Energy Infrastructure
The annual report people actually read
How an energy infrastructure group turned a dense compliance document into a clear story of the year, read cover to cover by investors and staff alike.
- Industry
- Energy Infrastructure
- Service
- Annual report
- Scope
- Printed report, online edition and investor summary
The challenge
Two hundred pages that everyone had to publish and nobody wanted to read.
The group runs transmission lines, substations and storage sites in five countries. Its annual report met every regulatory requirement and told almost no one anything. Investors skipped to the accounts; staff never opened it at all.
That year mattered more than most. The group had brought its first large battery sites online and wanted investors to see the shift. The report was the one document every one of them would receive.
- Two hundred and twelve pages, most of them tables
- A real strategic shift buried in the middle
- Strict regulatory content that could not be cut
Our approach
Tell the year as a story, and make every number earn its place.
A story in the first twenty pages
We moved the narrative to the front: twenty pages that explain the year in plain words and clear pictures, written with the chief executive and finance director. The required disclosures follow, intact, but now clearly signposted.
Charts that say one thing
Every chart was redrawn to make a single point, with the key figure set large and the axis kept quiet. Emerald marks growth, sapphire marks the grid, and no chart uses more than two colours. Finance teams can now update the charts from source data without breaking the design.
Made to be kept
The printed edition uses an uncoated stock and a debossed cover, so it reads as a considered object rather than a regulatory duty. The online edition follows the same story, with each chart readable on a phone.
The outcome
The report became the group’s most read publication of the year.
Time spent on the online edition rose more than fourfold, and investor relations fielded far fewer basic questions after results day. Staff requested printed copies for the first time. The report also won a sector award for clarity in its first year.
Investors quoted our own report back to us. That has never happened before.
The chart system and story structure now carry through to quarterly updates, so investors see the same clear format all year round.