Asset managers that focus on retail consumers have boosted their advertising spending this year. The likes of Fidelity Investments (Fidelity news), Franklin Resources and Janus Capital Group are bent on luring back investors who seem to have soured on Wall Street and perhaps specific funds.

But the focus this time around is not star fund managers or specific funds. The message now is stability, competence and a longer term investing horizon, according to Reuters.

Fidelity Investments' "Turn Here" print and television ads, for example, invoke "the green line of a global positioning system and urge consumers to 'stay on the line' to reach goals like a comfortable retirement." Similarly, T. Rowe Price Group's ads show "pen-and-ink drawings ranging from oil drilling rigs in the North Sea to strands of pasta to represent Italian food markets." "At T. Rowe Price we understand the connections of a complex global economy," says the narrator.

Financial firms in general have a unique opportunity to burnish their brand with the public right now. The reality is that many investors feel somewhat burned. They just might respond to a firm they see as upstanding. Another possible wildcard in all of this is security. A secure environment in which to grow a long term, low fee portfolio may do the trick.

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