Team talk with Quietroom: what non-reporting agencies should know about reporting
by Tamara O’Brien, TMIL’s roving reporter
Claire was invited to speak about Trust me, I’m listed to Quietroom, a team of writers and strategists, in their ‘Wednesday Wisdom’ slot.
Coals and Newcastle, grandmothers and eggs – all things that come to mind when one seasoned communications agency presents to another. About, um, communication.
But that would be to underestimate the intellectual curiosity, and sheer professional nosiness, that characterise practitioners of the noble art.
It would also underplay the highly specialised nature of our trade. As MD Andy Hayes said in his introduction, Quietroom don’t do annual reports – they refer clients to Falcon Windsor for that. But anyone who communicates for business and organisations needs to know something of the shape-shifting beast that is the annual report.
The why and the how
Claire stressed the importance of annual reports to society at large. “I’m evangelical about the role they play in a democratic, capitalist society. A listed company is for everyone. It’s where pension funds are invested. And the annual report is the source of truth about a business.”
So that takes care of the first part of the book’s subtitle: ‘Why the annual report matters’. The crunch, for most annual report producers, is in the next part: ‘… and how to do it well.’
“The central tension in creating an annual report is the company’s need to tell its story in an engaging, coherent way, while including the huge amount of information required for regulatory compliance – ticking the boxes.
“Regulators use reports as levers to make companies do what they want them to do, so they’re constantly expanding. For example, 20 years ago, my longest standing client’s annual report was 74 pages. This year – and the company’s not that much bigger – it’s 200 pages – and that’s considered quite reasonable for a FTSE company.”
One of the latest regulations means that UK-listed companies must set out their unique purpose beyond making money (which has, as Claire observed, “resulted in a slew of somewhat banal statements… but it’s a start”).
Thus good intentions and the desire for transparency can result in the opposite of good communication. “Are annual reports so long and boring to hide all the bad stuff?” Claire’s 12-year-old son once asked her. “That can be true, unfortunately – but in my experience it’s only a tiny minority of companies. Mostly it’s because they’re just really hard to do,” was the reply.
So how to reconcile these conflicting needs? Claire believes that when writing their reports, companies that don’t do reporting well start by writing to fulfil the regulations, and try to create a story afterwards, and rather baggily, around them. She advises the opposite. Start with the story – the company’s actions, strategy and context (the beginning). Follow on with KPIs, targets and performance (the middle). Then give an analysis of results against targets, and if/how this will affect strategy in future (the end). Use design to make all this information easy to read and find.
This structure achieves the holy grail of marrying up the different parts of the annual report, so that things like executive pay aren’t floating in shadowy isolation but tie directly into business strategy and performance. Which is what they should do, say company secretaries, investors and lawyers.
A couple of Q and As – from a wide range
Claire Harcup, Director of Copy: Who’s telling their story really well?
CB: Tate & Lyle, one of our clients, has a great story – and a true one which is revealed because, as a writer, you don’t have to force connections [between strategy, operations and performance]. When it comes to environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, companies like Diageo are demonstrating integrity by quantifying their key issues and reporting progress against targets. Others just put in a bunch of platitudes about their policies to fulfil ESG ratings agencies’ criteria – as we’ve all just seen with Boohoo. And that didn’t exactly end well, did it?
Mark Scantlebury, Co-Founder: What do you want the book to achieve for Falcon Windsor?
CB: Well, I did it because ICSA asked me to – it wasn’t a deliberate decision to ‘do a book’. But, having been asked, I was thrilled to do it, because I believe that corporate reporting is fundamentally important, and I have fought for accuracy and truth in reporting throughout my career. Anyone working on reporting can only directly influence a tiny percentage of companies during their working life, but this book means we can get the reporting message to a far wider audience, and I hope it will help lots of people to report better. But, for Falcon Windsor as a business, it was a marketing gift, because I’m now the Chartered Governance Institute’s annual report expert!
Judging by the alert faces in our zoom matrix, and plethora of questions (of which the above is just a sample), Quietroom thoroughly enjoyed Claire’s spirited take on what may not, in truth, have been the year’s most eagerly anticipated Wednesday Wisdom. But Falcon Windsor has always relished subverting expectations… and Quietroom proved willing to be subverted!
Read more in Trust me, I’m listed