Carol Merry
Vice President
Carol provides strategic investor relations, corporate communications and crisis management counsel to a variety of clients and leads the firm’s practices in those areas. Prior to joining Fahlgren Mortine, she was director of investor relations and corporate communications for Lexford Residential Trust, director of corporate marketing and communications for Cardinal Realty Services, Inc. and director of marketing services for the Knights Inn motel chain. Carol is a member of the National Investor Relations Institute and its National Roundtable for Strategic Communications and Reputation Management, a trustee of Columbus Landmarks Foundation and a four-year judge in The Ohio State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship Deloitte Business Plan Competition.

By Carol Merry, Vice President

There’s a battle going on today.

The irony is that the topic being argued over is probably not visible to those to whom it matters most.

The first shot was fired this morning when a few of the IR professionals on Twitter started sharing a Brunswick Group news release and presentation that reported the results of an online survey of about 500 buy-side investors and sell-side analysts in the U. S. and Europe. The key finding is that the investment community “overwhelmingly looks to companies as their primary source of information relevant to their investment recommendations and decisions, with the influence of new media playing a limited, albeit growing role.”

This proved controversial to the social media advocates on Twitter, although probably not a surprise to most corporate IROs, who have heard similar opinions from National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) panelists and webinar presenters. A number of tweets were unleashed in response - some saying they didn’t believe all the results and others finding ways to rationalize their way through the findings to show that investors do use social media. Interestingly, no one that I follow took the conciliatory path.

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By Carol Merry, Vice President

Lightening up the business world.

Do you like Stanley Bing? I do. I look forward to his column in Fortune and have enjoyed some of his books. Like most businesspeople, I read a lot of business news written by business reporters with varying degrees of business savvy.

I think Bing’s work is endearing because there’s so very little levity in business reporting. It’s all so heavy… so serious… so important. Today, with 24/7 business news and an ever-expanding universe of business blogs, being tuned in has become a requirement. We’re afraid we’ll miss something and not be able to hold up our end of random conversations based on repeating news more often than on thoughtful comments. I’m as guilty as the next person of what could in other circumstances be described as gossip. But we call it business news.

Once in a while you find some tongue-in-cheek comments. Mostly what you find is trying-too-hard-to-be-cute headlines that are not nearly as cute as their caffeine-crazed copy desk staffers wanted them to be.

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By Carol Merry, Vice President

Truth, luck and understanding.

Deloitte Consulting published an interesting study that was reported on in the April issue of the Harvard Business Review in an article titled “Are ‘Great’ Companies Just Lucky?” The report and more widely available coverage must have had business success book authors everywhere feeling momentary panic to think that their lists and insights may have no measurable bearing on improving performance. 

The study found that only one in four of the companies identified as major success stories actually qualified as having achieved remarkable performance and that the rest were just lucky due to being able to take advantage of circumstances.

The moral of the story, so to speak, is that success stories can be valuable when used as a source for what the HBR calls “inspiration and fuel for introspection.” Put another way, it’s what you take from them that matters. That sounds obvious - but maybe it’s not. 

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By Carol Merry, Vice President

Recently I talked with a long-time client about what trust means.

His company has done an outstanding job of building and defending their brand - as proven by their customers’ loyalty during this economic downturn.

Gaining and keeping customer trust is not easy. The Forrester Research paper on interactive marketing reveals the deplorable levels of trust that consumers have in corporate blogs because so many of them are “marketing” instead of providing help.  

Helping may be the new selling. Marketing is moving from “here’s why you should buy our product” to “here’s how we can help you.” Note that it’s not just our product that can help you - it’s the maker/seller that can help. That’s what consumer expect. But they want you to show them, not just tell them, how you can help - you must prove it. 

There was a stop along the way called “here are the benefits to you for buying our product.” It was a kind of mid-way point between two “why” and “how” approaches. But clearly marketers must evolve to being seen as helpers/facilitators/enablers.

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By Carol Merry, Vice President

“Risk” is probably one of the large words in business news tag clouds these days.

A NIRI newsletter called it the “word du jour in boardrooms and on the minds of institutional investors.” A September 15 story on CFO.com says that, after relative finance department obscurity, risk managers will be offered a seat at the big corporate finance table following the recent meltdowns.

“What’s your risk tolerance?”

That’s usually the first question from an investment advisor. With the answer, they fashion a strategy that matches your goals to your risk profile. It’s a procedure that more companies and organizations might want to emulate.

Knowing that a momentary misstep may turn into a widely publicized and endlessly speculated-upon incident with an extended lifespan on YouTube is intimidating. You can’t plan for everything. And you can’t be inhibited in growing your business. As the CFO.com story declares, risk management is misunderstood: “It is not about eliminating or minimizing risk, as the name would imply. It is about avoiding uncompensated risk.” In other words, determine what level of reward is worth what level of risk.

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