Archive for the ‘Corporate reporting’ category
Award-winning annual report copywriting for Serco
At the 2012 Strategic Value in Corporate Reporting Awards, my client Serco picked up the Tomorrow’s Company Award for Best Strategic Capability. This is the second time a report I wrote for Serco has won this award, having previously won it in 2008. Serco’s reports have also been shortlisted each year in between. In the [...]
Read more...
Annual report copywriting: good reporting boosts your share price
FutureValue has released its latest analysis of FTSE 350 annual reports. Once again, the research shows that most companies can do much better. And they should, because the benefits can be massive. Over the last four years, FutureValue’s index of the best strategic reporters vastly outperformed the FTSE 350. How the analysis works FutureValue marks [...]
Read more...
Annual report copywriting: you call that a strategy?
I’ve recently spent a lot of time reviewing annual reports, mostly from small and medium-sized companies. For a whole host of reasons this has been a disheartening exercise. One thing that really stands out, though, is companies’ inability to describe their strategy and draw out the links with their key performance indicators, business model, risk and [...]
Read more...
Annual report copywriting: improving your corporate governance reporting
Corporate governance continues to evolve but the way companies report it does not. The directors’ report, the corporate governance statement and the remuneration report all lend themselves to a box-ticking approach. The result is reporting that seems designed to deter the reader, with page after page of densely packed text and hard-to-decipher tables. Companies also [...]
Read more...
Annual report copywriting: top tips for improving your annual report
Many companies see the annual report as just that – a report on last year. From this standpoint, the report becomes a compliance exercise, adding little value to either the company or its investors. The best reporters view the annual report as their once-a-year chance to explain their company to the market. They understand the [...]
Read more...
Corporate reporting: what’s your story?
Too many companies treat the annual report as just that – a report on last year. Think of it as your once-a-year chance to explain your company, though, and you’ll approach the content in a completely different way. To get the most from your annual report, you need a coherent story. For listed companies looking [...]
Read more...
Corporate reporting: want credibility? Then say what you mean
Here’s a problem we see all the time in corporate reporting. A company tells us that its market ‘saw negative growth’. It didn’t shrink. Demand didn’t fall. It didn’t even grow negatively. It saw negative growth, as if it were happening to somebody else, far off in the distance. Euphemisms like this are born of [...]
Read more...
