When you decide to approach your corporate financial report this year, it is worth remembering that a corporation is essentially an abstract entity – it is your annual report that helps make your company ‘real’ in the reader’s mind. By holding your annual report in their hands, current or potential shareholders hold more than just a pile of printed pages – they are holding your company.

by Lyle Fraiman



An effective annual report will bring your company to life.

Regardless of size or sector, effective annual reports have four things in common: they are a) well written, b) reader friendly, c) visually engaging, d) strategically focused.

Over the past decade there has been a substantial evolution in the nature and role of annual reports. Many public companies, of all sizes, experimented with Internet based HTML reports, CD ROM formats, and even VHS tapes. Yet, the printed version prevailed. The reason is simple: a printed report is portable, readable without the need of electronic devices, and credible, because once it is printed, its content cannot be altered.

Annual reports are often considered to be a financial obligation that a public company must bear. But financial reporting is only half of the picture. Research conducted by Ernst & Young Centre for Business Innovation found that investors often place great importance on a company’s non-financial performance. In other words, the corporate essence is just as important, if not more so, than the corporate assets.

It is the non-financial aspects of the report that add most value to your publication, and in the process make a meaningful contribution to your company by presenting it as distinctive, well managed, growing and innovative.

Most people today no longer read printed annual reports for their financial information, just as people no longer read magazines for the latest news. In either instance, they get it on the Internet long before it arrives in their mailbox. The reason people read either of these print publications is to gain a deeper understanding of specific issues. In a printed annual report, readers look for analytical insight into your company’s products and services, competitive challenges and plans to meet them, competence and talent of top level management – information that will help investors assess the long term prospects of your company. Last year’s financial data is literally old news.

Your annual report is, arguably, perhaps the only corporate document that enjoys a considerable degree of credibility in the public mind. It is also, possibly, the only one that lets you have total control over its published content.

Publishing a professionally produced annual report may or may not, in itself, raise the value of your stock – but publishing one that is haphazardly put together and appears amateurish will certainly not add any value to your company’s brand in the eye of the public.

Publishing consistently well designed annual reports that work equally well in printed form as well as digitally is bound to provide your public company with unparalleled long term value by promoting understanding of, and trust in, your corporation, its services and its products. As such, they are invaluable – and in the foreseeable future, an irreplaceable part of your corporate assets.

Lyle Fraiman is the President and Creative Director of Fraiman Design Inc. a full service corporate communications firm specializing in brand development, corporate identity, marketing strategies and investor communications. He can be reached at 416.591.1444 x 21 or through www.fraimandesign.com