It’s getting to that time of year when companies start to think about their next annual report. For most readers, this increasingly means focusing on the look and content of the digital offering.
With that in mind, IR Magazine had a chat with some corporate reporting experts to determine the latest trends playing out in the world of online annuals. We wholeheartedly encourage you to be ‘inspired’ by any of the ideas below and use them in your own projects.
Video
Over the last 12 months, video has really taken off in a big way, according to Lorie Brière, principal at The Works Design Communications. While the reporting world has been talking up the benefits of video for a long time, last year saw it adopted by public companies in their reports ‘en masse,’ she says.
One of the most common types of video remains the executive talking head. But annual reports are also borrowing the use of micro-videos – short videos that sit in the background – from consumer marketing campaigns, says Brière. For an example, check out the start of Intact Financial’s 2014 online report, where the clips come to life as your cursor moves over them (see image, above).
Portals
The first page of Intact’s report highlights another recent reporting trend: portal landing pages, which showcase a range of content areas without users having to scroll anywhere. This approach was popular in the early days of online annual reports, and is now making a comeback, observes Brière. ‘I think it has become popular again because it’s a good idea and it’s what people want,’ she says. ‘They want the information immediately.’
Responsive design
Companies are creating responsively designed reports – documents that automatically change design to fit mobile, tablet and desktop screens – in huge numbers. Scott Martin, chief marketing officer at Curran & Connors, puts this down to three factors. First, data shows that mobile traffic continues to grow strongly – more than half of searches now originate from mobile devices. Second, responsive design is becoming increasingly important for deciding search engine rankings. And third, anecdotal evidence suggests almost everyone has a tablet nowadays.
Social media marketing
Digital documents and websites allow user behavior to be closely tracked. But that has thrown up a rather inconvenient truth: the online version of the annual report doesn’t actually get that much traffic, says Brière. This is pushing companies and their advisers to explore new ways to market the report in order to get all that hard work noticed. One option is to share ‘deep links’ to the report on social media. ‘Deep links’ is just a fancy name for sending people to a specific piece of information in the report, rather than the landing page. Goldcorp is one company making use of this approach.
Martin points out that companies can base entire communications campaigns around repurposing content. If you have certain divisions that are starting to perform well and you want to highlight their performance to investors, social media is a good way to amplify that message repetitively and from different angles, he explains. But companies and their advisers will need to think more about how to boost traffic to online reports, says Brière. ‘That’s the next thing people are going to start thinking about,’ she concludes.
This article appeared in the summer 2015 print issue of IR Magazine
