The investment analyst or results presentation is one of many presentation genres and has unique characteristics. I have a long history with this investor relations communication type going back to the late-90s where apart from producing the presentations, projects included sitting with the presenters, other board members and communications teams making changes on-the-fly during dry runs. Then came organising and outsourcing the staging, making sure the sound system worked, that the huge 3 lens Barco projectors were in focus, on multiple screens, the colour correct and the pictures straight and filling the screen. A third element was making sure the handout books were printed overnight, dropped at the venue with a copy on every chair before the presentation started. Travelling to other cities with the clients to repeat the staging process was usual, sometimes in their corporate Learjet. Those were heady days and much has changed.
I could wear the hat of a presentation purist and question the concept of the handout book, or that analyst presentations are quite content heavy, but relevant if one considers the audience. Analysts feed off easy to find grouped information with the opportunity to make notes. There is still ample opportunity to communicate bigger picture issues such as company direction, opportunities etc. with well-crafted concept slides. The actual presentation is the jewel in the investor relations crown, as leadership has the opportunity for 'face to face', engaging interaction with a receptive audience.
So, before 2020 there was already a move away from the big audience, hotel buffet venue to webcasts and the opportunity for analysts to download a handout and have access to a recording. Now we have had a year where most presentations are digital to virtual audiences. The same goes for creating the presentations and dry runs. I still, as do many of my client’s marvel at the fact that I am running their dry run from the Arctic with them sitting in London, or much further down in Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town.
I will publish a suite of articles on this special presentation genre sharing some insight, whether you use the services of a presentation specialist or do it yourself.
As with assessing all creative outputs, unless you know the brief, budget and project time allocated, one cannot criticize analyst presentations too harshly. However, brand alignment, structure, level of care and consistency should be a given. It is a unique deliverable where the creator/producer/designer loses final control of the process as the ‘open’ file is handed over to the end user who could make potentially off-brand and off-design changes which is unfortunate as this does not happen with other investor relations material.
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