Video is now an accepted part of getting the message to your clients, with editorially strong content enhancing and complementing the printed word. Around 50 percent of the UK FTSE100 including HSBC, Barclays and BSkyB as well as leading European companies – Carrefour, ING and Syngenta – now use video interviews as a regular part of their IR and corporate communications campaigns.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that online video has come of age with the growth of broadband and that it’s now entering a new phase,” says Tessa Bamford, director of clients at Cantos, the London-based company which has pioneered online video for corporates since 2001. “Being able to publish a professionally produced interview or programme with your chief executive or senior management at the same time as your printed news release, is now an accepted part of investor relations. It’s an excellent way of getting key audiences – investors, potential investors, employees and the financial media – to hear your key messages directly at a crucial time.”
Belgian-based brewer InBev used the power of video extensively during its successful takeover of Anheuser-Busch. Knowing it would be portrayed as a foreign invader targeting one of the US’s most iconic brands, the brewer of Becks and Stella Artois used Cantos to produce a series of video programmes throughout the bid process. These answered, head-on, key concerns from American employees, distributers, investors and politicians, such as what would happen to jobs and breweries in the United States. A special microsite – globalbeerleader.com – was created to host and stream all content, including several interviews with InBev’s chief executive, Carlos Brito.
The updates helped InBev win the PR battle, and commentators compared its online strategy favourably with the distinct lack of information coming from Anheuser-Busch. The content was watched by viewers in 45 different countries and was picked up throughout the American media – television and print, national and local – including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, the Washington Post, CNN and CBS. The end result? InBev won its takeover battle and industry professionals applauded its proactive and innovative use of online video as a crucial part of the campaign.
For the banking, insurance and asset management giant ING Group, online video was also vital in supporting its capital-raising programme at the end of 2008. While the details of its plans to increase core Tier 1 capital were fully explained in traditional text documents, the video interview helped outline the rationale and background to the move – at a time when it was vital for banks to reassure markets.
“In an ideal world, you’d try and gather all the people you need to speak to in one place and address them all at the same time,” says Bamford, a former director of investment bank Schroders. “Obviously, that isn’t possible in practice. Recording a video interview, which can be distributed quickly around the world through various platforms, is the best way to get round this. And, just as importantly, it’s an extremely cost-effective way of doing it as well.”
The online investor relations website, IR Web Report, agrees. In an article entitled ‘Building CEO credibility with the Cantos Interview’ it said: “A Cantos interview is compelling website content for investors and shareholders, especially those who value a more strategic, longer-term focus which CEOs tend to be good at. The ‘Cantos interview’ is the standard by which all company-sponsored executive interviews are judged.”
Some CEOs do, it’s true, worry about the practicalities of an interview and whether there’s enough time to record one, particularly around a big announcement when many people are already working flat out. But Cantos’ experienced teams are well used to working as trusted advisers, quickly and efficiently at stressful times and under the strictest confidentiality rules.
Most of the Cantos interviews are filmed the day before announcement and edited on site so that company representatives can sign off without having to leave the office. Questions are prepared in advance so investors’ key issues can be put to CEOs – but companies have final editorial sign-off and are in control of the process. “Chief executives have told us how they enjoy having the tough issues put to them in our interviews,” says Roddy McDougall, Cantos’ editor-in-chief and a former TV news editor. “It helps prepare them for the analysts’ meeting the following day and really focuses their mind, in a way that normal Q and A rehearsals don’t, because they’re ‘on camera’ and it’s effectively for real.”
After sign-off, Cantos will encode the interview and make it available in a variety of formats – including audio and video podcasts. They’re also experienced at producing versions in a variety of languages if, as is often the case, the company needs to reach audiences around the world. Every Cantos interview also comes with a fully checked transcript.
“There’s a power in seeing the whites of the eyes and hearing what the chief executive has to say but for some busy analysts who don’t have time to watch even a ten minute interview printing off a transcript ahead of the presentation or their meeting with the CEO or FD really helps to give them a heads-up on what the company’s thinking,” says McDougall.
For Cantos, distribution is crucial to helping get a company’s message out there. In addition to the www.cantos.com website and clients’ own websites, Cantos has arrangements in place with Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones Newswires and can post content on YouTube and iTunes so that it can be seen by as many people as possible.
As well as video interviews, Cantos also offers online services such as video and audio webcasting, sponsored online roundtable debates in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, corporate TV (which allows companies to manage and run their own online video programming service) and marketing campaigns for lead generation.
Cantos producers and film crews also travel the world helping to bring a company’s story alive in investor documentaries. As well as organising investor site visits, companies commission Cantos to produce professional programmes which can be shown at investor roadshows back at base. Europe’s biggest retailer, Carrefour, has used Cantos over several years to make focused investor documentaries to highlight different parts of their business around the world.
“Carrefour wanted to show investors Carrefour City – a new type of store concept which they’d just launched in Paris,” says Andy Rivett-Carnac, a senior client producer with Cantos. “They wanted to illustrate, first-hand, how they were reinventing the convenience store in the centre of big cities while updating investors on the progress of other initiatives such as their Dia format and Carrefour Market. We used our production and journalistic experience, allied with knowledge of what investors want to hear about, to produce top quality, IR-focused programming.”
To contact Cantos please email
clients@cantos.com or phone the
client team on +44 (0)20 7936 1319.