Delighted customers delighted shareholders

If we read one more Management Today profile of a European CEO of a UK PLC eschewing a focus on shareholders above consumers, then we’ve officially got a trend on our hands.

First it was the Dutchman, Polman, CEO of Unilever (ok, so this company is joint listed in the UK and Netherlands) with strident comments in the March issue of Management Today. As far as Polman’s concerned shareholders are gambling short-termists who hold a good deal of responsibility for the financial crisis. He says:

‘To drag the world back to sanity, we need to know why we are here. The answer is: for consumers, not shareholders. If we are in synch with consumer needs and the environment in which we operate, and take responsibility for society as well as for our employees, then the shareholder will also be rewarded.’

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1055793/MT-Interview-Paul-Polman-Unilever/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Next up its Vittorio Colao, Italian CEO of Vodafone, who sees ‘customer friendliness’ as entirely joined up with shareholder value: “You have to put them together or else capitalism can produce problems.” He describes Vodafone as “pushing harder than ever to be admired in the heart of the customer.”

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1071181/MT-Interview-Vittorio-Colao-Vodafone/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Now why this makes such interesting reading for us it what it could mean for communication in annual reports. You know, those big corporate manuals [of today] primarily directed at shareholders.

Shareholders might infer from the comments of these two CEOs that an interest in the business of their companies – customers, products, services, how they’re delivered, by what quality of employees and at what benefit or cost to society and the environment – will lead to better insight about the long term prospects of invesments. That is of course if shareholders are interested at all in anything like a slightly safer gamble.

Customers, trends, technology, competition, brands, values and value are constantly changing and companies have to regularly flex what they’re doing in order to win. Therefore high quality presentation of products and services, the investment made in them and the reasons behind the investment should never go amiss from corporate communication. But certainly in annual reports in recent years these things really have. Even Unilever and Vodafone could do better on this front than they have in their most recent annual reports.