Corporate storytelling - A cohesive approach to comms

Over the numerous years we have worked in the corporate reporting marketplace, we have seen shifts from historical, obligation-based reporting, to a siloed (section by section) approach, and more recently onto cohesive, forward-looking corporate storytelling.

Companies need to communicate their corporate story in order to build trust and demonstrate their long-term plan for sustainable value creation. In this fierce competition for capital, companies need to tell a compelling story capturing the attention of skimmers wanting the key points brought to them in an easy to digest manner, whilst at the same time engaging with the page by page devourers of minute detail.

There’s no step by step guide to creating a compelling investment story. Consider your stakeholder audience and address them in the most appropriate manner personalised to your business. To help you along the way, we’ve put together a few pointers.

Describe who you are, what you do, your core purpose, how that relates to your strategy and how you ensure that your performance supports your long-term goals. Your purpose should explain your company’s reason for existence beyond financial returns, it should align with your business model and your strategy should support its fulfilment. Highlight your culture and values in terms of what makes you different, and demonstrate them in action across the business, for example, showing how employees are trained in relation to values. Demonstrate the link between culture and performance and how this is supported through remuneration and reward.

Explain what makes you unique, what sets you apart from your peers and how this positions you to take advantage of market drivers. Describe a clear, engaging investor proposition and demonstrate how you create value for all stakeholders, not just in the short term, but into the long term. Show what resources and relationships you use to take advantage of market drivers and highlight value creation beyond financial, showing how you preserve value and mitigate its destruction (referencing risk and reward). It’s also important to show the relationship between your business model and risk.

Provide insight into your long-term strategy, your growth drivers and your key milestones. Show how your strategy has been derived from optimising the resources in your business model to create value. Disclose your strategic priorities using longer term time frames and talk openly about the areas of the business you are investing in. Explain the connections between strategic priorities and principal risks and how this interacts with the company’s risk appetite. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should be clearly defined in terms of what they measure, and why they are selected as measures of strategic success or value creation (a mixture of financial and non-financial KPIs give better context). Explain which KPIs are used in decision-making over remuneration.

Demonstrate the expertise of the board, showcasing how the directors work together, challenging each other to deliver long-term value and describe priorities and objectives for the board and its committees. Highlight the diversity of the board and how you manage the appropriate mix of skills and experience and offer personal insight on performance and the future using Q&A's, case studies and leadership statements. Describe how the sustainability of the business is governed demonstrating how the board takes responsibility and openly discuss the impact and mitigation measures of key risks. Explain the risks and the steps taken to guard against negative behaviours such as bribery and corruption. Show how you engage with stakeholders, specifically addressing issues material to them.

In conclusion, cohesion is what transforms disparate parts into a meaningful whole, ensuring it joins up purposefully to tell a singular story, logically ordered and interlinked with a consistent, compelling tone of voice. At Jp not only do we help you to tell your story, we consider the journey the reader takes, ensuring that the use of visual aids and navigational devices serve to elevate and clarify the message.

What’s our story? It’s telling yours. Come and see for yourself.