Russell Investment Group Launches First Major Advertising Campaign for Russell Indexes (Russell.com)

Russell Investment Group Launches First Major Advertising Campaign for Russell Indexes
Starbucks Coffee Used to Target Institutional Investors, Fund Managers and Plan Sponsors

TACOMA, Wash. — Russell Investment Group has launched its first major advertising campaign for Russell indexes targeting the institutional investment community. The effort focuses on increasing the use of Russell's family of 21 indexes, including the broad market Russell 3000® Index, the large-cap Russell 1000® Index and the small-cap Russell 2000® Index.

The theme, "Follow the Leader," highlights the fact that Russell offers the fastest growing indexes in the business with more U.S. institutional products benchmarked against them than any other index group. A survey measuring market share of various stock index families shows Russell holding an industry-leading 45.5% share of the institutional market for benchmarks. When U.S. equity indexes are ranked by usage, Russell indexes represent eight of the top 10 and 11 of the top 13 benchmarks. These rankings were determined by a recent Russell study of 2,524 U.S. equity products listed in Thomson/Nelson Information's database.

Russell's direct marketing campaign showcases how the Starbucks Corporation was added to the Russell 1000 in 1993, while it was not included in the S&P 500® Index until 2000. The advertising segment of the campaign consists of strategically placed full-page advertisements in trade publications and on industry websites that target asset managers and plan sponsors.

"The ads and direct mailing seek to encourage the movement of institutional assets to Russell indexes by effectively conveying how, by reconstituting annually, Russell indexes are the timeliest reflection of the US equities market," said David Grieger, managing director of marketing.

This campaign also capitalizes on the recent decision by Standard & Poor's to adopt Russell's approach to calculating indexes — S&P recently announced a shift to float-adjusted market capitalization weights.

"By altering the process, S&P virtually requires those who benchmark against their index or who use it as a model for investment funds or ETFs to change the weights of what they are invested in," Grieger said. "Now is the ideal time to switch to Russell's indexes, which have been float-adjusted since their inception over 20 years ago."

The advertising and marketing effort also coincides with the annual index reconstitution of Russell's 21 U.S. stock indexes, which took effect June 25.

"Our indexes were explicitly designed to be a true measure of fund manager performance and to represent the universe of securities that an investment manager uses," said Kelly Haughton, strategic director of Russell indexes. "The increase in usage proves that our indexes are the leading choice for institutional investors and asset managers."

In addition, Russell recently announced that the NASDAQ Closing Cross, an innovative and highly transparent single-price close, would be used for NASDAQ-listed companies in the calculation of the daily value of all Russell indexes. To commemorate Russell's use of NASDAQ for these calculations, and to mark the annual reconstitution, Russell hosted the NASDAQ Market Open ceremony on June 23.

Additional details on Russell's indexes are available at www.russell.com/us/leader.

About Russell
Russell Investment Group, a global leader in multi-manager investment services, provides investment products and services in more than 35 countries. Russell manages more than $107 billion in assets and advises clients worldwide representing more than $1.8 trillion. Founded in 1936, Russell is a subsidiary of Northwestern Mutual and is headquartered in Tacoma, Wash., with additional offices in New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Auckland and Tokyo.

Contact: Steve Claiborne 253.594.1858

Russell Investment Group is a registered trade name of Frank Russell Company, a Washington, USA corporation, which operates through subsidiaries worldwide. Frank Russell Company is a subsidiary of The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Indexes and benchmarks are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly.

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