What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 7: Financial Information
November 19, 2009
The lifeblood of all good investors is financial information. It is difficult, if not impossible, to make a reasoned judgment about a company’s future prospects unless you have analyzed its past performance. For this reason, it is my opinion that effective investor web sites need easily accessible financial information. Not information that is squirreled away in the press release or the latest regulatory filing, but financial information that stands alone and, at the least, summarizes the company’s key operating numbers. There are a number of ways to approach this data and I will highlight a couple that I think are well done.
First, the aerospace company EADS does a good job setting out summary financial information under the heading “Key Figures”. As you can see below, the company has extracted summary information from the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements and some other important data into a single page to provide investors with a quick overview. EADS also does several other interesting things on the page. They provide a link to an interactive chart generator (more about that in another post), they allow you to drill down into quarterly data for each year by clicking on the year at the head of the column, and a link on the side leads you to segment information. All in all, this is a very efficient presentation of key financial information.
The Italian energy company, ENI takes this approach one step further by providing eight different sets of data for the interested investor to browse through and even provides the ability to download all the data in Excel spreadsheet format. My only objection to the information is that ENI makes it difficult to find, tucking it away in a section they label “Main Data”. But once you’re there, it’s all that a data geek investor could ask for, laid out on a single page.
In this series:
Previous post: Eye candy for stock charts
Next post: Provide context
Obama and the Revitalization of Brand USA
November 19, 2009
In the fifth annual Country Brand Index report released by FutureBrand, where countries are ranked similarly to how retail brands are ranked, the United States took the top spot for the first time. The index is determined using survey results from approximately 3,000 business and leisure travelers from nine countries.
According to the results of the study, the United States took the top spot in the following areas:
- The place most people want to visit whether for the first time or again.
- The place most people want to do business with.
- The ideal place for shopping.
- The ideal place to find quality products.
According to the study, the boost in sentiment toward Brand USA can be attributed largely to President Barack Obama thanks to his inclusive brand strategy, global messages and global popularity. According to FutureBrand, it’s the ‘Obama Effect’.
The top 10 countries in the 2009 Country Brand Index are:
- United States
- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
- France
- Italy
- Japan
- Britain
- Germany
- Spain
Another interesting piece of information found in the report tells us that the United Arab Emirates, China, Vietnam, Croatia, South Africa, and India are poised to become major tourist destinations in the next five years.
It’s interesting to look at countries as brands, similar to retail brands. Not only do the brand images of countries affect industries like travel, but they also affect politics and business. In fact, it could be argued that when it comes to branding, politics and business are extremely similar.
What do you think?
Image: Flickr
Notes from a Disappointing Webinar
November 18, 2009
I can’t figure this one out. I attended a webinar featuring a panel of people who ought to have been interesting, talking about a topic that ought to have been interesting. I came away with nothing.
Couldn’t tell you what it was supposed to be about. Can’t imagine what they thought they were communicating. Have to wonder whether I’m just dense, or whether other attendees felt the same way.
Here are some observations prompted by the experience, along with some points of relevance for Careers and the corporate website:
1. The whole webinar concept was really popular for a while, but has somewhat petered out. That may be because most of them were not very good.
Which is a reminder that executing well is the key to success. Doing the “latest thing” has little value if you don’t do it well. (Let’s think Twitter . . . )
2. Speaking of execution, presenters should never read out loud what is on the slides. NEVER. Doesn’t everyone know that by now? (Actually this point isn’t really relevant, but I just had to say it.)
3. People with alluring resumes don’t necessarily make good panelists. In fact they may be too charmed with themselves to bother about the audience.
Which is a reminder to focus on substance first, style second. Ideally the two go together, but the order of priority is important.
4. If there’s a purpose for getting panelists together, you shouldn’t need to spend time on ice-breaker questions. (“How many of you have . . . ?”) Take off fast with crisp, specific questions that draw out the panel’s expertise!
Which is a reminder that the Careers home page should be sharp and engaging, not just a landscape of illustrated links.
5. Even if the audience is sitting at their desks, probably multi-tasking while you’re talking, they’ve bothered to show up, so they deserve the best show you can put on. (By golly!)
Which is a reminder that every visitor to the Careers site should go away feeling they got something worthwhile. Every single one.
6. Although it’s the right strategy to educate rather than sell in a webinar—you still need to provide some kind of value proposition. Don’t expect the audience to search out their own meaning from an hour of random chat.
Which is a reminder to provide a clear message about the employer brand, not just an aura of implication. There’s a lot of territory between “heavy-handed” and “terminally vague,” so find a good spot somewhere in the middle.
That’s a wrap! Thanks for listening.
Recovery: Get Ready for the Wild Ride
November 16, 2009
In many countries, cities, and industries, the “economic recovery”—with its inevitable hiring spree—may still seem like a distant notion. But the fact that some things are hard to imagine is one of the reasons we are sometimes surprised.
So I was fascinated by a group of stories on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition recently. Let’s start:
In Las Vegas. It’s a busy time at the soon-to-open CityCenter complex, where thousands of hospitality workers are being outfitted for their new positions. Their jobs are among 12,000 created so far by CityCenter. The lucky 12,000 were culled from 170,000 applicants—and that kind of hiring offensive must require a small army of people to locate, process, equip and orient the new employees. To say nothing of an industrial-strength website. Like everything developed by MGM, CityCenter Careers is a seduction in itself, so drop by—and don’t skip the intro.
From a recovery perspective, however . . . hold on for the whiplash. Completion of CityCenter means 9,000 construction jobs are ending—and with new building projects still far between in most cities, it won’t be easy to absorb that capacity. On the other hand:
To Poland! Eastern Europe has had a lot of experience already with economic rebuilding, which was not a simple matter after decades of Communist rule. Poland is one of the happy stories there, however. We learn that “Strong internal consumer spending has helped insulate the country from the worst effects of the global financial crisis. Poland remains the only country in Europe with positive growth in the second quarter this year.”
And then there’s huge, complicated . . .
China, where: “The global recession threw some 20 million migrant laborers out of work.” Many of these workers had migrated from the populous and primarily rural interior of China to the coastal cities, where jobs have been more plentiful. But now many of those unable to remain employed on the coast are going back to their inland homes.
Here’s the twist. Some returning migrants are using their experience to open new businesses. And some coastal companies are following incentives into the interior. “All this has helped make labor a sellers market,” according to the report. Xiang Wenbo, who recently established an association of labor recruiters in Wanzhou, says “We’re now suffering shortages of workers here. Even though we’re a big labor-exporting region, economic growth is speeding up and local firms need more new hires. Our fees for introducing employees to companies have gone up steeply.”
So?
The moral is that sudden growth in hiring can come about for a variety of reasons—and they are not necessarily predictable. Or even logical. Above we have three flavors of surprise:
- Did it make sense to go ahead with a megaventure like CityCenter during such gloomy times? No telling yet. But who knows what plans are afoot in the boardrooms of big companies at this moment. And it’s not likely that executives will consult with HR before deciding to launch some improbably (yet labor-intensive) initiative.
- Poland’s prosperity is in many respects the result of decisions made during the 1990s, now bearing fruit. There are plenty of companies around the world where good ideas and patient planning are spring-loaded in the background–so a relatively slight trigger could produce explosive growth.
- When labor demand exceeds supply all of a sudden, the cost of hiring goes up—whether in China, Manchester, or Chicago. Planning ahead can help reduce this effect.
Big takeaway: Be ready.
(Thanks to ishrona for the colorful carousel.)
Nikon, Twitter and Ashton Kutcher Launch New Social Media Marketing Campaign
November 16, 2009
Let’s face it. People love celebrities, and celebrities who have active Twitter accounts — those who truly use them to engage with their fans, can attract huge followings.
Ashton Kutcher is a celebrity from television, film, and of course, he’s married to Demi Moore. He’s also a Twitter celebrity (check out his Twitter page here). He tweets frequently and about all aspects of his life. His followers love him for it, and he made no secret of his attempt to be the first Twitter user with 1 million followers. Today, he has nearly 4 million followers.
That’s an audience that Nikon wants to connect with.
Ashton Kutcher has been appearing in Nikon television commercials for awhile now, so when Nikon had the idea to hold a video creation contest where people were asked to make 140-second commercials with its Nikon D5000 camera. what better way to drum up some hype for the promotion than involving Ashton Kutcher and his 4 million followers on Twitter?
Kutcher tweeted about the contest as did a few other celebrities Nikon added to the celebrity mix backing the promotion. Ultimately, those tweets about the Nikon promotion could be seen by a potential audience of their over 6.5 million combined followers — with just a single tweet by 4 celebrities.
I’ve actually witnessed celebrities working their magic and increasing their Twitter followers rapidly and in huge numbers. I’ve witnessed celebrities drive widespread awareness via Twitter for charities and boost donations. Brands like Nikon are recognizing that while celebrity endorsements on television commercials and in print ads might not be as effective as they were years ago, celebrity brand advocates who engage large numbers of consumers through Twitter just might be a goldmine.
What do you think? Is the Nikon and Ashton Kutcher promotion the start of a new trend of celebrity endorsements of brands via Twitter?
Image: Flickr
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