Annual report secrets: helping relations with publics

Craig- My congrats on hosting Laura’s blog on annual reports. I am a veteran of over twenty annual reports and her guidance is great- with one exception. I never outsourced the writing of it to an external, simply because outsiders never could understand the industry and my organisation’s position in it to a satisfactory level. As the annual report is the keystone of your stakeholder communciation, it is SO precious a resource that handing it over to a third party is fraught with danger. In my experience, organisations that did that ended up with “pretty books” that did not link in or reinforce the rest of the corporate communications strategy. As the annual report will be scrutinised by stakeholders for consistency with all the rest of the communication, outsourcing is a dangerous route- in my opnion. I teach second year undergraduates for five weeks worth of corporate reporting, culminating in their drafting of a Chairman and Chief Executive’s statements for the next annual report. This blog and its successor will be required reading!

Catherine, you are the only PR professional I have ever heard say the annual report is so critical to stakeholder communication. It would be great to hear you extrapolate on this, either in the comments section or in an entirely seperate post which I am happy to feature on this humble blog!

I have a feeling you might have some great insights and a unique perspective to share. Thanks for the comments.

These are terrific guidelines to get the AR process off on the right foot.

I’d add one important aspect.

Many international companies need to produce their AR in two or more languages – a PR opportunity that should be leveraged. Reputations are not a monolingual affair!

Typically, the translation phase is tagged on at the end of the project. While weeks (months?) will have been spent getting the source text just right, adapting it to another language with its own culture, targets and objectives, rarely benefits from the same level of commitment. The end result is often sub par.

Bringing your translator(s) – better yet, your foreign language copy writer(s) – in at the start of the word food chain and integrating them into your project team is critical.

The benefits are clear and include:
- Native copy is superior to the best translation.
- A document’s “translatability” is no longer an issue.
- Translation pitfalls are avoided.
- Project phases are reduced, saving precious time (and thus money).

Terrific value-adding, Patricia. This isn’t an aspect many communicators would think of so a useful lateral perspective. I wonder, do you think value can be added through the translation process, as well as making sure value isn’t lost? And if so, how?

Absolutely! Good question, Craig.

I’ll bullet list some, if that’s OK — it’ll reign me in from writing a book on this

Bringing your linguist in at the start of the project ensures:

- Thinking “international” and “intercultural” from the outset, which:
a) Avoids the use of untranslatable terms and expressions
b) Ensures that the source copy will be well-received by non-native speakers of that language who are from another culture
c) Determines what needs to be adapted for foreign copy and what does not (mandatory local requirements differ – do you need to translate everything?)
d) Ensures the graphic design and visuals are appropriate for foreign audiences

- Allows your foreign language pros to have the same degree of understanding about the company’s stakes, goals, strategy,identity and *voice* as the rest of the team, which
a) Lets them see the big picture (“context” is a professional translator’s absolute favorite word)
b) Advise the company on the best way to communicate these key messages to foreign cultures and stakeholders whose communication styles and information requirements can differ significantly (ex: high context v. low context cultures)
c) Adapt the structure of the foreign language version to those foreign norms
d) Help the source language writers communicate clearly (often, a source text is improved thanks to the translator’s requests for clarification — when that happens at the tail-end of the project, then what? Let the source text remain unclear or reprint?)

- Reduces the number of project phases

Professional translators partner with their clients and play an important advisory role. Their deep understanding of both the source language and culture and the target language and culture enables them to add value to corporate communication endeavors and promote (and protect) a company’s image internationally.

Have you guessed? This is a topic I’m rather passionate about

Patricia, thank you for your insightful suggestion and rationale. I will certainly include these ideas in my next post, which is coming soon!

I’d be interested to know if you agree with Catherine that, “the annual report is the keystone of your stakeholder communication”.

Do you think this is only true for publicly listed companies?

Great article Laura, and systematic good advice.

Having worked on ARs as an inhouse communicator and as a freelance writer success is about allowing plenty of time to get the key messages of each AR right, and to allow everyone involved in the process to understand these messages in good time.

In writing and editing as a hired gun, I know that a solid brief will do much to avoid the hazard of losing your organisation’s edge and differentiators.

Likewise it is critical that the AR project is fully owned by someone in the organisation. Too often it falls into a gap somewhere between comms, finances and executive, and ends up being a corporate hot potato rather than the essential document it is.

The benefits of having someone who is not as close to the organisation, who can see things with a perspective closer to that of shareholder, media, layperson, should outweigh the danger of an unsupervised outsourced writer taking the AR in new and unhelpful directions.

ARs are a lot of work but, done well, they are intrinsic to building successful organisations and have a much longer life than most other communications pieces.

@Laura
I’m not sure there can be a clear-cut universal answer to your question! Whether an AR is the keystone of a company’s stakeholder communication depends on …the company: whether it treats an AR as a terrific tool or major headache, who is involved in and represented by the AR (“Message from the President” only or also key messages from the rank and file), what its overall communication strategy and mix are the rest of the year, whether the latter tie into and leverage the AR or not, and so on.

From where I sit (and I read a lot of AR when doing research on prospective clients — or to develop specialized glossaries), an AR can be a pretty accurate reflexion of a company’s culture. Does it mesh with the mission/vision statements? Does the company seem to “walk the talk”?

We may be in an era of instant communications with stakeholders through social media. But what is printed lasts.

[...] By Craig on Mar 31, 2010 in Music In this, the final of a two-part series on how PR pros can leverage an annual report to achieve business objectives, Laura Fayers-Pooley argues that it is up to each of us to determine whether the annual report should be a used as a prime strategic weapon in the first place. Her first post discussed at building the right foundation for an annual report. [...]

[...] Fayers-Pooley, recently contributed to this blog. Laura’s posts addressed building the right foundation for an annual report and how PR pros can leverage an annual report to achieve business [...]