Whether you’re an IR Team of one or many, looking to add “best practices” to your daily program, or a CEO/CFO looking to co-source your program with a strategic IR specialist, Alpha brings partnership and project solutions that will solve your needs.  We bring insights and real world advice that tactical, data-driven entities can’t provide.

• IR Strategy & Planning
  

  IR Strategy & Planning

  Does your current IR firm feel like your personal assistant? Are you tired of getting data dumps or high-level PR perspectives versus actionable and strategic IR insights that might change your valuation? At Alpha IR we build investment brands, and we’ve built a full suite of research-based support tools and deliverables that help our clients know they have a real strategic foundation underlying their programs.   

  We approach each and every IR event, press release and earnings communication guided by a strategic plan that was built within our first 90-days of support for any new client and is updated annually for our long-term partners. Don’t settle for tactical IR solutions, partner with the premiere IR consultancy in the country, and bring a new strategic approach to your program by adding Alpha IR to your team. 

• Strategic Messaging & Materials
  

  Strategic Messaging & Materials

  Whether your company is navigating change, renewing its strategic direction, or looking for a fresh approach to your investor communications, Alpha IR can help. We have deep experience across all industries, and have worked with numerous companies that have unique business models and highly complex issues to navigate.  

  The critical component of our messaging consultation comes from our daily interactions with the buy-side and through our research function. We have a deep understanding of your most critical investors, and thus we can refine, focus, and tailor your investor communications to attract, retain, and guide all of your key shareholders.  

  Tactically, our messaging support includes a comprehensive analysis of all of your key investor support tools including your investor PowerPoint, the investor portion of your website, factsheets, annual reports, and of course, all earnings communications. 

• IR Measurement & Benchmarking
  

  IR Measurement & Benchmarking

  Even best-in-class public companies find it difficult to accurately measure their IR programs. Without proper measurement, it is nearly impossible to set the meaningful qualitative and quantitative strategic goals that: 1) Build investors’ confidence in the organization’s ability to create measurable value, and 2) Help today’s IROs both guide and own the IR discussion with their management teams and boards.   

  While collecting investor perceptions is a critical part of the tool kit, and something Alpha IR is the market leader in, it is only one of many tools you should be considering as you look to build a truly “best practice” IR program. As a result, and through decades of real-world experience, our team has developed a proprietary measurement toolbox that can help bring stronger direction and goal setting to your program.  Put the “Alpha” in your IR program and build an impactful measurement and benchmarking program that will ensure long-term IR program success. 

• Investor/Analyst Relationship-Based Targeting
  

  Investor/Analyst Relationship-Based Targeting

  Are you a mid- or large-cap company with an executive team that is tired of seeing the same investors at every conference you attend? Or are you an underfollowed small-cap company that needs help improving its visibility to high-quality, long-term investors? 

  Whether you are big or small, Alpha IR has developed a proprietary quantitative and qualitative process that can help you better prioritize your investor conferences, non-deal roadshows, and analyst coverage. Our proprietary targeting methodology has helped numerous companies build high-quality shareholder bases and overall analyst coverage over the last two decades, and can help you and your executives spend less time on IR, and higher-quality time across all of your investor interactions.  

  Lastly, if you’re an under-followed company and/or frustrated with the quality of today’s sell-side sponsored meetings, let our team setup an Alpha IR driven roadshow as our universe of quality institutions is unlimited.  

• Perception Studies (not Surveys)
  

  Perception Studies (not Surveys)

  As an organization, we have delivered over 750 perception studies during our IR careers. Over the last twelve months alone, we had well over 1,000 conversations with the Street for our clients. Our perception study approach is truly unique – and to be clear – as a firm we do not believe in the survey approach that many of our tactical competitors take. Influential Wall Street investors do not have time to answer a question like:, “Rate the management team on a scale of 1 to 10.” However, they will take the time to have an in-depth conversation with a smart firm that has the pedigree, background and deep knowledge of the story to discuss value-driving issues. Thus, we refer to our work as “issues-based studies” and the Street often thanks us profusely for: 1) Understanding our clients’ businesses, and 2) Not wasting their time with meaningless surveys.

  Further, do not be fooled when our competitors claim that buy-side investors always want to be anonymous. That’s categorically false and only intended to disguise a weak quality of a sample set as again real investors don’t do surveys. In our multiple decades of experience, the buy-side is not shy and only 1 in 20 will ask to remain anonymous.

  Lastly, given our issues-based approach, our studies conclude with numerous, actionable suggestions to improve your IR messaging, materials and overall program. This advice is provided by senior strategists who support multiple strategic IR programs for our monthly clients, and thus offers meaningful differentiation versus a tactical survey approach.

  Perception Study Factsheet

• IR Audits & Plans
  

  IR Audits & Plans

  The foundation of all of Alpha IR programs is research. Whether you’re a company caught in the middle of an unplanned business transition, or is looking to level-set and elevate an existing IR program, our IR Audit is a tool you can use to bring a more strategic approach to your IR efforts.

  Our audits are comprehensive and dig into critical issues surrounding your IR materials and messaging, influential investor perceptions, historical Wall Street visibility, future investor targeting, your IR team’s structure, etc. These audits can be performed on a project basis to test our approach, or they form the foundation of our monthly partnership programs. 

  They are also often directly contracted with many of our clients’ boards looking to get an independent third-party review of how they can improve their IR efforts, and ultimately their long-term valuation. 

• Investor/Analyst Days
  

  Investor/Analyst Days

  Investor Days have become critical investment brand-building exercises for public companies of all sizes, and Alpha IR has unparalleled experience providing end-to-end Investor Day support programs. This includes supporting both in-person events, either onsite or in New York City, as well as virtual-format presentations. 

  Our leaders have consulted on well over 250 Investor Days, and we have the holistic knowhow to make your Investor/Analyst Day a huge success. We go through great effort to understand the current message alignment/misalignment, grasp the corporate strategy, and marry the two to develop a high-resonance messaging platform for the event. Further, we complement that strategic support with best-in-class execution and tactical support. Whether you’re looking to outsource the event management, or just procure backup strategic and coaching advice, Alpha IR has the right experience you need to maximize your Investor Day. 

  Alpha’s Investor Day Fastsheet

• Interim IR Support &/or Staffing Services
  

  Interim IR Support &/or Staffing Services

  Given our work across all industries and market-caps, our team has holistic experience and can immediately fill an unexpected gap or a planned transition at either an IR leadership or support level. With a three-person team model, we bring the right resources to flex quickly and ensure full coverage for your IR function.

  Additionally, with 20+ years of building IR advisors, as well as training multiple levels of corporate America to grow into senior IR in-house roles, we also provide IR staffing solutions (Alpha IR Staffing) on a contingent basis for clients of all sizes. 

  Alpha IR Group can fill the temporary gap, and Alpha IR Staffing can help you find a permanent in-house solution. 

With stakeholder expectations higher than ever, our corporate reputation team focuses on promoting and protecting your brand using data-driven, multi-channel storytelling. We bring large-agency experience and a small company touch to help you reach your target audiences with the right content on the right channel at the right times.  

• Corporate Reputation Campaigns
  

  Corporate Reputation Campaigns

  Rapidly evolving business and geopolitical environments, changing public expectations of companies, and the rise of disinformation are all leading to disruption to your business model and increased reputation risk. Our team will partner with you to understand the communications landscape and key stakeholder perceptions of your brand, then design and execute multi-stakeholder, multi-channel campaigns that protect and promote your corporate brand.

• Executive Positioning & Thought Leadership
  

  Executive Positioning & Thought Leadership

  Breakthrough thought leadership and executive positioning programming starts with identifying the right platform for your company and its leaders. Our team will help you find the white space and work with you to create a platform that disseminates the messages, themes, topics, and content that will drive a new conversation about your brand, your expertise and, by extension, your experience as a leader. Such a platform should reflect your brand—and personal—values. Most importantly, it should be told by voices from throughout your organization, from the C-suite to frontline employees.

• Media Relations
  

  Media Relations

  Brand reputation can’t be bought. It must be earned.  As the cost of paid media continues to rise (more than 4x the price as compared to five years ago), ratings and viewership continue to fragment and decline. The complexities of the scenarios and situations that companies find themselves in don’t lend themselves to paid advertising solutions. But a powerful idea covered by traditional media publication, or gone viral on social media, can be amplified with paid media to more deeply engage your target audiences. Our media team uses the power of storytelling, underpinned by audience data and analytics, to develop the right content, on the right channel, to reach your key stakeholders. Our team has deep experience working with newsrooms and placing stories in top tier business publications like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, AP, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Axios and New York Times, as well as executing media strategies that reach key trade, regional and policy media.

• Social Media Content & Counsel
  

  Social Media Content & Counsel

  Human-centric storytelling and engaging content in both traditional and social media is critical to building and sustaining corporate reputation. Powerful paid media ideas don’t translate to earned media. But powerful earned media ideas will work in any context. Our team helps companies leverage the right social and digital channels to tell a compelling brand story. We use social listening tools to ensure we are effectively listening to social media conversations and utilizing trends and insights to shape content and channel strategies. We’ll also work with your team to craft a tailored measurement approach that examines engagement across social and digital channels and impacts the KPIs most important to you. Our team can also deploy paid amplification tactics across social channels to extend the life of our content and stories.

• Employee Communications & Engagement
  

  Employee Communications & Engagement

  Employees are a company’s most important stakeholder. Building and sustaining corporate reputation and trust through turbulent environments and improving business performance starts with ensuring that your workforce is engaged, informed, empowered, and supported. Demonstrating transparency with regards to company values and actions is a first step to ensuring that your workforce feels engaged and listened to. Employees want to feel good about understanding their role in achieving success for the organization. They expect that their company take a stand in social issues as trust in public institutions continues to falter.

  As workforce norms continue to evolve in a post-pandemic world, we’ll partner with your team to understand perceptions and attitudes of your employee base so that we can design and deploy trust-building and employee brand-advocacy programs that propel your business forward.

• ESG Communications Counsel
  

  ESG Communications Counsel

  An effective ESG framework is critical to long-term, sustainable success for any enterprise. Our team has deep experience in helping organizations understand stakeholder expectations, perceptions, and attitudes around ESG, including investors, employees, key customers, and policymakers. We’ll partner with you to provide counsel on engagement and communications strategies around your ESG framework and programming, trends and insights on broader industry efforts, perception studies, investor day support, investor targeting, industry and policy events, and reporting and communication tools and tactics.

• Issues Management + Crisis Response
  

  Issues Management & Crisis Response

  We believe companies and brands that identify reputational threats and vulnerabilities are best-prepared to prevent or respond to actual crises. Our team will help you understand where you’re vulnerable and equip you to respond quickly and proactively when issues arise. In times of real crisis, we will work alongside you to define and execute an effective communications response strategy. And we’ll align with you after a crisis to help your brand emerge stronger than before the challenge.

• Brand Repositioning, Launch, & Execution
  

  Brand Repositioning, Launch, & Execution

  Compelling brands connect with their stakeholders by bringing a company’s values to life through words and imagery. Brands tell your audiences what you stand for and why they should care about you. Likewise, stakeholders often overlook or ignore ineffective brands. Our team will work with you to fully understand your brand goals, assess your organizational values and interpret your “why” in a way that sets you apart, gets you noticed and makes you memorable and meaningful to all your key stakeholders.

Building a strong, sustained corporate reputation and investor brand starts with understanding your key stakeholders’ awareness and perceptions. Our team is skilled in primary and secondary research to inform your story. When you’re looking to support a strategic decision with objective third-party perspective and expertise, we know how to design the right solution for you.

• Primary & Secondary Audience Research
  

  Primary and Secondary Audience Research

  Nothing is more important to communicating effectively than understanding the concerns and attitudes of your organization’s key stakeholders. Our seasoned team of researchers and analysts conduct primary and secondary research, polling, and focus groups to understand and plan against the realities inherent in your competitive set and business environment, and among your key stakeholders. The information we gather shapes internal and external messaging in a compelling, engaging, and motivating way.

   

• Master Narrative & Messaging Development
  

  Master Narrative & Messaging Development

  Whether you seek a compelling, cohesive way to articulate your brand, or you need to effectively communicate new products or services, we can work with you to shape and develop a narrative that connects. We then apply this narrative to your most important communiques, including web and social media content, media releases and materials, speeches and presentations, annual reports, ESG reports, internal communications and more.

   

• Media & Messaging Training
  

  Media & Messaging Training

  Stakeholders today expect a company’s leaders to be visible, articulate and compelling. We equip your leaders and key spokespeople to deliver messages confidently, even under the most trying circumstances. Through our programming, your leaders can expertly conduct media interviews, deliver speeches and presentations and sell customers.

   

• Measurement & Analytics Frameworks
  

  Measurement & Analytics Framework for all Programming

  You should have a goal in mind every time you communicate. Are you trying to inspire employee action or a change customer behavior? Gain brand fans and supporters? Close a sale? We can help you identify your communications goal and build metrics to understand whether you are advancing toward that goal. And we can analyze which messages are having the greatest impact, or evaluate why you fall short of your goals if you do. Our measurement and analytics approach will ensure you continually communicate with purpose.

   

• Competitive Monitoring/Quarterly Reporting
  

  Competitive Monitoring/Quarterly Reporting

  All of our full-service, monthly partnership clients receive detailed bi-weekly, monthly and/or quarterly reporting. This includes extensive competitive monitoring for most, and in-depth quarterly board reports reviewing recent trading, earnings message resonance, sell-side consensus model changes, buying and selling of critical investors, and routine KPIs for the collective IR program. We think of these reports as our collective team’s quarterly IR report card, and our clients’ boards love the third-party aspect of these strategic reports.

  Additionally, our teams often flex to support an overloaded internal finance team during earnings season, and can provide written summaries of industry peer earnings calls. This includes a review of their performance vs. expectations, guidance changes/commentary, key messages from the prepared portion of the call, and key Q&A details. 

  Lastly, given that the large majority of our team has ex-Wall Street backgrounds, this work often expands into more detailed special projects around financials issues such as dividend policy, buyback analyses, business model evaluations, and M&A support. When you need more than just an IR advisor, but also a team that can support and extend your finance team’s capabilities, you should consider Alpha IR. 

   

• Guidance, Disclosure & IR Training
  

  Guidance, Disclosure & IR Training

  With over 100+ years of IR advisory and Wall Street experience, the Alpha team is ideally suited to help train and coach any new corporate executive who inherits the IR function. Whether your new IRO is a former Treasurer, FP&A, CorpComm, or has other experience, our team knows how to bring them up to speed quickly, making sure they understand all SEC guidelines and proper disclosure rules. We also perform similar training for new Board members routinely.

  As it relates to guidance, this decision is a massively complex and often somewhat contentious issue for many companies internally. Boards hate the liability. Management teams struggle with the right metrics and proper range. Some companies have forecastable businesses, and others have extremely volatile business models. Every company is different, with different shareholder profiles and analyst coverage requiring different outlook approaches. 

  At Alpha, we’ve seen just about every business model, every Wall Street following, and have the insights needed to help you maximize the guidance decision. When you need a partner and counselor to guide the Board on the pre-release process, or narrowing the range, or shifting your guidance policy, we have the experience and knowhow to make your team comfortable that you’ve made the right decision. 

• IR Gap/Benchmarking Analysis
  

  IR Gap/Benchmarking Analysis

  In today’s world, data and digital analysis tools are increasingly sophisticated, ubiquitous and often free. These tools of examination are at the disposal of most investors and many institutions have placed them at the center of their investment process. 

   One of the key foundations of Alpha IR’s work on behalf of our corporate clients is our extensive and regular interaction with the investment community. Combining our historical and broad investment industry experience with our own digital expertise, we have developed the tools to conduct this important analysis on behalf of our clients. Knowledge is power, and Alpha IR can put together this important information for management teams and Boards in a way that is both comprehensive and yet streamlined – ready for action. 

• Board Advisory Special Projects
  

  Board Advisory Special Projects

  The IR function remains underfunded, understaffed and under-appreciated across the public company spectrum. This is especially true for small and mid-cap companies. The Boards of those companies often have a sense of this issue, but rarely ask for help until they have serious IR messaging and/or visibility issues. 

  At Alpha IR, we routinely counsel Boards of Directors around the key issues they need to assess, and guide their management teams around anything and everything that might impact their IR program. This includes performing independent IR Audits, valuation work, capital allocation reviews, the building of activist and/or crisis preparedness plans, etc. Crisis firms are staffed by highly intelligent PR people, but Alpha IR brings you true IR depth and experience. Hire an IR specialist for an IR need! 

Alpha brings over 150 collective years of complex transaction and issues management expertise, which support a full suite of services that make our firm truly unique.  Today’s leading companies are tired of getting the “D team” at large multi-practice PR agencies and/or crisis firms, and our customized solutions cover all key corporate stakeholder communications.

• Risk Assessment & Playbook Development
  

  Risk Assessment & Playbook Development

  Alpha facilitates efficient workshops with your senior leaders to establish a comprehensive, 360-degree view of where your reputation is potentially at risk. Working with subject matter experts and functional leaders in your business, we then develop issues-specific playbooks that enable you to respond immediately when those issues move toward crisis – maintaining control of your own narrative and reputation.

• Crisis Response Protocol & Simulations
  

  Crisis Response Protocol & Simulations

  Alpha will work with you to identify and prepare your crisis communications response team. We define team member roles and responsibilities, due diligence protocols, issues escalation thresholds and simple processes to ensure your organization responds efficiently when issues arise. To test your team’s ability to execute in a crisis, we also create and facilitate realistic tabletop exercises and simulations based in the realities of your business.

• CEO/Leadership Transitions
  

  CEO/Leadership Transitions

  CEO transitions are on the rise — both planned and unplanned. While it has become commonplace within the global business environment, leadership change almost always presents more risk than opportunity to a company’s enterprise value. However, the magnitude and duration of that impact depends largely on measures taken by boards and executive teams in the months leading up to, during, and following the change. 

  The Alpha team will work with you to communicate leadership changes with an eye toward reassuring and motivating employees, investors, customers, policymakers, regulators, and others in support of your brand and business. During the critical first 100 days of new leadership, we help you plan and communicate your new leaders’ vision for the business and strategic plans for achieving that vision. Then, we support your leaders as they transition from the initial honeymoon period toward long term action.

• Litigation Communications & Support
  

  Litigation Communications & Support

  It’s inevitable: Every company, brand, and leadership team must cope with the prospect of litigation. We partner with your internal and external legal counsel to ensure stakeholders hear and understand your perspective amidst legal challenges. We aim to simplify complex legal arguments in simple, clear, and understandable ways aimed at building ongoing support of your organization throughout legal challenges.

• IPOs, SPACs, M&A, Divestitures & Spin-offs
  

  IPOs, SPACs, M&A, Divestitures & Spin-offs

  Alpha has supported hundreds of IPOs, SPACs, acquisitions, divestitures and spin-offs across multiple sectors and market-caps. This ranges from multi-billion-dollar transformative IPOs and/or mergers, to small strategic bolt-on acquisitions. Transaction communication requires thoughtful analysis and forward-looking thinking, the kind that only true corporate communications experts like those at Alpha can bring.

• Transformation/Restructuring Comms
  

  Transformation/Restructuring Communications

  Change is never easy, but corporate cycles continue to shrink, and transformation and restructurings are more common than ever. Each transformation is unique, and often involves complex guidance and key stakeholder communication decisions. Those choices and your communication strategies surrounding them, will have a huge impact on your ability to navigate this kind of change seamlessly, such that you can focus on your new future.

  Alpha is an expert in transformations and restructurings, and has consulted hundreds of management teams and Boards of Directors through this strategic process. We bring the experience and strategic insights you need to set the path, rebuild credibility, and change key influencer’s perceptions.   

• Activist Counsel, Preparedness & Defense
  

  Activist Counsel, Preparedness & Defense

  The first day a company receives an activist letter or phone call is usually a very scary one. Our leaders have counseled companies involved in very public and hostile activist situations, and also with those who were very private and cooperative. We’ve even counseled activist events involving whistle-blowing situations and prolonged forensic accounting analyses.  

  Every activist situation is different, but the key is to uncover the true motivations of the investor and take the emotion out of the picture. Most situations can be handled fairly openly as the broader investor community will always have a longer-term investing horizon than the activist. But activist events become multi-stakeholder engagements fairly quickly and Alpha has the experience and governance/legal partners to help you through any activist situation. 

• Capital Raise & Capital Markets Advisory
  

  Capital Raise & Capital Markets Advisory

  When management teams, sponsors, VC/PE firms and boards need independent and strategic capital markets advice, Alpha leverages its leaders’ 100+ years of Wall Street depth and experience. This includes support for strategic events like IPOs, SPACs, capital raises, spin-offs or divestitures of business segments, M&A, capital allocation shifts, etc.

  Our team has been involved in thousands of transactions, across multiple sectors and every market-cap, and can bring the independent experience you need to maximize your capital decisions.