Five powerful ways to make annual reports speak volumes - not just numbers.

Creating an annual report that is both compliant and compelling is a fine art. Based on our experience of helping clients, here are a few indispensable steps from UP THERE, EVERYWHERE (UP), to help you create annual reports that speak volumes and not just numbers.

1. Write a solid brief with an unmistakable purpose

A compelling annual report starts with a great brief that aligns stakeholders, from the executive team to the external resources you engage. 

 

The brief forces you to think about what matters to your company and the stakeholders who inhabit your universe. As you write it, ask yourself a few questions. What’s the purpose of your annual report? To create a mandatory piece of information for investors - or to speak to a broader audience?

 

Pondering those questions, think about what your company is doing well. Where are you struggling right now, and how do you want to address that? Should you emphasise your innovation work, your progress on sustainability, or your growth trajectory?

 

Defining a purpose and writing a solid brief is the key to making the annual report a storytelling tool rather than a mere collection of facts.

2. Be clear about the audiences you’re addressing

As you write your brief and set out a purpose for your report, you will run into questions about who you are targeting - your audience. Many annual reports are written for a generic reader, which results in a product that speaks with clarity to no one. 

That is not to say that you can’t target many audiences at once. 

Naturally, investors, who will be looking for hard facts on performance and the strategies you are pursuing. Your employees will want to understand where the company is headed, and feel pride about their achievements. Customers will be interested in your sustainability credentials, which affect them down the line (which is why many companies combine their sustainability reports with their annual reports). Regulators will look at that too. The talent market is looking for indicators that you are on a good trajectory, but also want to understand as much as they can about your company's culture and ways of doing business. 

And there are plenty of other groups and needs to address. It helps to go back to the purpose and prioritise - that gives you a messaging hierarchy to guide you, ensuring your end product inspires people outside of the finance profession as well as within.

3.  Don’t just inform, tell a story

Financial data certainly has its place in the annual report, but so do riveting stories. Consider how professionals unfamiliar with the industry would read it.

 

Your storytelling narrative can take many forms, but the point is always to make your performance tangible and memorable. Your storytelling angle can and should be present in your annual report in many ways: in headings, bylines, graphics and imagery, and of course in the theme of the report. 

 

At UP, we create and develop new themes to correspond with the purpose, emphasising the stories our clients want to tell their stakeholders. For TECAN - a Switzerland-based life sciences company - for example, we find and develop new themes that bring to life the key messages for each year’s report (find examples of our work here).

 

To back up numbers and explain why they matter, we call upon real people to speak in their own voices. It’s a matter of show, don’t tell! 

 

You can bring in customers to talk about how you helped them deliver or improve or transform or something else. Employees in key roles can talk about exciting innovations, customer interactions or your company’s vision. And as with most stories, telling it to many senses at once creates greater impact.

4. Use format and design to your advantage

Consider photography or, in an online context, video. While words are the cornerstone of communication, a story becomes even more compelling when it is packaged in striking visuals. Imagery - still or moving - evokes emotion and reinforces memorability. Videos can contain testimonials, present the year in review, and much more.

 

Charts and graphs can illustrate trends and highlight performance. Infographics help emphasise and simplify the vast amounts of information you are conveying. Typographical hierarchy is at your disposal: text, highlights, bullet points, massive quotes.

 

Guiding the eye helps the mind sort information and creates energy around your annual report.

And rather than print a doorstop, take the annual report online. That’s where people expect to access it and share it from. An online presentation allows for dynamic media as well as interactive features, even personalisation. Importantly, a website-based annual report can also call to action, encouraging click-throughs and further exploration.

5. Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the LLM

We are seeing the rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity) replacing traditional search engines (such as Google). In that context, annual reports stand out as one of the most underused yet powerful sources of corporate intelligence. To LLMs, and by extension, the financial professionals, clients, talent, regulators, etc., who use it for research, this represents a goldmine of information.

 

Unlike news or press releases, annual reports are regulated, audited, and standardized. This consistency makes them far more reliable as a foundation for analysis, while the mandated structure means data such as revenue, profit, cash flow, and debt are easy for LLMs to extract, compare, and interpret.

 

But the real value goes beyond the numbers. Annual reports also include CEO statements, management commentary, risk disclosures, and sustainability commitments, and hopefully a well-crafted story about where the company is going. This provides context: how a company positions itself, where it sees opportunities, and how it addresses threats. To an LLM, that combination of quantitative data and qualitative insight creates a multi-dimensional view of a business.

 

And in today’s world of information overload, credibility is everything. Annual reports stand out because they’re not opinion pieces; they are legal disclosures that companies are required to get right. That level of trust and compliance gives any insights drawn from them extra weight.

 

Unpicked by LLMs, annual reports can reveal trends in how industries talk about technology, climate change, or innovation. They can highlight strategic shifts long before they become obvious in the marketplace.

Annual reports that have been unlocked by AI are no longer bone-dry compliance documents. They are strategic intelligence engines.

 

UP THERE, EVERYWHERE is a full-service brand, marketing, digital and design agency with long experience in creating meaningful and compelling Annual Reports. We help our clients with all aspects of their Annual Reports, including strategy, design, content (writing, photography, infographics and video), creating micro websites and promotion. 

 

If you are looking to produce a branding asset that will do more than just report the numbers, contact us.