(November 3) – “Peter Lynch, one of the world’s most famous stock-pickers, takes pains to avoid flying the Delta Air Lines Shuttle. He says he feels odd seeing his own face staring down at him from a series of billboards hawking Fidelity Investments’ mutual funds,” writes John Hechinger in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“Mr. Lynch won’t have to change his travel plans much longer. Starting Sunday, the former manager of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund will no longer be the company’s top pitchman.

“With its mutual-fund sales in a major slump this year, Fidelity is preparing to launch a new ad campaign, its biggest ever, featuring newspapers, TV, radio and billboards — without Mr. Lynch in a starring role. The new ads feature a harder sell of individual funds, and their performance numbers, reflecting sentiment by Fidelity’s top marketer that the old campaign, with a heavier educational component, was pulling punches.

“Fidelity, which doesn’t disclose its advertising budget, will spend more than $100 million on the campaign over the next 12 months — about 25% more than in recent years, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“‘I didn’t want to be doing Fidelity ads for the next 20 years of my life,’ Mr. Lynch, 56 years old, said Thursday. “I didn’t want to be Ed McMahon,” referring to the former NBC-TV Tonight Show”sidekick, famed for selling Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

“Mr. Lynch wasn’t entirely comfortable in the role as a hard-seller of individual funds and preferred the more educational message, which offered general investing advice rather than pushing a specific fund, according to a Fidelity insider. Mr. Lynch said he had no problem pitching funds and understood the need for a harder-edged approach now. But, he added: ‘Which ads do I like better? The educational ones.’ He will appear in 10% to 20% of Fidelity’s mutual-fund ads, down from 100% today.

“In September 1998, when Mr. Lynch began the campaign, the high-profile ads, partly humorous, partly educational, featured him and such comedians as Lily Tomlin and Don Rickles, urging investors to research their investments better. Over the last year, however, the ads began directly hawking groups of Fidelity funds, featuring hot offerings and performance numbers. In 1999, the shift in emphasis appeared to be working. Last year, Fidelity gained market share, reversing a three-year slide.

“But through Sept. 30 of this year, closely held Fidelity, the No. 1 mutual fund company by asset size, ranked No. 13 in net sales of stock and bond funds, according to Boston fund-tracker Financial Research Corp. Its share of the entire industry’s net sales slipped to 3%, down from 14% last year. As recently as 1995, Fidelity was the leader, taking in almost a quarter of the industry’s net sales.