and over 1500 “find a planner” searches.

“This is an extraordinary result for a campaign that is relatively small scale in financial services terms and has undoubtedly lifted the profile of financial planners and the relevance of the FPA across Australia,” Mr Rantall said.

“Taken across the whole multi-media campaign we’ve achieved an additional $1 million of value out of a total spend of $1.7 million.”

The national campaign ran for six weeks starting in September and had a $2 million budget.