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Media Monitor

A round-up of interesting articles on the capital markets, business, economics, investor relations and related matters that caught our attention this week.

Big Brother

The financial media seemed to be relishing eating one of its own this week as news broke (last Friday actually) that journalists working for Bloomberg’s newswire had access to information about Bloomberg Terminal subscribers that those subscribers may have thought was private and confidential. Here are some of the meatier bits:

Hot Book

I got right up out of my chair, left the office (it was lunchtime), walked to my favourite bookstore and bought a copy of Jaron Lanier’s new book, Who Owns the Future?, after reading just half of this fascinating interview on Salon about how the Internet appears to be devolving formal economies into informal economies, and how that may not be such a good thing.

Going Up

The Financial Times’ Lucy Kellaway (syndicated to The Globe and Mail) provides some entertaining insight into corporate elevator etiquette.

Looking Back

Lucy Kellaway also provided a humorous gallery looking back at some of the worst management fads over the last few decades.

Bonus Story

Speaking of odd ideas, wouldn’t it be great if company bonus structures looked more like a Secret Santa game? Er, maybe not, right? Well, according to Bloomberg’s Drake Bennet, new research shows that such structures, called “prosocial bonuses” (where other people spend your bonus on what they think you might like!), may actually have some merit.

Shaun Smith

Author: Shaun Smith

Manager, Media Relations. At TMX Equicom, our Media Relations group keeps its finger on the pulse of the financial media in Canada and around the world. Our clients benefit from our strong relationships with independent major national and local media outlets, as well as with numerous sector trade publications. Lets us help your company tell its story to the media, to drive greater awareness of its capital markets brand with investors. Contact us now to learn what our Media Relations group can do for you.

 
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Integrated Reporting to help Providers of Financial Capital Better Understand Company Value

The International Integrated Reporting Council Publishes 2013 Consultation Draft and Partners with TSX for Canadian Launch

Last month the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) partnered with the TSX for the Canadian launch of the 2013 Consultation Draft of the IIRC’s International Integrated Reporting Framework.

The IIRC, a global coalition of regulators, investors, companies, standard setters, accounting professionals and NGOs, share the belief that business value lies beyond just the financials and that as such, corporate reporting must evolve to give providers of financial capital a concise yet holistic understanding of a company’s strategy, governance, performance, and prospects, in relation to its external environment.

The Integrated Reporting Framework takes a principles-based approach. It does not provide rules for measurement or specify mandatory KPIs; rather, it gives leaders flexibility to determine which matters are material to an organization’s ability to create value over the short, medium and long-term and report on these matters accordingly.

From April 16 – July 15, interested parties have the opportunity to review and comment on the Consultation Draft of the Framework and by December 2013, the first version of the Framework should be released. Currently adoption of the Integrated Reporting Framework is voluntary, but the IIRC’s vision is that the Framework will eventually become the norm in corporate reporting.

The Six Capitals

At the launch, Lisa French, Head of the IIRC’s External Relations in the Americas, spoke about the six capitals that organizations need for success, including: financial, manufactured, intellectual, social, human and natural capital. French argued that because these six capitals create value for an organization, they are integral inputs into a company’s business model.

By including these capitals into corporate reporting, the IIRC argues that organizations will be able to:

  • Enhance their accountability and stewardship by establishing more meaningful investor engagement;
  • Promote transparency by providing greater insight into a company’s future outlook and value creation, and;
  • Improve the identification, analysis and management of material issues thus, mitigating risk and reducing the cost of capital.

For the providers of financial capital, what does this really mean?

Ultimately, Integrated Reporting should allow for greater access to asymmetrical information which should help individuals better understand and compare the value of organizations. It comes down to giving individuals the opportunity to make better-informed decisions.

For integrated reporting to be truly effective, its proponents argue that organizations must be ready to adopt an “integrated thinking” approach.

Integrated Thinking

According to IIRC, financial and non-financial strategy creation has traditionally occurred in silos. For example, corporate and social mandates for an organization are usually developed in isolation of one another; business teams across the organization seldom work together to develop a cohesive roadmap; rather each business unit usually develops its own strategy with consideration for the greater goals and objectives of the company.

Panelists at the launch argued that integrated reporting will help build internal bridges and promote cross-collaboration, fostering an internal culture open to integrated strategy creation. This integrated thinking will help organizations better identify the risks and opportunities they face and maximize value creation over both the short and long term.

‘An idea whose time has come’

There is no question that financial metrics alone cannot provide investors and other providers of financial capital with sufficient understanding of a company’s value. Despite this, the movement towards full comprehensive reporting has been staggered. According to IIRC, a paradigm shift is required and it must start from the top. Senior leadership must promote a culture where silos are broken down and corporate strategies are created collaboratively across the organization.

Integrated Reporting has the potential to change the way we tell a company’s story. It’s focused on looking forward, which places the emphasis on communicating how a company’s strategy and business model will create value.

Whether Integrated Reporting will be the answer remains to be seen. But clearly, as it was echoed repeatedly at the launch, it’s an idea whose time has come.

For more information, please contact Marina Proskurovksy.

 
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Media Monitor

A round-up of interesting articles on the capital markets, business, economics, investor relations and related matters that caught our attention this week.

MAD IPO

Fans of Mad Men who follow the capital markets got a real treat this week as it was announced that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, the AMC show’s fictional advertising agency, was going public. The New York Times’ Deal B%k blog subsequently offered an entertaining post providing background on ad-agency IPOs from the 1960s and 70s.

Bitcoin Annals

Deal B%k also covered on a different sort of capital market this week. Reporter Nathaniel Popper was on hand Monday at Manhattan’s Union Square to witness the first real-world bitcoin exchange. Meanwhile, Ars Technica reports that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is looking at options for regulating Bitcoin.

Innovative Innovators

What type of innovator are you? Four authors of a new book on business innovation contributed a post to Bloomberg’s The Management Blog this week. In researching their book, the group discovered that there are actually ten different types of innovation, and knowing what they are can help you foster bigger and better breakthroughs.

Window Danes

Unemployed Danish business people took part in an innovative exercise recently to try to find work. As reported by The Wall St Journal, in a gambit weirdly reminiscent of Amsterdamn’s red-light district, potential employers in Copenhagen could view white-collar workers on display in shop windows and view their LinkedIn resumes using a QR code.

Millionaire City

Where does your city place on the millionaire index? The Economist’s Chart of the Day blog on Thursday presented the top 20 cities in the world by resident millionaire (and billionaire) count. Canada landed just one burg on the list: Toronto, placing 15th, with 117,600 millionaires and 5 billionaires.

Shaun Smith

Author: Shaun Smith

Manager, Media Relations. At TMX Equicom, our Media Relations group keeps its finger on the pulse of the financial media in Canada and around the world. Our clients benefit from our strong relationships with independent major national and local media outlets, as well as with numerous sector trade publications. Lets us help your company tell its story to the media, to drive greater awareness of its capital markets brand with investors. Contact us now to learn what our Media Relations group can do for you.

 
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Media Monitor

A round-up of interesting articles on the capital markets, business, economics, investor relations and related matters that caught our attention this week.

Inside Venture

Darcy Keith of The Globe and Mail published a fascinating piece this week about insider buying on the TSX Venture exchange, which is near a record high. Citing INK Research, Keith reports “there are more than seven stocks listed on the exchange with insider buying for every one seeing selling”. Why is this important? Keith continues: “Such a high level of buying interest among officers and directors within their own businesses in the resource sector has correctly foreshadowed a recovery in share prices in the past.

Wig Wars

Barristers and Solicitors in Hong Kong are apparently waging war over the traditional wigs worn in court. The Wall St Journal reports: “Hong Kong’s lawyers are split between solicitors, who work directly with clients, and barristers, who represent those clients in court. The difference has historically been easy to spot: Barristers, like judges, work in an elaborate uniform of robes topped with hand-woven hairpieces.” Now some Solicitors want to start wearing wigs as well, the article goes on to explain, and that is not sitting well with the Barristers.

Leaking Deals

Ever heard of “the Friday night drop”? In an article about a new study that examines how confidential business deals get leaked to The Street. The New York Times explains that, in olden days in London, “deal leaks used to be delivered by envelope on Friday night on Fleet Street to the gossipy Sunday broadsheets where the news could be placed as a trial balloon ahead of the markets’ reopening on Monday.

Problem Solving

Where do entrepreneurs get their ideas? The Wall St Journal this week interviewed a bevy of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business academics to better understand the origins of new business ideas.

“Folksy 24/7”

As reported by The Globe and Mail’s David Berman, Warren Buffett launched an official Twitter feed yesterday (@WarrenBuffet). Buffett has issued two tweets so far and garnered more than 300,000 followers. In his article Three expectations for Buffett’s Twitter feed, Berman offers some entertaining theories on what might follow.

Shaun Smith

Author: Shaun Smith

Manager, Media Relations. At TMX Equicom, our Media Relations group keeps its finger on the pulse of the financial media in Canada and around the world. Our clients benefit from our strong relationships with independent major national and local media outlets, as well as with numerous sector trade publications. Lets us help your company tell its story to the media, to drive greater awareness of its capital markets brand with investors. Contact us now to learn what our Media Relations group can do for you.

 
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The Visual Revolution: Watch and Learn

FastCompany recently wrote “we are living in image-obsessed times”. Facebook has acquired Instagram for $715 million, Pinterest hit 2.5 billion monthly page views and mobile experiences are now expected to provide rich visual experiences.

As a graphic designer, I’ve long known the communication power of a strong image. Science tells us that humans can process visual information far more quickly than words. Images are the fastest way to transfer a lot of information rapidly.

Public companies should use images as an opportunity to improve communication and audience engagement with their investors. Pictures can bring light to products, operations, people, culture and other assets of the company. When sourcing photography, there are a few options:

    1. Amateur (employee) photos.
    2. Stock photography
    3. Original professional photography

Let’s go over the pros and cons for each option.

 

Amateur Photography
Pros:

Original photography unique to your company

The lowest cost option

Can foster positive employee engagement

Cons:

Quality can be poor

Amateurs lack the professional lighting needed for sophisticated shots

Nearly everyone has a cellphone with a camera these days, or a decent digital camera. Using employee photographs is the least expensive option, and you don’t have to worry about usage rights—if the image was taken by an employee on the job, the company owns the copyright.

Smartphone cameras don’t work well in low-light conditions and zooming is done digitally, eating away at the resolution. This can result in photographs coming across as dark, pixelated and unprofessional. While a digital SLR has great features, the technical specs of a camera only make up a fraction of the final shot. Quality still depends largely on the photographer’s knowledge, eye and ability. Amateurs might not think to move that garbage can out of the shot, or stop the car and get out rather than shooting through the windshield.

 

Stock Photography
Pros:

Low cost

Instantly available

Professional quality

Cons:

Not proprietary

Can be hard to find specific shots

Predictable & basic subjects lack creativity

The availability and low cost of Stock photography pricing has made this extremely popular. Need an apple? A golden lab? A delivery truck? A business person? You can search almost anything and find it in stock. However, if you need a golden lab eating an apple with a business person while leaping out of truck, you won’t find it in stock. The more specific your need, the harder it can be to find. Sometimes this can hamper creative concepts.

Unless you spend a lot more on rights managed stock photography, other companies (including your competitors) can use the same images, diluting your brand. Often, by the time you factor in rights usage fees, it would cost the same to organize your own shoot with a professional photographer.

 

Original Professional Photography
Pros:

Original photography unique to your company

Build a unique, proprietary image library to enhance your brand

Can shoot exactly what you need and be as specific as you like

Cons:

Cost is higher than options 1 or 2

Requires time to plan and execute

 

Real, professionally commissioned photography provides a level of credibility. When Airbnb was asked why they invested in professional photography, they replied, “Quality breeds trust. When you’re introduced to a new place, you look for signs that the information comes from a reliable source. Our listings with professional photographs earn more than twice as much money as those without them.” Credibility is crucial with your investors—why not use photography as a way to build trust?

Original, professional photography allows you to set up any image you desire, showcasing company products, facilities and people with proper lighting and staging for the perfectly branded shot. During a single full-day shoot you can build up a library of hundreds of great photos that can be used on marketing collateral, online, in social media and more, giving you a high return on your investment.

 

Stay tuned for the next addition of “The Visual Revolution”, which will feature examples of each type of photography.

Caroline Bruckner

Author: Caroline Bruckner

Art Director

 
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Do you have an App-etite for Annuals?

You should. Investors and analysts are getting information differently – on different devices and the speed it’s transferred.

Printing a 100-page annual report from SEDAR is still an option, but it’s becoming less popular. Issuers who want to maximize the reach of their message would be wise to adapt their practices and use technology to their advantage.

Embrace Technology

Apps and online annual reports are two solutions we are helping clients use strategically. These options allow information to be quickly and easily accessed and rapidly transferred.

Have you seen the COM DEV online annual yet? It is a great example of using an annual report as a strategic tool.

Annual Report iPad App

This week we launched an innovative iPad app for AMG. As a tantalum producer, the key ingredient in iPads, AMG elected to make an App for their Annual Report. This allows investors to get detailed information about AMG in a user-friendly way.

AMG Annual Report iPad App

Take a look at the App and feel free to contact us if you have any questions. We’d be happy to hear from you.

AMG Annual Report iPad App

 

Erica Watts

Author: Erica Watts

Marketing Manager

 
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Media Round-Up

Here’s a look at some of the top stories we’ve generated for our clients in April:

Media Relations, TMX Equicom, Media Round-Up, Investor Relations

 

 

Crystal Quast

Author: Crystal Quast

Sr. Director, Media Relations.

Contact us now to learn what our Media Relations group can do for you.

 
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Media Monitor

A round-up of interesting articles on the capital markets, business, economics, investor relations and related matters that caught our attention this week.

Twitattack

By now, most of us have seen the news reports of the bogus tweet on a hacked Associated Press Twitter feed that sent markets momentarily tumbling earlier this week. Twitattacks are becoming more common, and in the wake of the SEC’s recent decision that US issuers may now use social media to disseminate announcements of material news, the New York Times informs us that companies are treading very carefully into this new disclosure frontier.

Gold Rush

Gold may be in bear territory, but consumers have gotten bullish on the metal. In China, Xinhua reports that, following this week’s steep decline in bullion price, consumer demand for gold was so high that Beijing’s largest dealer sold out of gold bars, and in India, reports Al Jazeera, consumers are “flocking to shops to buy jewellery ahead of Akshaya Tritiya, a Hindu and Jain holy day believed to bring good luck and success”. (via Mining.com)

Prodigy Pickers

Pete Evans at CBC News takes a look at a new report from the Journal of Finance which examined the performance of brokerage accounts created on behalf of kids by their guardians. The study examined data from 671,438 accounts over 15 years and it seems underaged account holders exhibit some suspiciously superior stock-picking skills.

Bits & Bytes

The bitcoin – that yo-yo-like virtual currency  – is not just for nerds any more, or at least not in one neighbourhood in Germany. The Guardian reports that, as usage of this new peer-to-peer electronic cash system migrates off the internet into the real world, the Berlin neighbourhood of Kreuzberg has pushed to the front of the wedge, boasting the highest density of businesses accepting the currency in the world.

Hockeynomics

Four of Canada’s seven NHL teams have secured spots in the playoffs (Go Leafs!), and that could be a good thing for Canada’s economy. The Wall St Journal’s Canada Real Time blog reports that, according to BMO, “if any Canadian team makes it to the Stanley Cup Finals, the spillover economic benefits could boost Canada’s GDP for May by 0.1 percentage point”.

Shaun Smith

Author: Shaun Smith

Manager, Media Relations. At TMX Equicom, our Media Relations group keeps its finger on the pulse of the financial media in Canada and around the world. Our clients benefit from our strong relationships with independent major national and local media outlets, as well as with numerous sector trade publications. Lets us help your company tell its story to the media, to drive greater awareness of its capital markets brand with investors. Contact us now to learn what our Media Relations group can do for you.

 
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What does a great Online Annual Report look like?

Take a look at COM DEV and you’ll see. We’re pretty excited to launch the 2012 COM DEV Online Annual Report. There are a lot of new things we’ve done to help elevate the bar for our team – to stretch our abilities and demonstrate great new things we can offer our clients. This project was the best kind – a true collaboration between the creative team, the account team, and a client with imagination and ambition.

The report can be viewed here, and we’ve collected a few of the things we think makes it stand out from the crowd.

Craig MacPhail, Senior Account Executive

Compared to other clients, I think COM DEV stands out in their consistent approach to their annual report as a strategic document rather than a simple recap of what happened in the past year. In their print annual reports they have always been concerned about ensuring their shareholders understood their business (designing and building components for satellite industry) as well as what was driving growth in the business, and management’s strategy to harness that growth.

The online annual report was a natural evolution of that concern as it afforded COM DEV two distinct benefits.

  1. It significantly increased the audience for their message as they were not constrained by the limits of a press run and physical distribution systems.
  2. It provided them with a more flexible medium to communicate their message as they could apply video and animation to increase understanding.

Management’s reaction to their first online annual report was that it was “tremendous” in terms of the shareholder response they received. This encouraged them to expand the report in the second year so that it fully embraced online technology.

Caroline Bruckner, Art Director

We used responsive design and layout to ensure the information, as well as the look and feel, is uniformly and clearly conveyed across any mobile device, laptop or desktop.

COM DEV Annual Report - Responsive Design

HTML5 video allows us to seamlessly incorporate video content into our designs without the use of Flash or external video hosts such as YouTube or Vimeo that have built-in players and frames that would interfere and take away from the unique custom design.

COM DEV HTML5

 

We created custom illustrations and animations to complement the design and clearly demonstrate the complexity of the company’s products and services.

Neil Anderson, Designer and HTML5 developer

Video

We took the use of video to the next level. Instead of just another YouTube video embedded on a screen, COM DEV’s executives are able to speak to shareholders right out of the pages directly. We feel this adds character and personality to the company, in a way that standard video may not.

Infographics

Our use of interactive infographics allows users to understand the company and its products in a quick and intuitive way.

Simple Navigation

We focused on developing simple and easy navigation, using icons and colours to differentiate sections and make key sections stand out.

Appropriate content

The content is high-level and well written specifically for the online reader – rather than paragraphs and editorial style content, we focused on breaking up the content into bite-size pieces and integrated with interactive elements and images, graphs and charts.

Andy Ratz, Designer

The homepage is simple with icons dividing the reports main four sections. This gives the viewer a clear understanding of the website’s content at a glance.

COM DEV Sections

We used interactive elements to allow the viewer to get closer to the content while taking in more information. Doing this allows us to minimize content in the viewer’s browser pane. This allows the inside pages to appear clean and not overwhelming without sacrificing content.

Using collapsible story sections allowed us to reduce scrolling for the viewer, allowing the viewer to find what they are looking for as quickly and simply as possible.

COM DEV Collapes Sections

 

 

To learn more about Online Annual Reports, please contact Derick Tjin.

Erica Watts

Author: Erica Watts

Marketing Manager

 
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How Successful is your Annual Report?

One thing always comes up with clients when we’re discussing the merits of online annuals versus traditional printed annual reports. Almost without fail, the client will ask about how successful the online report can be.

We use Google to track analytics on all our online annuals. And we are careful to help define success at the outset, because there are some easy traps that you can fall into. We look at lots of different statistics/metrics, but the first number that everyone gravitates to is ‘Unique Visitors’.

Who reads your Annual Report?

The default way of thinking is to compare unique visitors to the mailing quantity. So, for example, last year we mailed out 5,000 annual reports, so anything less than 5,000 unique visitors means less value, right?

Of course not. How many of those who received the hard copy report spent a good amount of time reading it? How many even opened the cover? On top of that, how many people found the PDF on your website and read it there?

You don’t know. You can’t know. That’s not to say that the number was low – it may have had great impact, but unless someone specifically tells you that, you have no data.

Contrast that with an online annual report, and the information you can gain from that.

Case Study

One of our clients is an interesting case study. In this case, when considering whether to do another online annual, we looked at the statistics from last year. Note that we excluded both TMX Equicom and the Company from the data, so as not to inflate the numbers. Here are some data points we drew out:

>2,000 unique visitors throughout the year

78 different countries

10% of visits are from mobile devices (iPad being the most popular)

65% direct traffic – these are people who either went directly to the link without Google or the Company’s homepage. These people were most likely clicking on the link in the press release, or going straight to the online annual report which was promoted with the mailing of the financials and MD&A.

What does this mean? Compared with a print run of 600 books for the previous year, this is a huge improvement. We could have posted a PDF, but the engagement factor we get by using the web to its fullest is a good way to be memorable and different. We  created a printable version of the report for that audience, but to my knowledge it’s never been used.

Most importantly, it’s a benchmark. Now we know what success looks like, and the client can measure future efforts and track the perceived value to their shareholders. We can try different ways to attract attention to the piece and see the results of each individual action.

What do you do with the data?

At TMX Equicom, we can use data from this report and other clients’ online annuals to see what’s more engaging, to better set expectations for clients that are considering going online.

On top of the compelling numbers and a successful year, the Company had received specific praise on the piece, and decided to do it again in 2013. This year, we’ve added some small video segments to increase the engagement factor.

There are many factors to consider when deciding which type of annual report you’re going to produce. If you want to track analytics and determine ROI, then the online annual report is the right choice for your company.

Check out some of our online annual reports:

If you have any additional questions about online annual reports and their analytics, please contact Hugh Carter.

Hugh Carter

Author: Hugh Carter

Director, Strategic Design

 
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