When clients and colleagues learn that my design firm is bullish on annual reports, their usual reaction can be summed up in one word: "Why?" Indeed, what could possibly justify the time and expense of producing a well-designed, well-produced annual?
The fact is, for a corporation with something to say, the annual report remains an incomparably powerful communications tool — with probably the greatest ROI of any corporate communications investment. Nothing else so accurately expresses a companyıs vision of where it has been, where it is now and where it is going.
The S.E.C. regulates public communications about financial performance — but not about non-financial strengths such as vision, values, heritage or future. If you think investors should know where the company is going and how itıs going to get there, the annual report is the best means to tell them. It is also a question of controlling perceptions. Generally, a companyıs image is subject to all the noise of the marketplace. But here the companyıs identity is within your control. The annual report can be the intersection where perception and reality meet: the most complete, specific, current utterance of a public companyıs identity at a specific point in time. Finally, it is an excellent way to drive home the intangibles in a tangible way. Some of a companyıs most important assets — the quality of human resources, the strength of the brand, the strategic outlook — are also the most difficult to convey. A well-designed annual report can bring these to life.
For top managers who "get it" and use their annuals to speak the truth in plain English — like Warren Buffett and Jack Welch, to name two — the annual has consistently been an incomparably effective medium for stating the corporate case to stakeholders and the financial community.
With an assured audience of shareholders, employees, prospective investors and the business financial press, an annual report reaches more people than any non-advertising medium. Finding the best way to tell a companyıs story to these diverse audiences in todayıs media-rich environment is a design challenge whose solution can take any form or combination of forms — from perfect-bound book to poster, from newspaper advertisement to Internet posting. For the designer, it is the perfect challenge of matching form with function.
In recent years, so-called "trophy annuals" have grown rarer — done in by a nasty combination of corporate accountability scandals, cost-cutting, investor skepticism and changed S.E.C. reporting regulations. They have given way to spartan annuals with a just-the-facts-please approach. Some companies slap a cover on the 10-K and send it out. But such minimally compliant disclosures miss out on the added value of context, mission and vision that an annual report can convey. And as a statement of the companyıs position and a reaffirmation of its brand, the annualıs value to the company and its audiences grows with each succeeding year.
Is it worth the effort and expense? We think so.
David Schimmel has been a design director at Young & Rubicam, launched his own firm at the tender age of 23, worked with many of the worldıs most sophisticated clients and earned multiple awards for his work. He graduated in 1998 from Washington University with degrees in art and business and was immediately hired by Y&R Advertising in a new position of design director. In 1999, And Partners was founded to provide branding, corporate identity, literature and collateral for upmarket consumer and professional-service companies. The firm has since enjoyed steady growth and broad recognition.