IPO communications have come a long way in the last few decades.

You may have heard us banging on recently about how the business of communications has changed dramatically in the last ten years. This has important ramifications on how a successful IPO campaign can and should be conducted. 

But the problem is, the client (and sometimes their advisors) are often living somewhere in or near the dark ages when it comes to what has happened to the media world in the last decade. We are often up against an ongoing fixation from clients and their advisory teams with getting stories in traditional broadsheet newspapers, and in particular the FT. This is a problem for a number of reasons:

• Unless they have very big valuations (did someone say Unicorn?), are very big tech companies, well-known consumer brands, or have a retail tranche, the broadsheets often show little interest in IPO stories. Uber? Yes. UKMidCapIndustrialCo? Not so much. ForeignMidCapCoWithNoOperationsInTheUK? Not a chance.
• The broadsheets have seen their influence over potential investors diminish over the years. It’s obvious that investors will form their own views based on multiple news and data sources. We simply do not believe that an institutional investor will be persuaded to participate in an IPO by a puffy article in a broadsheet about a company they are likely to meet face to face and will already have researched themselves. In fact, of all the media, the newswires have the furthest reach and the most sway with investor audiences 
• Clients often fail to understand from the outset the sort of handcuffs that IPO rules (and particularly the 144a SEC restrictions) place on our ability to communicate via the media during the process

So. If broadsheet coverage is no longer as influential, impactful or even guaranteed, then why should an IPO candidate still hire a communications agency? Click here to find out.

#IPO #Communications #helpful