parity product

Although Bridgewater Associates was the first to bring a risk parity product to market, they did not coin the term.

"For a writer in advertising to have something that's not a parity product is a gold mine," Mr. Schuldman said.

Lutz uses the example of parity products: products in which most, if not all, brands in a class or category are of similar quality.

It is an advertising truism that parity products frequently produce very imaginative advertising - since the only product differences are created by the advertising.

McCann, which has always had the reputation for creating image-type advertising rather than the more "hard sell" product-benefit type, is gaining from the longtime marketplace drift toward parity products.

A 2011 survey of institutional investors and consultants suggests that over 50% of America-based benefit pension and endowments and foundations are currently using, or considering, risk parity products for their investment portfolios.

A parity product is a product category or group of categories where the several brands within that category possess functionally equivalent attributes, making one brand a satisfactory substitute for most other brands in that category.

During the period 2005 to 2012 several companies began offering risk parity products including: Barclays Global Investors, Schroders, First Quadrant, Mellon Capital Management, Neuberger Berman and State Street Global Advisors.

In a broadcast and print campaign with a budget of $25 million, Luxottica and its agency, the feisty New York shop Deutsch Inc., seek to accomplish a difficult task: convincing shoppers to insist on the benefits ostensibly brought by a brand to what seem to be parity products.