SHEDDING their starchy images, public company chief executives and chief financial officers are increasingly turning to the popular video sharing service YouTube to tell their firms’ investment stories.
And while their videos are unlikely to go viral any time soon, the executives and their investor relations professionals are using a variety of techniques to make their often dull corporate reporting information more approachable for a wider viewing audience.
Several of the executives on this list of 10 examples made their YouTube debuts this past quarter, while others are almost old hands and have attracted sizable followings. All of them, however, face the same challenge: how to deliver the numbers and talk strategy without putting people to sleep.
For each example, we provide a link to the company’s YouTube channel and to their investor relations websites so that you can review for yourself what they are doing. We chose the examples because each illustrates a somewhat different approach to content or production, rather than because they are the best. This article complements an earlier one we did on 5 CFOs who are using web video to communicate with their investors.
1. Steve Schwarzman, CEO of The Blackstone Group
IR Website: http://ir.blackstone.com/index.cfm
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/blackstonegroup
Length: 7:34 mins
Views: 130
Allow comments: No
Time magazine has called Schwarzman one of the most powerful businessmen in the world, so his decision to hit YouTube is a sign of how far social video has come. But that’s about as far as the significance of Schwarzman’s video debut goes. It’s a single-camera reading of a shareholder letter that runs for over seven minutes. You can’t blame the CEO for this because some basic video editing would have made it much easier to watch. Hopefully, someone at Blackstone will read this and get some ideas from the other executives mentioned in this post. On a positive note, the company mentions the video in its earnings release and posts it in the News & Views section of its website. However, you’re warned that the “presentation is copyrighted material of the Blackstone Group and may not be duplicated, reproduced or rebroadcast without consent.” Not sure how that can be if it’s on YouTube and embedding is enabled. Clearly, all of this is still new to Blackstone…
2. Peter Voser, CEO of Shell
IR Website: http://www.shell.com/home/content/investor/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Shell
Length: 4:30 mins
Views: 940
Allow comments: Yes
Integrating the YouTube embed into its IR website is something Shell does better than most companies. The video is highlighted on the company’s IR homepage and then prominently positioned in the site’s Financial Reporting section. The video itself includes two camera angles, which makes it slightly more visually interesting. However, the script needs work. There are too many facts and figures crammed into the front-end, which doesn’t help grab users’ attention or communicate the company’s key messages. If you’re going to read numbers, you need to support them with something in writing, such as a chart. The lack of a suit jacket is clever as it makes Voser appear more relaxed.
3. John Dielwart, CEO of ARC Resources
IR Website: http://www.arcresources.com/en-ca/investorrelations/overview
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/arcresources
Length: 1:23 to 4:58
Views: 4 to 15 views
Allow comments: No
Another oilman, but John Dielwart of Canadian oil and natural gas company ARC seems much more relaxed than his counterpart at that much larger company above. ARC is a relative newcomer to YouTube and the social web, which partly accounts for the low number of views. Video production is a simple, single-camera affair with some editing and graphics. Rather than post one long clip, the company has segmented the footage into four shorter clips, each introduced by a question that appears in a graphic at the start of each segment. The videos consist of a talking head, but Dielwart makes a good impression because it’s obvious that he isn’t reading from a script. It’s amazing the difference it makes when CEOs respond to questions rather than read something prepared for them by the IR department. He comes across as comfortable (no jacket), confident (no script), and most importantly, human (lots of ums). Going forward, the company needs to do more to get those view stats up to give this straight-talking CEO more exposure.
4. Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis
IR Website: http://www.novartis.com/investors/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Novartis
Length: 3:52 mins
Views: 900 – 3,500
Allow comments: No
As healthcare companies go, Novartis has long been one of the better online communicators. CEO Jimenez can read a script so well it’s almost imperceptible. The monotony of the talking head is broken up with a timely cutaway to some B-roll of test tubes and people in lab coats at the company’s facilities. The script is short and isn’t crammed full of numbers that no one will remember. A disclaimer that scrolls like credits at the end consumes almost a quarter of the clip, so it’s actually only 3 minutes. The video is also integrated into the company’s corporate website.
5. Michael Wolf, CEO of Swedbank
IR Website: http://www.swedbank.com/investor-relations/index.htm
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/swedbank
Length: 1:15 mins
Views: 10
Allow Comments: Yes
Of all the executives on this list, Michael Wolf of Sweden’s Swedbank has the least to say. At 75 seconds, part of which is taken up by questions from an invisible interviewer, there’s just not enough meat in the video for it to be meaningful. Given that the bank has been through a tough period during the financial crisis, there was an opportunity for Wolf to answer some hard questions in a more controlled environment. But the video is Wolf’s YouTube debut and isn’t posted on the company’s website, so perhaps this is just a trial run for something more elaborate next time.
6. John Gerspach, CFO of Citigroup
IR Website: http://www.citigroup.com/citi/fin/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CITI
Length: 5:45 mins
Views: 160
Allow comments: Yes
Gerspach’s quarterly reviews of the Citi empire are only posted to Citigroup’s corporate blog, which probably suggests that they are part of the financial services giant’s attempt to make the public love banks more. Gerspach himself is cuddly enough and he comes across well on the screen, but — and this is a problem with a lot of YouTube execs — enough with the verbal spreadsheet stuff! The video script probably would have 100% more impact and Gerspach would seem less like a talking calculator if they just removed all of the dollar figures … 18 billion dollars this … 23 billion dollars that… none of it adds anything to the message. Just stick to percentages up or down and say if they’re good or bad, or add some visual aides like charts so we can see the numbers in context. A highlight of Citi’s videos is the clever use of close-ups and wider shots that are stitched together during editing. This gives the video a slightly more professional feel and reduces the monotony of a single camera angle.
7. Peter Wennink, CFO of ASML
IR Website: http://www.asml.com/asml/show.do?ctx=42337
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ASMLcompany
Length: 8:03 mins
Views: 170 to 650
Allow comments: No
Headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, ASML uses YouTube as a secondary channel for its quarterly video interviews with CFO Wennink. While the most recent video is longer than most, it works well because it is presented in a news style interview format and the discussion is less about numbers and more about the reasons behind them. The fact that Wennink is standing during the interview somehow makes the whole thing seem less staged, as if he was called out of a meeting to talk to the camera crew. Whatever the case, it works a lot better than having an executive talking from a teleprompter and it feels more like a conversation than a speech. On the company’s website, videos are available in both self-hosted Flash and Windows Media format.
8. Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson
IR Website: http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/investors
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ericssonpress
Length: 1:56 mins
Views: 140 to 200
Allow comments: Yes
The video is shot as a television news report rather than an address or interview. The idea of companies being their own web TV stations is interesting, and while Ericsson isn’t the first to do this (Bayer is another), it nails the genre quite well. On the downside, the video isn’t integrated into their IR website content anywhere. It’s not even accessible in the video archive area of their Press section.
9. Brian Gladden, CFO of Dell
IR Website: http://www.dell.com/investor
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/DellVlog
Length: 6:08 mins
Views: 540 to 2150
Allow comments: Yes
For the past two years or so, Dell’s vice-president of investor relations Rob Williams has sat down in front of the cameras with Dell’s CFO Brian Gladden to review the most recent quarter’s numbers. He changes things up a little by inviting one of Dell’s division executives to join the interview. This format works reasonably well, although IROs don’t necessarily make for the best interviewers since they’re not exactly impartial. One way to get around this is to source the questions from investors. Dell embeds the videos on its IR blog DellShares, enabling investors to comment there or on YouTube.
10. Luís Paulo Salvado, CEO of Novabase
IR Website: http://www.novabase.pt/en/Pages/NovabaseHome.aspx
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/novabasetv
Length: 4:25 mins
Views: 93 to 450
Allow comments: Yes
The use of English subtitles is the main reason for including Portugal’s Novabase is this list. If English isn’t your CEO’s mother tongue, then Salvado’s videos show that subtitles are a perfectly acceptable alternative.
Dominic Jones (bio) created IR Web Report in 2001. He is a consultant to leading public companies and investor relations service providers worldwide. You can contact him via the contacts page.
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