ne beneficiary of the close presidential race may be Fidelity Investments, which advertised heavily during Election Day news coverage.
''We wanted to get the biggest bang for our buck,'' said Neal Litvack, president of retail marketing, about Fidelity's decision to blanket the airwaves with new ads on Election Day.
When advertising in newspapers, Fidelity often buys space near the stock-market tables. This time, Fidelity requested that its ads appear near a paper's election coverage, Litvack said.
Fidelity had never advertised so heavily around Election Day before. But hoping to make an impact on a huge audience - in a year when it has had an up-and-down performance - the mutual-funds giant made a big Election Day bet that seemed to pay off.
According to Nielsen Media Research of New York, nearly 62 million viewers watched election returns Tuesday night on one of the major networks or cable stations.
Those stations earned a combined 40.2 rating, the highest Election Day rating since 1980 and well above the 25.8 rating in 1996.
While Tuesday night's audience was smaller than the roughly 88.5 million viewers that Nielsen estimated watched this year's Super Bowl on ABC, it likely included a high percentage of the affluent, well-educated consumers that Fidelity targets.
The ads that debuted Sunday are a departure from those in the two separate ad campaigns that Fidelity has been running recently.
One of those campaigns, created by the Boston ad agency Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos, featured Fidelity legend Peter Lynch and the theme ''We help you invest responsibly.''
A second set of ads promoted Powerstreet, the company's online brokerage at Fidelity.com. Recent ads for Powerstreet were created by Gotham, a New York ad agency.
As recently as 18 months ago, consumers who bought mutual funds tended to be a different group of people from consumers who traded online, and Fidelity felt it needed separate ad campaigns.
Now, as mutual fund investors begin to trade online, those groups have merged, and only one ad campaign is needed, Litvack said.
Hill Holliday and Gotham worked together to develop Fidelity's new campaign, Litvak said.
With the theme of ''See yourself succeeding,'' the new ads emphasize performance and service.
Fidelity no longer wants to be seen as just a mutual-fund company or as just a brokerage, Litvack said.
''What we're trying to do is to position Fidelity as a personal-investment company,'' he said, an operation that offers a wide range of products and a high level of service.
Past ads with Lynch had an educational tone. With the focus shifting from education to service and performance, Lynch will be less in evidence in upcoming Fidelity ads, Litvack said.
Ralph Nader seemed to take a Barry-and-Eliot approach to advertising his presidential campaign. Like the brothers at Jordan's Furniture Co., Nader promoted himself partly by parodying the ads of others.
MasterCard took Nader to court in an attempt to stop him from airing a takeoff of its ''priceless'' ad campaign.
Another Nader ad spoofed a spot that Mullen of Wenham had created for Maynard-based Monster.com, a job-search Web site.
In the Monster.com ad, about a dozen kids say such things as ''When I grow up ... I want to be a yes man'' and ''When I grow up ... I want to claw my way to middle management.''
In the Nader variation, a youngster said something like, ''When I grow up, I want to be ignored by politicians.''
Peter Blacklow, Monster.com's senior vice president of marketing, said he learned of Nader's parody about a week ago.
''We're flattered that he has an eye for great advertising,'' Blacklow said of Nader.
At Mullen, chief creative officer Edward Boches said he was also flattered but wondered: ''Ralph Nader is supposed to be a new thinker out to create a new party. Shouldn't a new thinker try to express himself in a fresh and original way?''
A California idea has arrived in Boston. On the West Coast, a company called FreeCar Media has been giving away cars. The hitch? The cars are wrapped with ads. For a company out to promote its brand, the cars are a cheaper way to reach customers than are TV or newspaper ads, said FreeCar cofounder Keith Powers.
One West Coast customer of FreeCar Media: Taco Bell.
Powers hopes to have about 60 cars soon plying the roads of Greater Boston. Those interested in driving a billboard on wheels can check out www.FreeCar.com.
On the cause-marketing front, Genesco Inc., which sells shoes under such names as Johnston & Murphy, has joined Timberland Co. to provide footwear to the needy at Pine Street Inn.
''What better company to collaborate than Timberland, nationally recognized for its community services programs, and what better time than Veterans Day weekend, given that two out of every five homeless persons are veterans,'' said Genesco chief executive Ben T. Harris.
Chris Reidy is a member of the Globe Staff.
