Corporate Eye

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Archives for June 2008

Blogging Can Improve Your Corporate Image

It is an unfortunate but true fact that if there is anything negative about a business, there is probability that it will be magnified in the media. The job of the media is to report on news, whether that news is good…or not so good. Often, the damage may seem irreversible and executing damage control strategies may prove futile. But how does a corporate entity arrive at a point or even allow the company to be cast negatively to its shareholders and/or consumers?

By not being proactive in their approach to media relations strategy and establishing a corporate image.
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XBRL: The Transparency Acronym

It’s time to challenge your stereotypes! Here’s what first springs to my mind when I think of these professions:

A Formula One racing driver: fireproof overalls, helmet tucked under one arm, cocky stance and arrogant smile on his face.

A high court lawyer: hand tailored suit, leather briefcase, slightly otherworldly air and nose in the air.

A corporate analyst: reserved, uncomfortable in the real world, an abacus on the desk, smart clothes but never truly smart in demeanour.

Hang on a minute… an abacus?? A slightly sharper look at the corporate analyst and a somewhat Pythagorean figure emerges, complete with wraparound white sheet and funny pointy beard.

This is because corporate analysts are, at the end of the day, brilliant mathematicians whose mental agility would flummox the rest of us humble human beings. They’re the gods of all number crunchers.

Hence, I suppose, the abacus: to help with the day-to-day shuffling around of figures in analysis of a company or product’s performance. But surely we’ve progressed beyond such oddities by now?
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The Argument AGAINST Brand Extensions

Earlier this week, I wrote a post that described the argument FOR brand extensions. Today, I’m going to take a look at the other side of the brand extension argument and discussing why extending your brand can cause problems for your brand and business overall.

Consider these risks of brand extensions:

Confusion: If you over-extend your brand, you run the risk of diluting that brand’s power. I’m sure most of us have been in an aisle at a supermarket at some point and had trouble finding the exact product we were looking for amid the many products a specific brand offers. Some brands have so many extensions that finding the one you want is like looking for a needle in a haystack. [Read more…] about The Argument AGAINST Brand Extensions

Stories are Serious Business

Stories and storytelling cut across all types of industries and all business functions. The diagram below is only a narrow snapshot of where and how stories are used. You need a super wide angle lens to capture the corporate storytelling landscape. Note also that stories transcend organization size.

Stories are not limited to lofty corporate wide applications. I’ve seen more “mundane” uses such as a start-up using a story in its business plan presentation to investors, a six sigma consulting company using stories to help their clients and government vendors using stories in their proposal applications.

There have been a few articles on storytelling published in the Harvard Business Review and other publications. But it hasn’t yet hit the Business Top Ten List.
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Materiality within Sustainable Reporting

Imagine something you can live without; an atlas, perhaps, or pretty wallpaper. These may improve your quality of life or be useful repositories of knowledge, but they’re not strictly necessary for your day to day existence.

Now think of the things you really do need: air, water and nutrients must be top of your list. Additionally, shelter is useful for maintain a good health and transport is normally necessary to continue to earn a living.

Materiality within sustainability reporting is the concept of how much something is part of a business’ ongoing processes. How material it is to that company’s existence.

So taking the example above, pretty wallpaper and an atlas are pretty immaterial to an individual’s existence. Conversely air, water and nutrients are most definitely material, as are transport and shelter to a given degree.
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Sticklebacks of Sustainability

WARNING: sticklebacks can cause choking, vomiting and severe stomach pains if swallowed. So would read the food safety report on these small fish for their larger predators.

They have a spiny dorsal fin which they can raise if another fish attempts to eat them, hence the name. Its purpose is to lodge the stickleback, somewhat painfully, in the mouth or throat of its predator.

Often as not, this causes the predator in question to spit the stickleback out, thus saving its life.

Smaller listed companies can be compared quite favourably to sticklebacks. Preyed upon by larger fish, they often have to develop self defence mechanisms which can be surprising in their elegant simplicity.

On a whim, I thought I’d have a look at those FTSE Fledgling companies, equity vehicles aside, who were due to publish their reports last week. Perhaps their websites would have signs of sustainable spines, ready to be raised as a predator approaches?
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