Smarter Sustainability Reporting

Sustainable Business is running a conference next week entitled Smarter Sustainability Reporting – Transforming your strategy into a competitive advantage, at which Paul Druckman, Chief Executive Officer of International Integrated Reporting Council is a speaker.

https://www.fhevents.net/favhouse/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=56&eventID=1&eventID=1

In January this year…

Both is better

The idea could be a word. Or it could be a graphic feature. Either way, it is the concept that writer and designers all have to work hard at to reinforce. The result is always better communication. There is far greater clarity for audiences about what they’re being told.

Where to start?

Usually the issue with internal communications is too much noise – a busy environment with too many messages going out.

Award winning Changing Lives – Zephyr deliver internal comms ‘Bang for bucks’

We were pleased as punch to join NOMS (National Offender Management Service) in collecting top prize at last week’s CorpComms Awards for Best Live Event created for internal audiences.

The NOMS winning event was a two-part awards ceremony (held over…

Motion and meaning

We’ve commented a few times previously on the challenges of integrated reporting. In particular the need for companies to show the links they see between financial and non-financial performance and the long-term sustainability of their business.

If a company believes…

The promise of the FRC Reporting Lab

The Reporting Lab, launched on the 14th October, by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) definitely has promise.

Conscious of the endless stream of white papers and exposure drafts addressing the effectiveness and future of narrative reporting, the Lab instead is…

Visualisation has its catches

We’ve written a few times now about the benefits of visualisation as a process of summarising complexity and even defining a brief. Indeed, we’re big proponents of using images and icons to capture thinking rather than endless words – a…

Erotic capital and why that’s not branding

Heard of the concept ‘erotic capital’? It’s taken from the book ‘Honey Money – The Power of Erotic Capital’ by Catherine Hakim, which puts forward a thesis that erotic capital is an over-looked asset which combines beauty, sex appeal, social…

The perfect visual brief

A number of conversations we’ve had with clients over recent weeks continue to highlight how team Zephyr’s visualisation skillset can usefully be applied to a whole number of different scenarios. They all work under the basic premise that visualisation done…

Use me…surprise me…use me…surprise me

So I’m sat in the blue corner, sipping my coffee on Monday morning, eyeing my Twirl and perusing my ‘inspiration’ sites for cool stuff. Stuff that says ‘different’, stuff that says “we think in a new way – come have…

Surprise me…use me…surprise me…use me

Now you may be surprised to hear that we do at times have divergent opinions within team Zephyr. Never more so, it seems, than when we get into the debate of convention versus invention.
In the blue corner, convention,…

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…

Trust in magazines

Following our blog on Monday about the source employees favour most for information (http://www.wearezephyr.com/blog/2011/06/14/trusty-channels/), we were really interested to see this blog by Matt Hutton, a client of ours at Zephyr. It describes the benefits magazines can offer, in contrast…

Brand spend on top

A snippet of research we got sent by The Marketing Forum got us talking this morning. To entice us along to sell our wares at their annual clients and suppliers jamboree they shared their findings on the top product and…

CEOs of character

When it comes to leadership shots in corporate reports we’ve seen it all: Pink backgrounds, holding props, back to the shop floor, in meaningful conversation and, of course, straight to camera with various portions of head, shoulders, knees and toes,…

Participation = reputation

We attended a really good conference this morning on the merging of search, social and PR. Speakers from agencies and client-side alike communicated the message that people should get on with delivering great outcomes together rather than fussing over what…

Offender jouney infographic

Back in 2010 we asked by the Ministry of Justice’s National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to create a clear and concise visual platform for communication that would span the entire breadth of NOMS – one of the nation’s biggest Government…

Not so perfect

Whilst the film Black Swan had me in equal parts turning away, cringeing, closing my eyes completely and marvelling, it also made me scribble something down in my note book.

The character played by Natalie Portman was being criticised for…