A year-old marketing campaign and a strong run in the ETF space are pushing Vanguard close to the top spot in the mutual fund rankings. The Wall Street Journal's Eleanor Laise reports that Vanguard crew is on pace in 2009 to surpass the $84 billion (including money-market funds) they pulled in 2008.

Through July, the fund firm claims $62.2 billion in net flows this year. About two-thirds of those flows come from index-based products. ETFs account for about 30 percent of the flows.

The push has been helped by a marketing campaign the fund firm launched last year, according to the paper. The tagline for the campaign is: "You can't control market performance, but you can control how much you pay for your investments."

Vanguard is also wooing advisors more than in the past.

"Right now, it's a bull market in advice," spokeswoman Rebecca Cohen told the paper. "People want advice, they're seeking out advisers."

To take advantage, Vanguard is holding podcasts, town-hall meetings, and symposiums for financial advisers as well as other ways to reach advisors, including Facebook and a blog. Attendance at the symposiums has more than doubled so far this year and Web cast viewership is up 65 percent, the paper reports. 

Edited by: Sean Hanna, Editor in Chief


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