CFP Board Launches Campaign to Attract Young Talent to Financial Planning

The CFP Board has unveiled a new digital ad campaign, “Quite Possibly the Perfect Job,” aimed at encouraging young people to consider a career as a certified financial professional.

The initiative, which launched on September 16, features playful and imaginative job titles like “professional daydreamer” and “chief self-care officer” to grab the attention of college students and high schoolers.

One of the campaign’s YouTube ads shows an actor receiving a massage while a voiceover states, “Shockingly, there’s no career called ‘chief self-care officer.’ Until there is, check out a way to take care of others and yourself—financial planning, quite possibly the perfect job.”

The ads spotlight various benefits of becoming a CFP professional, including high salaries, career satisfaction and work-life balance—findings backed by surveys and the CFP Board’s 2024 Compensation Study.

“Demand for financial planning is at an all-time high,” CFP Board CEO Kevin Keller said in a statement. “CFP professionals enjoy rewarding work that pays well, yet we face a shortage of competent, ethical financial planners. This initiative highlights CFP Board’s commitment to fostering a diverse, sustainable talent pipeline for the benefit of the public.”

The campaign will run across major digital platforms such as Spotify, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitch and Snapchat through the end of 2024. The CFP Board enlisted Lambert, a Michigan-based communications agency, to help execute the strategy.

The initiative comes as part of the CFP Board’s broader efforts to address workforce issues, following a 2023 restructuring that created a new 501(c)(6) nonprofit professional organization. In addition to the ad campaign, the CFP Board has ramped up efforts to support aspiring financial planners through scholarships and career fairs.

This year, the organization increased scholarship funding by 54%, providing more than $2 million in total, and saw a 30% rise in attendance at its virtual career fair, which drew more than 600 participants. The CFP Board Career Center also more than doubled its job listings to nearly 2,500.