Cameco is one of the world’s leading nuclear energy companies, with premier uranium mining and production facilities throughout the world. Their 2010 online annual report launched in April of this year, features a highly visual landing page that includes interactive graph features, as well as the “Double U” branding and an introductory video featuring CEO Jerry Grandey. The online annual report (OAR) received a Best in Class IMA in the Financial category, with a score of 493 out of 500.

PotashCorp is the world’s largest fertilizer company by capacity, producing the three primary nutrients. Their 2010 online annual report launched earlier this year and boast a new interactive Management Q&A feature on the home page, as well as a live graphing data tool for their 11-year report. PotashCorp’s OAR received a Best in Class IMA in the Financial category, with a score of 496 out of 500.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders is one of the most followed teams in the CFL, selling over 60% of all branded football merchandise in the league. In 2010, the Riders launched its new online store so fans can get their green gear from anywhere, on the go. The site received a score of 479 out of a possible 500 and an IMA for Outstanding Achievement in the E-Commerce category.

TransCanada Corporation is one the leading energy infrastructure companies in Canada. This June, they launched their 2010 online annual report, which showcases a rollover image feature and simple intuitive navigation and site structure. With a score of 488 out of 500, TransCanada’s online annual report received a Best in Class IMA in the Financial Category.

Congratulations to Cameco, PotashCorp, The Riders and TransCanada on their award-winning websites. It was a pleasure working with you on your projects!

The Presentation will be taking place on Wednesday March 30^th at 10:45am in the Sheraton Centre Hotel, Toronto. For more information on the CICA and their upcoming events, head to their website.

Cheers fellas, break a leg!

On February 2, zu Account Executive Jordy Burrows and I headed to Toronto, ON, for the IR Magazine Canada Awards 2011 Gala. We felt fearless in the face of the “Storm of the Century,” a moniker that was overblown [ahem] unless you were coming up from the US Eastern Seaboard.

We attend this event annually to support our clients, and we are always delighted when some of them win. This year, PotashCorp collected three awards, including Best IR Website. I had the happy task of collecting those awards on behalf of Denita Stann, VP, Investor and Public Relations, and Kelly Freeman, Manager, Investor Relations, who were indeed snowbound in Chicago.

The IR Awards Gala is always delightfully over the top, with humourous and irreverent presenters such as Elena Cherney, editor of The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, who this year delivered the Dubious Achievements Awards (the “Dubies”). Also presenting was Amanda Lang, who returned to host in her smooth and funny way (catch her CBC business show, The Lang and O’Leary Exchange, with Dragon’s Den investor, Kevin O’Leary).

One thing about working in Investor Relations is that IR folks are generally fun to be around. They are well-rounded, cynical, humourous, well-spoken, willing to learn and share ideas, call BS when they see it, and generally keep you on your toes because they are used to being kept on theirs.

Probably the other most memorable part of the evening for me was the speech by Lifetime Achievement In Investor Relations recipient, John Rogers. After a glowing introduction, John accepted the award and described how his career in IR started, how his wife found a way to deal with his Fort McMurray career, and how he had been mentored by other IR professionals. One thing he said he believes is key in this industry, and one of the things that makes IR people inherently interesting—and I agree—is that they know their company from “bottom to top.”

At any rate, it was a fun evening and we warmly congratulate all the winners and nominees.

These two Saskatchewan industry leaders keep setting the bar for online investor relations, and the 2011 IR Global Rankings are only one of multiple international recognitions.

We are grateful for the long-standing relationships that we have with both PotashCorp and Cameco, who understand and appreciate the value of strategy on an investor relations site. Thank you for choosing us to help you tell your online story. We look forward to celebrating future awards with you!

Thank you, also, to Creative Fire for its role as collaborator in the PotashCorp website creation.

View these best-ranked IR sites: PotashCorp and Cameco.

The Backstory
In early 2010, Feronia was about to go public, offering an investment opportunity in large-scale commercial farming and plantation development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, the company needed an online presence to show how its operations fulfill a vision to transform African agriculture and address a global need for food. So when Osaka Capital approached zu on Feronia’s behalf, we knew we could deliver a concise, investor-focused site.

Feronia’s is an intriguing story, with 100 years of chapters conveying a value creation strategy of “world-class farming conditions” without deforestation and with a vision to help feed more than two billion people. Along with its sustainability, development and growth drive, an investor relations (IR) focus was key from the onset to communicate Feronia’s vision of becoming “the largest agricultural company in Africa.”

Strategy
Our Strategy team first explored Feronia’s key stakeholders: potential and existing investors, communities and their citizens, and the environment itself. The team then reviewed the company’s branding guidelines and existing print and PDF material for investors. From there, we created an information architecture that addressed Feronia’s audiences and reflected its competitive strengths. The company’s sustainability practices warranted a separate section, featuring its own schools and hospitals, and maintained a prominent and consistent theme throughout the rest of the site.

Design and Development
The Design crew incorporated stunning photography, provided by Feronia, with modern style to capture the company’s history and its vision to drive Africa toward self-sufficient food production and profitable exportation. As a recently public company, scalability of the site and content was crucial for Feronia so it could grow online as the company worked towards its mission. Our Development team brought the site to life with IR features, social media sharing and a News & Press Release content management system module for convenient content access.

The Result
Feronia now greets website visitors with rotating banners depicting lush African crops and a commitment to sustainable agriculture, along with key growth facts. Deeper in the site are operational strategies and information about the highly skilled management and Board of Directors. To engage potential and existing shareholders, we pulled Feronia’s competitive strengths from existing materials to create an Investment Highlights page and compelling infographics for the homepage.

Through partnering with Osaka, we delivered a website that visually showcases Feronia’s agriculture roots and its flourishing grandeur. And, while the company continues to grow, so must its online story. Next up for Feronia is a French version of the site, along with a “Feronia in the news” video gallery and archive.

We were privileged to work with this growing company and we thank Sangeet from Osaka and her Feronia team for choosing zu!

About Feronia
Feronia Inc. is a large-scale commercial farmland and plantation operator in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (“DRC”). The Company uses modern agricultural practices to operate and develop its oil palm plantations and arable farming business division. Feronia believes in the immense agricultural potential of the DRC for high-quality foodstuffs and edible oils, given its ideal climate, excellent soil and highly skilled and experienced workforce. Feronia’s management team is comprised of senior agriculturalists with extensive experience in managing both plantations and large-scale mechanized farming operations in emerging markets. Feronia is committed to sustainable agriculture and environmental protection, and to providing support for local communities. For more information, visit the new website: www.feronia.com.

zu thanks Creative Fire for its partnership role in the website creation and thanks PotashCorp for choosing us each year to help tell its online story.

Want to view an award winning site? Visit PotashCorp’s website and while you’re there, check out the full press release.

Cameco wanted to reach investors, their key audience, through a website designed specifically to meet the information needs of investors. They first came to zu for help in 1995. Recently, Cameco has drawn more top-ranking IR awards. How did they come to be the industry leaders they are today?

All along, Cameco has been committed to making their story easy to understand. They have been willing to create new best practices and are unwilling to copy other companies, who often just mirror their competitors. And because Cameco is so open to new ideas, they inspire those they work with to go above and beyond.

When Cameco identified investors as their primary web audience, they began asking them more targeted questions though their annual perception studies. This helped determine what their investors wanted to see on an IR website. Cameco also recognized that investors would want to understand the basics of their business before they would be comfortable making investment decisions. And, when it came time to ask about company performance, Cameco knew that well-informed investors ask better questions.

When it was launched in December 2008, the redesigned website was strategically reorganized to enhance the flow of information to stakeholders. zu provided a spectrum of skills based on technological innovation, IR experience, design prowess, attentive service and programming expertise. Above all, an overall strategy gave structure and meaning to the new content and architecture. An expansive site design accommodated a wealth of reference materials that included multimedia, financial tables, dynamic charts, and other features, such as:

• Regularly updated CEO messaging, including CEO’s Corner (Q&A feature)
• Updated webcast and audio recordings
• Consistently fresh and relevant site content
• Tools that allows users to easily find historical market and company information
• A library to access documents in one location
• Information architecture focused on usability and easy navigation
• Enhanced environmental assessment content, highlighting:
• 23 key performance indicators
• Topic scorecards, with expandable and contractible information
• Information categorized by workplace, environment, communities and financial performance

Although the goal wasn’t to win awards, that was the result. The goal had been to make the site as useful and usable as possible to the primary target audience—investors—and this goal was achieved. In the annual IR Global Rankings alone Cameco has most recently been awarded:

• Best IR Website in North America (2010)
• Top 5 Ranked IR Website in North America (2009)
• Best Online Annual Report in North America (2008)
• Best IR Website by technical criteria in North America (2008)
• Best IR Website by technical criteria in Canada (2008)

As is the standard approach with this particular client, zu took on a development role in the project. PotashCorp and Creative Fire were on the planning and designing end, and zu offered technical expertise and programming.

“Given the critical importance of our website in excellent stakeholder communications, success or failure in creating a brand new site depended entirely on the strength of the project team,” commented Tim Herrod, Director of Treasury at PotashCorp. “The best websites are a product of the best ideas and execution, and exceptional performance flows only when talented, dedicated people understand, share, and deliver on our vision for excellence. These are the qualities of the zu team, and we have always been fortunate to have such world-class talent locally, working with us.”

About PotashCorp
PotashCorp is the world’s largest fertilizer company and leading potash producer, responsible for approximately 20% of global capacity. With operations in seven countries, PotashCorp is an international enterprise and a key player in meeting the growing challenge of feeding the world.

The goal
Websites go stale quickly. A leader in online investor relations, PotashCorp wanted a website with a cleaner interface, simpler navigation, more consistency for users and lower maintenance costs. From a development perspective, the goal of the project was to reengineer the code to make the site more stable, easier to maintain, and easier to build upon.

Having struggled through cumbersome updates on the site in the past, creating an easy-to-maintain system with lower maintenance costs was a high priority for the development team. The team strived to offer the client a platform in which they could perform updates easily. Part of this involved the integration of zu’s own content management system (CMS), EasyUpdater, which allowed the client to make changes to parts of the site that would require regular updating such as news, career postings, and calendar events.

The challenge
Meeting tight deadlines and coordinating amongst three parties proved to be the greatest challenges during the project. These were addressed in regular meetings between the parties and through enhancing internal systems. zu’s sizable talent base was also used to the team’s advantage, providing the ability to scale up and add additional support as needed.

With a looming deadline and a massive project to tackle, morale was kept high with zu-supplied dinner breaks when working late and the occasional night out after a long day. With some dedicated employees and solid leadership, the team plowed through.

The solution
To achieve the goal of building a system that would be easy to maintain and update, zu expanded the EasyUpdater CMS and modified it to provide needed flexibility while maintaining consistency and reducing costs.

A “flexibly consistent” system was the outcome. It was achieved by using a template-container-block approach to building the pages of the site in which each page was a template with multiple containers. In each container, the user could place any block. A block might be a piece of content, a list, a career posting, a news article, or an upcoming event. The user can create and edit only one block (for consistency), but a block can be placed in any location on the page (for flexibility).

New features
The freshly updated, easy-to-use site, inspired the launch of some additional features:

• DataTool: This allows investors to browse through financial data in the four key areas of financial, sustainability, facilities, and markets. They can select data to graph, export, share, or even save to a personal MyPOT account that can be revisited.
• News: This section has taken on a blog-like approach with all news items, regardless of category, falling into one global news section, allowing visitors to access all company news in one location or filter news postings according to topic.
• Social media: PotashCorp took the opportunity to dive further into the world of social media by linking to two Twitter accounts, @PotashCorp for news and @PotashCorpJobs for career postings; two Facebook pages, one for news and one for careers; and a YouTube page which provides an opportunity for videos to be more widely distributed.

The results
Since the project has launched, PotashCorp has received positive user feedback about the site’s new features. Looking at three month comparative data before and after the launch, site visits increased by 11% and page views grew by 14%.

Overall
The PotashCorp redesign shows how taking care of foundational aspects of websites such as navigation and user interface can transform a site from being merely available to being useful and frequently visited. This philosophy should apply to all web projects, regardless of the project size or budget.

PotashCorp continues to be a leader in online investor relations by adding new features and improvements on an ongoing basis, acknowledging that in the web world, a site is never finished.

But there will always be that little, annoying voice in everyone’s head that whispers doubts and disbelief about every company’s potential for growth. Call it due diligence, corporate distrust, or fear of the unknown, but this voice serves as IROs’ nemesis, chipping away at all the work they’ve put into promoting their company as the ultimate deliverer of shareholder value.

Yet, is the effort enough? More specifically, is the online story that companies are telling an open book, with all elements present to powerfully draw in investors so they not only believe the company’s story but want to tell others?

For it to resonate with your audience, your story needs to be easily accessible, understood and true. Ask yourself, your IR department, and the investors who visit your website:

-Does your website require visitor information prior to giving access? (The equivalent to a salesperson asking me to provide my personal information before I can browse a store for shoes)
-Does it hide the good stuff in PDFs?
-Does it only speak to the past, rather than also proactively discussing the future?

If the answer to these questions is yes, revisions are in order.

Consider Canada’s current place in the world economy. Relatively sheltered from the global recession, Canada is slowly but surely recovering. And so, Canadian companies are positioned to capitalize on this major opportunity once the country recovers and people regain confidence in the markets. But companies need to prepare now for when that time comes, when investors will flood the markets seeking best value, trusting in stories that clearly tell them how they will earn that value. Pen your online tale properly now so that you can be ready to draw these investors in and create believers out of them.

Presuming you do cover these topics somewhere, will our intrepid investor find what you are providing? How hard will this task be for him? Is your website effective in informing, or does it make it a challenge? If it is a challenge, well… why are you allowing it to be a challenge?

It seems IRO’s usually strive for communication effectiveness in ways suitable to the form they are delivering meesages in:

-    for required filings and releases effectiveness is in accurate reporting, a transparent writing style, and balanced treatment of opportunities and challenges;

-    in presentations they shoot for nicely designed PowerPoint slides, hopefully with legibly-sized type and some consistency in visual style;

-    in speech delivery or one-on-ones they practice-up the executives for an engaging and credible delivery.

Yet investor sections of corporate websites are not getting the idea of “effectiveness”. They may be getting the idea of ‘completeness’, but they are just not getting the ‘Internet’ part.

Not many of your favorite websites would consider their efforts to engage their audience complete with the addition of a PDF. Frankly, I can’t think of any good (non-investor related) website that would trust key messages to only PDFs. Well, maybe government websites, but they’re not really in any sort of competition based on effectiveness. Oh, and they’re not trying to achieve a fully and fairly valued stockprice based on informed investors. Oh, and they’re not worried about their cost of capital.

So, back to the idea of considering whether you are communicating foundation material on your website effectively. Ask: “Why should someone who doesn’t know my company invest in it?” “Can my website answer basic questions that will engage them in our story?” “How difficult does my website make it to find these answers?”

Get your visitors, especially potential investors, off to a strong start when they visit your website. (Please Note: I didn’t say “When they visit your Filing Cabinet”).

Don’t make the task of evaluating your company more work then it has to be. Don’t make them convince themselves of your worthiness. Don’t make them play BattleDecks with your sans-remarks Investor Slideshow.

Get your content strategy together. If you’re interested in doing better talk to us at zu.

This screen capture from the I-Metrix brochure displays the concurrent presentation of financials for Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, and Dell generated from the XBRL feeds from Edgar Online. This type of tool will greatly accelerate the data gathering process for potential investors from hours to minutes.

Soon the ‘go-to’ description of your enterprise will become the equivalent of a food label nutrition chart in a ‘just the facts’ approach to providing information.

Here we can compare two brands of chocolate chip cookies.

But is this how we buy food? By only looking at these measurables? We all know that, despite the similar make-up of these products, they don’t taste the same and one will be more successful than the other.

The reasons for success may be better explained in the story that goes with the product then in the nutritional performance data.

When XBRL allows your company to be compared side-by-side with its peers in a generic GAAP-compliant view, such as those provided conveniently by I-Metrix, then what is the next step in the analysis? What’s missing?

What will increasingly matter on the Internet and on your website will be the ‘other stuff’, not the financial reporting. It will be the story the CEO tells investors in person. When he’s running the conversation he isn’t reading XBRL to the audience, he’s adding the context, the long-term strategy, and the positioning explaining markets, outlook, competitive advantage and so forth.

When the quantitative XBRL filtering and screening is over with, and the analyst or retail investor visits your website, are they going to get what’s missing? Or is it just out-of-date, coffee table book statements about the company with links to PDF financial reports that are rather superfluous to the slicing and dicing already done by XBRL readers?

Will they find current high-value materials provided in an engaging way? Will they see the clarity in the plan that fosters a corporate culture that will win in their chosen field and create shareholder value? Will it bring to life the recipe that makes a company a success?

When widely disemminated XBRL viewers focus attention on your last quarter’s earnings blips, are you ready to show an engaging version of why your company is a worthy investment?

Even as we integrate new communication forms and technologies, let’s keep our eye on the website.

Cameco and PotashCorp were listed as the Best Ranked IR Websites in North America. They were in good company alongside Intel, General Electric Company, Microsoft, Bank of Montreal, Del Monte Foods Company, and Overseas Shipholding Group.

After a complete site redesign and reengineering in 2008, Cameco has worked to enhance their environmental assessment content, regularly update the CEO messaging, add webcast and audio recordings, and consistently keep the site’s content fresh and relevant. In the past Cameco achieved an overall Top 5 ranking for best ranked IR website in North America (2009) and best online annual report in North America (2008), along with best IR website as ranked by technical criteria in North America (2008), and best IR website in Canada by technical criteria (2008).

“We strive to be a leader in our ongoing communication with investors,” says Lyle Krahn, Cameco’s director of external communications. “We rely on zu’s knowledge, advice and expertise to achieve that goal with our website. The awards reflect our combined efforts.”

PotashCorp reloaded and relaunched this year with a complete redesign and reengineering of their website. The new site features a  DataTool that allows users to easily find historical market and company information, and a library to access a range of documents in one convenient location. The focus on ease of navigation and simplified usability was spurred by feedback collected from investors. In past years PotashCorp has taken home IR Global Rankings awards including Best Online Annual Report in North America (2009), Best IR Website in the Basic Materials industry (2006), and Top 4 for Best Earnings Releases and Disclosure Procedures in North America (2006).

“At PotashCorp we focus on clear, transparent and timely disclosure,” says Denita Stann, senior director of investor relations with PotashCorp. “Our website is an important part of our communication strategy, and zu’s expertise and vision has been a key part of our success.”

“It is extremely rewarding for our team at zu to see the accolades our clients receive from everyone’s hard work,” commented Lejbak. “We are very proud of the work Cameco and PotashCorp have done and believe they will remain leaders in online Investor Relations for many years to come.”

About the IR Gobal Rankings
The annual IR Global Rankings and Awards survey is the most comprehensive auditing and ranking system for IR websites, corporate governance practices and financial disclosure procedures – a great opportunity to benchmark IR efforts vis-à-vis peers and industry leaders. Based on extensive proprietary research of publicly held companies and investors, and supported by input from independent audit, corporate governance and legal experts, MZ’s methodology is highly detailed, transparent and fully accessible to all participants.