Transcript for Cutting Through podcast Season 2 Episode 7

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Jonathan Holt   This is Cutting Through the podcast for Corporate Digital Communicators. Today on the podcast, since the dawn of the internet, the investor section has been the crusty uncle of corporate digital communications; buttoned up, more than a little bit formal, fond of a spreadsheet and jargonistic terms like EBITDA and Market Capitalsation.  

A funny thing has happened though. As retail investors and analysts have gotten younger, some companies' IR communicators have started to loosen up and explore fresher, more casual ways of engaging with these audiences. AI is also starting to shake up how IR communications is done, so much so that suddenly this most staid and cautious corner of communication is, dare I say it, sometimes even seeming to have a little fun. 

Joining me to unpack how IR is changing and how communications teams can navigate the opportunities and risks of a more modern style of IR communications, our podcast regulars, Scott Payton and Georgia Barrett from Bowen Craggs. 

Scott and Georgia, what changes are you seeing that make you think IR communications might be loosening up? 

Scott Payton   Hi Jonathan, hi Georgia. Over the last eight to 12 months we have seen a lot more interest among Investor Relations departments in investing in richer narrative communications. There's a lot more interest among IR people in going the extra mile in the investors section of the corporate website rather than just viewing the IR section as a box ticking compliance exercise, which for many companies it frankly was. Not all companies, but many companies, the IR section was really ticking compliance boxes rather than doing much more much else.  

So Bowen Craggs is partnering with IDX, which is a digital agency. We're running a series of in-person events about the intersection of investor relations and corporate communications in the AI search age. We're having them in London, New York and Stockholm. And the reason I say that is because the London event, which is happening in a couple of weeks, it's fully booked and it has a waiting list. So there's clearly a lot of interest in this topic from Investor Relations people, as well as corporate communications people.  

Also, the IR Society in the UK has been focusing a lot more on narrative investor communications online in recent months and we've been working with them on some of that. And Georgia and I have been invited to speak about this summer at the Conference Board's Quarterly Investor Relations Council meeting in New York about the rising importance of investor storytelling. So across the board there's definitely a rising tide of interest in narrative online investor communications, richer investor communications and experimenting with new formats. 

Georgia Barrett   I would just add to that, that we're really seeing that the rise of AI search is just across the board. It's making your corporate website and your corporate digital channels even more important as a reputational cornerstone. And investor relations content plays a really important role in all of this because quarterly results, annual reports, financial information, all of these are structured and authoritative pieces of content. And that type of content is just gold dust for LLMs. So investor relations is more strategically important than ever. 

IR is moving closer to the corporate digital communications experience and we're seeing a bigger emphasis on making the Investor Relations section of your website just more in line with the rest of the website. So it's less about disclosure and box ticking and more about discoverability and just making sure that humans and machines can really understand everything that's going on with your Investor Relations communications. 

Jonathan   IR and the digital communications team seem to be coming closer together as a result of these new sort of movements. In the past,  and even right now, it's not at all uncommon for investor sections to sit outside the main website for historical reasons and because there has been that distance. 

Do you think we have reached a point where that distance is no longer going to be possible and the IR teams and the corporate digital teams will by necessity need to be on the same page? 

Georgia   Yeah, I think the closer collaboration between the two departments is very, very key. And that's because consistency is so important in the age of AI search. So if you're saying one thing in your “About” section, one thing in your strategy section, one thing in your investor relations landing page, then AI is going to pick up on that and it's going to decrease the trust that it places in your content. 

And then even before kind of AI search existed, Bowen Craggs has been collecting visitor research data from surveys that we run on corporate websites. And for the past 20 years, we've seen that investors, they don't just stay in the investor section, they go to the “About” section, they go to your news section. So this idea of like not staying in your lane is happening more than ever. 

Scott   Yeah, I totally agree. And I think the, I mean, the big difference between AI search optimisation and traditional SEO is you're not just trying to get the link to your IR section ranked highly. You want your IR content and your wider corporate communications content to be infused into AI search answers. So as Georgia says, if the IR team is working in a silo in isolation from the corporate online communications team, then that's going to increase the risk of that kind of inconsistency which is, as Georgia has said, the kind of inconsistency is the is the enemy of effective communications in AI search. 

Jonathan   Well, there are essentially two strands here that seem to be driving the change. One is AI, that is top of mind for a lot of people, so it seems appropriate that we should be digging into that now. The other, of course, is the demographic change and the change in habits now that  a generation or multiple generations really that have known nothing but life with the internet at their fingertips, on their phones, social media and all the rest is coming of age and beginning to invest, beginning to even be working as professional analysts and institutional investors and running the whole gamut.  What do younger and non-traditional investors want and expect that old-school IR isn't able to give them? 

Georgia   Yeah, it's a great question because there's two things happening. Firstly, there are more retail investors than there was before. And secondly, there are more younger investors. So there's some research from the World Economic Forum that shows that 30% of Gen Z are investing. And that's compared to 15% of millennials and 9% of Gen X and 6% of baby boomers. So you can see as each generation goes on, more of them are investing when they are in their early adulthood. So younger generations, they're also using AI and social media and just kind of technology in general to get financial advice. So that is, you know, its own kind of situation.

So what does all of this mean? Well, it's really impacting the way, you know, what younger investors and what investors, every investor expects from the quality of the information that they're getting. So they really want the same digital experience that they would get everywhere else online. And increasingly, that's a ChatGPT-esque experience. 

Scott   I mean, think looking at what if I was, you we were having a conversation directly with an IR director, you know, what does what do the kind of next generation of investors want? I mean, I think more interaction, more regular updates, more video content, more openness, more social media updates and more unscripted informality and honesty. 

So this is quite a, this is quite a big shift from the... there's the kind of the old stereotype of, of the private investor, the kind of retired private investor who likes maybe sitting in Miami. This is a horrible sweeping generalisation, but there was an old stereotype that retail investors are - tend to be - older, they like tea and biscuits at the annual general meeting and that kind of... Those days are over. They like looking to more visual content, more interactive content, more informality and more honesty, as I say. 

Jonathan   Well, is there also a style difference, simply a difference in the style of information that younger audiences, younger investors gravitate towards and expect compared to what older audiences have been prepared to tolerate? 

Scott   I think that going back to this point about unscripted informality, I think there is generally a kind of as Georgia has said, I think younger investors are looking for a kind of experience that mirrors the kind of formats and the tone of other areas of life. And traditionally investor communications has been very, very formal, very staid for regulatory reasons, by definition, pretty scripted but I think kind of lightening up and being more informal, being more unscripted is going to be a key differentiator.

And that kind of that reflects the general... kind of a general trend in communications generally. Ironically in order to cut through in AI search, Google has said on its search blog recently that being authentic, being opinionated, providing content that is not available elsewhere, providing a real human perspective is actually kind of be going to be a way of cutting through in AI search. So the less AI you are, the more you're going to win the AI search battle. That also means resonating I think more strongly  with younger human people. 

Georgia   Yeah, I think it's about this idea of giving people a reason to click. So, you know, if you can get the hard facts and figures from an AI search answer, then you might go to the corporate website to get the sort of the extra details. So we're seeing more engaging formats like CFO videos explaining the results, podcasts, infographics. 

Just more of this richer, interesting, unique content. Then it also, if you provide that on your website, it has this kind of circular beneficial effect of the more evidence you provide and the more detail, then the more likely it is that your investor content is going to be surfaced by LLMs and other AI search systems.

So if you demonstrate the value of your board in action or like what it the board is doing, or if you explain your annual report as an HTML page and not just as a PDF report, and just generally increase the surface area of your investor relations content, then that's going to be more appreciated by your human visitors who just want to see like the highlights, but it's also going to be feeding AI Search with that valuable information about your company. 

Jonathan   So risk focused, everything they do is heavily regulated, corporate reports and quarterly results announcements on all such things go through extremely rigorous edits before being released into the world. So to embrace generative AI means stepping away from that rigor and that probably feels like a leap of faith. And let's face it, AI, generative AI does still hallucinate to some extent. It does still kind of get the facts wrong. 

I talked to a corporate digital team just yesterday that had made the decision for right now to not have generative AI tools on their website and to explore sort of similar possibilities to do some of the things that generative AI does without actually taking that leap. And the main reason being because investors, especially the IR team, and other corporate stakeholders were scared, you know, were not happy with that level of risk.  

So, my question for you is, you know, how can communicators open up and embrace AI and AI friendly practices without risking the share price? 

Scott   I think Georgia's point about increasing your surface area of investor relations content is the nub of the answer really. It's really, really important in this day and age to provide as much provide your performance information, qualitative and quantitative, in as much clarity and detail as you possibly can on the website. Because that's the best way, the best weapon you have for teaching AI search tools as much about the truth as possible.  

So if you kind of... if you flood the zone with clarity and detail and facts and figures and every corner of the truth about your company's performance and its strategy, that is the key to maximising the chances that ChatGPT's answers about your company and Google's and Perplexity's, they're going to be as accurate as possible. 

So the best way of teaching, of avoiding AI search to get answers wrong about your company is to teach, teach, teach. And the website and the in this case the investor section of the website is the best teaching aid possible. End of metaphor. 

Georgia   Yeah, I mean, one example of the changing state of affairs is earnings calls. They used to just be this single event, it was you know, you listen to the earnings call. Whereas now you have a transcript, you have highlights, you can pull out short form content from it, you can get summaries, AI-generated insights. So in terms of increasing the surface area, every sort of event that you do can be divided into fragments. And if they're all consistent with each other, then it increases the chances that they'll be picked up by humans and by AI. So, that's all quite interesting.  

Oh, And then the final thing is this idea that we should be moving away from financial jargon and using plain English, plain simple language is a competitive advantage in the AI search era. And yes, there's this risk of oversimplification and losing some of the nuance. But in general being as clear and consistent as possible is one of the sort of the key ways to mitigate risk when it comes to AI search visibility. 

Scott   Just to go back to this point about is now the time for should this be the you know the end of siloed separate IR websites? Is it time for investor communications and corporate communications to truly come together?

I think another strong reason why the answer is yes, it is time, is because when we've conducted… We've done a lot loads of consultancy work on  AI search visibility and providing recommendations to companies on how to improve their AI search visibility. And we've found repeatedly that IR called traditional investor relations content, whether that's the annual report or the sustainability report or an investor day subsection or page, if people ask this IR content isn't only important for from an investor communications perspective, it's also really, really important from a wider reputation management perspective because it's the, if you ask ChatGPT, is Company X a good place to work? Is this company innovative? Is this company successful? Does this company have a strong strategy? Then it's gonna be… And that could be a job seeker asking the question, that could be a customer, that could be a potential partner, as well as an investment professional, it does tend to be IR content that is likely to feed the AI search answer.  

So investor relations material in the AI search age has a wider importance and potential impact that transcends investor communications. 

Jonathan   Well that's a heady role then for the IR team to embrace and maybe something that the digital team can use to sort of butter them up in recognising just what a key role they have in the new reality. I asked ChatGPT about all of this and one of the things it told me was this: 

“The IR team of 2030 will likely spend as much time thinking about AI retrieval, search behaviour, digital discoverability, and content architecture as it does about annual reports and earnings presentations.”  

So, you know, I guess ChatGPT would say that because you know it's an AI, but it seems that seems a fair prediction  for the near future, and that maybe one of the key roles that the digital team needs to be thinking about is how to further that mentality, particularly if they happen to operate in an organization with an IR team that's been accustomed to you know sitting behind their ivory tower, which I guess is most of them. 

But I was struck by this this thought that plain language is a key step. That's not something that comes naturally to IR teams, who are more accustomed to things being written by committee and getting the letter of the legal language correct. But it is something that's possible and it's something that corporate digital teams are inherently expert in. So small steps, I guess. 

Let's take a short break and when we come back we'll look at some fresh takes on investor communications that are appearing on corporate sites and social media channels. 

[Interlude] If you’re new to Bowen Craggs you might be wondering… Bowen, who? We help corporate digital communicators and large companies measure and improve their website and social media communications, saving time and avoiding costly mistakes along the way. And we do it through benchmarking, visitor research and consultancy.  Now, more than ever, digital communicators need to know the decisions that will boost rather than damage the company’s reputation. Bowen Craggs offers a lifeline backed by our constantly updated ranking of the world’s best, the Corporate Digital Communications Index. To learn more about what we do and how we can help, check out our website. We’re at bowencraggs.com [End of interlude]

Jonathan   We've been talking a lot about the theoretics of how IR is changing. Let's get into some of the practicalities and just some examples of things that are actually out there now that maybe give some evidence for the changing nature of IR communications today on digital channels. What are some compelling examples that you've come across that you think illuminate this this movement towards loosening up? 

Scott   I've got a fairly shiny and new example from Bosch. In April this year, they launched their new annual report and as part of that process they published on their website an annual  report online experience, quote unquote, to go alongside the full report. It is very much embracing narrative storytelling. It's multimedia, as well as the kind of online summary of the annual report itself. Simultaneously and as part of the online annual report experience, they also published seven multimedia, multi-format stories, each of which highlighted a key aspect of Bosch's in innovation activities and strategy. Those stories were combining kind of text, imagery and video. And the whole launch was very much very multimedia, very multi-format. It was coordinated very harmoniously across web and social media channels. And what's really and it's well worth having a look at to see a to give an example of how you can be editorially rich and creative with the launch of an annual report. 

Impressively, Bosch is not a stock market listed company. Bosch is owned by a private foundation, so therefore is under, you know,  fewer regulatory obligations to produce  kind of annual reporting material. So the fact that it's going the extra mile with its online annual reports  content  and approach is all the more impressive. Because it doesn't really have to, but it's doing it anyway. And I should say you know Bosch's that it's that kind of attitude I think which has kind of driven Bosch to the to current joint number one spot in our corporate digital communications index, because it's always going the extra mile. Hoping to have the Bosch team on this podcast, I can exclusively reveal. Hope that happens, fingers crossed.  

Jonathan   Yeah, here's hoping. And one thing that jumped out at me in their in the in their online annual report was the timeline of the year, which borrows a technique that's long been in use in the “About” section of corporate sites, but it's just really compelling. It's a really compelling way of being able to see what's up, you know, what what's happened and for Bosch to be able to get across some messages around its innovation and its commercial prowess and all the rest.  

So that in itself is something I would I would say that other teams should be looking at and and thinking about ruthlessly stealing. Georgia, what are what are you seeing out on the corporate web that  makes you think that things are changing in in investors areas? 

Georgia   Yes, so I've got another example of this trend of making an HTML annual report page. As we know, this exact type of narrative performance information is more likely to be interpreted and highly rated by AI search bots if it's in HTML and not just PDF. So Bosch is a great example of doing that.  

Another example is Reckitt. They have a great annual report HTML page. But what they've done, which is quite interesting, is just divide it into lots of different types of content. So they have case studies, they've got LinkedIn posts, they've used the annual report as the starting point for a whole host of different materials that all kind of orbit each other and feed their strategy and their message. So that's one example. 

Another example is having a “At a glance” page or a section that really gives you the key facts, figures, information about your company as an investment proposition. So we're seeing quite a few of these. A really good one at the moment is the chemical company BASF. They have this at-a-glance page which has facts, figures. They they're making it really digestible for human website visitors, but also for AI bots. So that's really good.  

And then a final example comes from HSBC of including a clear investment case, which just sets out in that plain language why you should invest in HSBC. 

Jonathan   What strikes me about a lot of these examples is that what's good for AI search visibility is also what's good for retail shareholders especially. And that's an audience that, you know, so often gets ignored. At Bowen Craggs we have long running conversations with, you know, digital teams around whether it's possible, you know, when an IR team doesn't really want to put their resources in that direction, to serve those audiences well. Now it seems they may end up doing it by accident almost, and that seems to me a very positive step, in that way that AI is in so many ways bringing longstanding best practice more to the fore and the importance of it.  

Any other examples that you've come across that you you'd like our audience to know about?  

Scott   Another great example of a company that has been doing something for some time now, been doing something really quite different and effective when it comes to results communications is Netflix. 

And Netflix on YouTube, which I guess is a quite ironic when you think about it, because YouTube is a big competitor of Netflix. Anyway. Netflix uses posts on YouTube sort of 30 minutes every quarter,  I believe, 30 minute kind of conversations about the quarter's performance. It's chaired by a sell-side analyst that knows Netflix well. 

And you have senior executives from Netflix talking in an unscripted, honest way, almost like a kind of financial news TV show about the about their performance that quarter gets thousands and thousands and thousands of views. I guess it's surprising how few companies do that. And if that long form video content is properly captioned and subtitled, then that's going to be feeding the AI beast beautifully. So the LLMs are going to be learning lots and lots from these long-form, unscripted, authentic, kind of investor TV shows. So that's definitely something that's worth doing.  

Georgia   Yeah, alternative formats are having a big thing at the moment. We're seeing Reddit as well. So the CEO of Coinbase hosted a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session. We're also seeing that as part of different proxy campaigns. And then Reddit itself is engaging its retail investors on Reddit. It's again hosting these quarterly “Ask Me Anythings”, yeah, also live streaming earnings calls and turning it into more of a engagement opportunity. So yeah, lots of out of the box thinking is happening. 

Jonathan   Well I have one, I actually asked Claude to give me some examples of things that are you know happening that are a bit revolutionary in the investor space. And the one that stood out was Jon Gray, who's the president of and CEO at Blackstone, who has started posting videos in which he talks to camera while jogging, often I think with a selfie stick, maybe at times with someone somehow moving along beside him. I'm not entirely sure of the technicalities, but according to Claude and Claude, according to general buzz, this is winning him plaudits for finding a way to do something like that that's a bit quirky and off-key, but also not cringeworthy. Also frankly, and to me it seems exhausting. I don't know why you would want to run while talking, but it is kind of charming. 

It's reminiscent of and sort of a notch up from the more classic walking while talking video, which is a media trope that the selfie stick has enabled anyone with a selfie stick to be able to do. You're no stranger to that yourself, Scott, I think, with some internal communications, especially during the COVID era, which were well received and presumably fun to make.  

Scott   My daughter almost disowned me for those videos and they must never see. That's an internal communication that will must never be external. 

Jonathan   Well, I think we should contact Jon Gray's office and ask whether he's had any similar feedback from any of his relatives. But to finish off, I thought we could try and use that as a jumping off point for a moment of perhaps inspiration, perhaps just wilful zaniness and offer some suggestions to help digital teams think outside the box if they want to suggest some slightly off-the-wall ideas for formats that their senior leaders could use to help them cut through on social media. I'll go first so that to give you a moment to think and say that… Well what I was going to say was shopping. I once, long ago when I was working at BP, I sort of skived off for part of the afternoon and went to Selfridge's, where I found the CEO shopping for kitchen gadgets in the basement. And then I promptly went back to work feeling shamed, even though I don't think he knew who I was.
But that moment also made me think that CEOs are humans too. You'll be glad to hear this, Scott. It seems like maybe if CEOs want to go shopping, they might not want to open all that up to the world. I don't know, I guess it's a personal choice.  

So my actual suggestion is rock climbing. I just think that you know maybe that would take the right sort of level of physical fitness, but all the colours of the you know the pegs on the wall and there must be rock climbing centres now within a five-minute jaunt from just about any corporate headquarters. And if there's not, then surely there must be budget to install one, and the risk of falling in itself would create such dramatic tension that surely all of … to tune in and find out what that senior corporate leader had to say this week. Either of you want to weigh in? 

Scott   Yeah, bit of jeopardy. Everyone loves a little bit of Jeopardy, don't they? And I think CEOs in Selfridges is probably kind of I reckon you could sell that idea to Netflix or Amazon Prime as a TV show: "CEOs in Selfridges". 

Jonathan   It does have definite Bravo reality TV to it. 

Scott   I think one thing that has struck me in terms of what is standing out, what is cutting through on social media in recent months. One standout in the last few weeks on X has been Hunter Biden has started tweeting. And he's very, very quickly got  a lot of traction, a lot of attention, a lot of noise. And his approach seems to be kind of radical honesty and radical and indeed mostly not safe for work honesty in terms of language and what he's talking about. So I think really any kind of whether you're jogging or rock climbing or shopping in Selfridges, I think being in this AI-infused world, the more that you can show  be to stand out and show your human side the better. 

I'm not going rock climbing. Well I suffer from slight vertigo. I have a I'll do it if I have a if I've got a rope, if I'm attached to something. Maybe. 

Georgia   Yeah, I think being distinctive, being authentic are increasingly the keys to cutting through. 

Jonathan   Well, we can leave it there and allow the creative prompt to percolate in our listeners' minds. And if you if anyone listening comes up with a radical new format for leadership videos as a result of this conversation, please let us know because that would be a great mark of pride. This has been a joyful conversation as ever. Scott and Georgia, thank you very much. 

That's it for this episode of Cutting Through. As always, you can find show notes, links, and all manner of good things on our website, including all of the previous episodes of Cutting Through if you happen to have missed them or would like to listen again. 

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