| 12 January 2010

We've seen some, uh, interesting promotions from the online brokers in our day. There was the TD Ameritrade (AMTD) bus tour; that was a good one. TD Ameritrade is actually only a sponsor of the tour, but it still classifies as promotion. And who wouldn't want to get their financial advice from a bus full of fee-only advisers roaming the countryside?

Then there was the E*TRADE (ETFC) Baby look-a-like contest. (OK, maybe that was just in our office.) And of course there's always the good ol' standby: the investing contest.

So it is no surprise to us that we should see yet another crazy promotions from a broker. It was a surprise, however, to see this one coming from Fidelity. That's right, the buttoned-down, private broker from New England has decided to fling preconceptions aside and strike out in a bold new direction. And what better way to do that than through user-submitted videos on YouTube?

To help promote their new "Green Line" advertising campaign Fidelity announced a contest today encouraging wanna-be Ron Howards to "Be The Green Line." The contest, which runs through February 19th, will award a whopping $5,000 to whomever the voters deem as the best Green Line Impressionist. That's right, you have to pretend to be a green line. (Heck, even we could do that!)

Is $5,000 enough to lure any action? We'll see. But it's certainly better than 10 free trades. Perhaps the point is not the money but the creative outlet, or the raw release of talent or the... wait, what was the point again? We haven't seen any videos posted yet -- but hey, it's early. There's plenty of time for inappropriate Fidelity-related content to to make its way into the video responses and forever live on the Interweb. We can't wait. We are prepared to laugh, to cry, to put our retirement accounts in the hands of that "Green Line" company, for sure.

Which has us thinking... we should launch a promotion of our own. Bonus points if you post a good contest idea in the comments.