Do You "Date" Your Stakeholders? I'm Kind of not Kidding...

Shareholder loyalty has always been about relationships. It always will be. I've also always said that marketing and communications - especially IR Comm - is kind of like dating.?

You should hear the push back I get from that statement! Dating? Relationships? How about P&L, burn rate and runway. Or how about data readouts, pipelines and shots on goal. All of those are important, yes, but in hard times if the numbers are the only point of connection, it is pretty easy for shareholders to justify a breakup. I think the drop in share price across the biotech and medtech categories points to the opportunity to forge stronger connections. Unless you enjoy getting dumped.?

Companies that endure have a strong foundation of support from people who believe in the company. People who understand what the company is doing beyond the indecipherable SEC filings. When someone puts money in, that's a pretty strong commitment, but it’s just the beginning of the relationship.

It seems that even in complex, scientific or “sophisticated” categories, too many companies struggle to build relationships with their stakeholders. The stakeholders they have and the new ones they want. Good relationships require communication. And that takes a little effort. A little leap of faith from the company. It can be awkward and sometimes hard to talk about yourself appropriately. Especially when the story isn’t so flattering, i.e, any company in our categories in the last two years!

But don’t you respect and admire people who tell you how it is? Isn’t that what makes you stay with that friend over time? We can all smell a perfumed lie from a company. It is easy to spot the hype of a stock promoting retail trading group. Does your company really want to be in these kinds of one-night stands to manipulate share price? That’s not dating. And investors that want to hold on will see that and start to sell or spend their days bashing.

I primarily work with biotechs and med techs at all stages. There's always? the regulatory line of what you can and can not say. Add in public company guidelines and the overthinking kicks into superdrive. There’s compliance, MLR and loads of reasons to tie communications up in review for 2+ months and overthink every social media post, original content, even repackaged already publicly released content…I just can’t tell you how much great content never sees the digital light! And then, nothing gets done. (that’s another topic). So silence beyond filings ensues. Boards get antsier and shareholders sell what they can when they can…I’ll bet there were some pretty ugly Christmas presents this past year!

I’ve been in a front row seat watching companies use up (often unintentionally waste) precious time and dwindling cash-runways while looking for quick fixes and going back to old fix-tactics that used to sort-of work but never really “worked” beyond the meter to begin with.?

But times have changed. Marketing to human beings has changed.?

Now imagine if a company, with angry shareholders and an antsy board, talked to them. Kind of dated them? This is when my agency partner really goes crazy “…I wouldn’t want to DATE my board members and no one else would either…” but hear me out.?

Say the company communicated to their board members the communications strategy they’re executing to soothe angry shareholders and risk-averse strategics. What if they didn’t just tell board members and shareholders what they’re doing, they actually included them in the comms strategy?

Communication, done well and without too much overthinking always wins! Always.

And that is the first of my soap box!

So what do you think?