Remember the days of disintermediation? That was when everyone was raving about how the internet would allow companies to communicate directly with their audiences. Cut out the middle man, go direct, we preached in the pages of this very magazine. Companies were going to be able to save thousands by cutting back on all those communication consultants that ‘facilitate’ the way they shape their messages.
Oh dear. I take it all back. Look what the result of the disintermediation process has been: terrible web sites which fail to satisfy the information needs of their audiences.
Scan through the IR pages of a small selection of corporate web sites and you’ll see what I mean. Do companies really think that a boilerplate bish-bash-bosh site is going to satisfy the information requirements of investors? How on earth is a standard selection of options, artificially tailored to your company, going to make you stand out from the crowd? Would you do it in your annual report? Ah, maybe now I see the problem.
It’s not just the template fans that need a wake-up call. The safety in numbers freaks could also do with a kick up their own cyber space. You can see the thinking as soon as you click onto these sites – the fear of stepping out of line compared to what everyone else is doing. Give me strength. Surely the web was designed to share information, not hold it back?
The latter problem emanates from innate corporate conservatism, something that a few years of internet-based communication was never going to overcome. But there is a wider issue here, the question of where consultancy power should lie and how companies should manage the trade-off between the need for technology and the need for communication.
I suspect that in many cases the need for technology is currently gaining the upper hand and that cannot be a good thing for the investor relations process. Part of the problem may lie in the fact that the traditional IR and financial PR consultants have pulled back from being too forthright on the subject of web-based communication. Why? Because they don’t understand the technology. The result has often been an alliance with or acquisition of an online IR ‘specialist’ which knows the technology inside out and ends up shaping the messages to boot. Rather poorly, at that.
In reality, that lack of technological understanding by traditional consultants should not matter a jot. Communication is communication is communication, regardless of the medium. The same ground rules apply, no matter how the message is being conveyed. The technology should be used to apply these ground rules, not the other way round.
I recently interviewed a former dot-com entrepreneur who admitted that one of great failings of his capitalist venture was allowing technology to rule the roost. ‘We built a super-duper, flash web site, forgetting that Joe Public just couldn’t get anywhere with it. I think the key lesson is to use the technology rather than letting the technology use you.’
It is a valuable lesson that can equally be applied to online IR. Take a step back from your site (and your company) and ask yourselves just what it is you are trying to achieve. In turn, it may lead to a whole new set of questions – then see if your site provides the answers.
