Last month NIRI unveiled the seventh edition of its landmark Standards of Practice - Disclosure publication, the ultimate resource for the investor relations (IR) profession. To meet the demands of the ever-changing regulatory landscape in the U.S., this new edition not only refreshes existing content but also integrates valuable insights from several related NIRI best practice guides.

Rebranding is risky business, especially if your reputation is already tanking. Take Twitter's change over to "X" last Monday. In embracing its aspirations as “an everything app”, the company’s roll-out of its new logo was a complete flop. The bird was still flying everywhere online except for on Twitter’s homepage.

Your headshot is crucial for establishing authority and communicating power, confidence, authenticity, and creativity on your website. Adding a smile increases your likeability and exhibits friendly, competent, and trustworthy qualities that can attract investors. A study by Priceonomics using a content creation app called Snappr evaluated the headshots of leading CEOs from each of the 2020 Fortune 500 companies.

As we enter the second half of 2023, the IPO market is beginning to show signs of recovery with renewed activity. After a notable slowdown last year, there have been several promising public offerings in the first half of this year. Notably, Johnson & Johnson's spinoff, Kenvue, which achieved a remarkable valuation of $50 billion following its successful IPO on the NYSE.

Clarify Capital recently tested the effectiveness of GPT-4 created pitch decks vs. human-crafted pitch decks, and the results are remarkable. (The experiment asked 250 investors and 250 business owners to review and rate pitch decks created by GPT-4 against those made by humans—and, those surveyed, did not know AI was involved at all.)

Mid-year is the perfect moment to review the results of your investor relations (IR) activities and plan for the next two quarters to ensure a successful second half of the year. Reflection combined with recalibration enables you to improve marketing efforts, as well as tweak how you present and share your company’s story.