Investors don’t typically use futures as an investing tool because it’s difficult to grasp. Little do they know, they have all the information that they need to understand the investment asset right under their nose.
Leveraging this insight, we partnered with the CME Group and the Wall Street Journal to develop: A Taste of the Futures. In this 3-part series, we drew parallels between the demands of a chef and the futures audience to help people understand the basic principles, the trading mindset, and the strategic aspects of futures. Each episode, Jamie McDonald -- a seasoned restaurateur and former futures trader -- tackled a different concept, breaking it down in relatable and entertaining ways.
In our first episode Jamie gives a simple overview about how a futures contract works. In the next, he travels to Chicago, the birthplace of the American futures market, and chats with chef Noah Sandoval to learn about how futures directly affect how he runs his restaurant. And in the final piece, New York chef Gabriel Kreuther takes on the challenge to create a dish from the future. Our three episodes were live on a microsite, ran across social media, and throughout various display placements.
With the storytelling muscle behind the Wall Street Journal, TD Ameritrade was able to make futures trading more approachable and show investors that it could be a great way to be the master chef of their own portfolio.
A Taste of the Futures saw huge success, not only in how much our audience engaged with the content, but in actual volume of futures trading and accounts opened at TD Ameritrade.
The campaign garnered an average of 25K page views per episode, exceeding benchmark by over 200%. Our page view time was 3x the benchmark with average of 6 minutes 23 seconds per episode, and there were over 1 million engagements across Facebook and Twitter.
During the campaign’s run between October-December 2020, TD Ameritrade saw an astounding 10.6 million futures contracts, an 87% increase year over year in futures volume. There were also over 8,300 new futures accounts opened, up 74% year over year.
