Analyst presentations are often a primary brand port of call and should reflect the corporate identity, design language and attributes of other brand touchpoints.
If you were to access the website of a random public company, navigate to the investor relations portal, you will probably be able to download a PDF of the most recent annual report and presentation. Compare the home page, investor relations page, annual report and presentation from a brand/design point of view. The analyst presentation often comes up short. This is unfortunate, because when published, it provides enough current detail to be used as the main reference about the company performance and prospects.
There are many real-world reasons why this happens. The most common is corporate weariness towards strict brand rules “I am so tired of our green”; “Can’t we make the graph pop, it’s so boring”.
The extreme deadline driven process tests team dynamics and time pressure could result in some checks and balances being disregarded “We don’t have time for marketing to look at this again”.
Then of course too many people get involved in the designing “Let’s add a pretty graded colour, bevel and shadow to those blocks”; "Yes, lets".
It is usually a relatively quick fix to realign to brand:
If available, read the company CI manual which at the least should provide rules around the logo, colours and fonts.
Refer to the annual report, which is usually well designed, to pick up on the treatment of the cover, section breaks, graphs, tables and other visual elements.
Avoid the PowerPoint defaults trap of selecting looks and styles, even mixing and matching them within the same presentation just because they are there. This is particularly common when it comes to graphs and tables. PowerPoint is simply a tool, and users should view it as a blank canvas where they can use the features to create exactly what they want – brand aligned
Address the real-world issues with context, brand rationale and the logic behind object treatment and placement.
Sample content available in the public domain
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