Winning a successful IPO - An art of communication

I often leave a question when I exchange debate on the importance of Corporate Communications with the sponsors of the companies' questioning, why is that our drawing room the most tastefully decorated portion of our house? The answer comes natural, because anyone walking in for the first time gets the best impression of our living style.
How does one reflect the living style, the taste and the level of aesthetics of a company? It is the tools of communications, the website, the social media, the visiting card, the employees and every external message or publication that carries the logo of the company, speaks the personality of the company.
In over 10 years of my professional service and having worked in various industries, capital market, airline, packaging; the scope and communications is observed to be grossly under estimated and underrated. For many organisations, communications is still a part of HR function. For others, it has sought a strategic position in the organisation, however it is still an under-utilised function. Interesting is to mention, a common belief amongst the B2B businesses is that they don't need to brand themselves or they don't need to focus on their communication tools. This argument becomes hard to defend in times of pitching a new corporate client as that is the very time when the company needs a corporate documentary to visually introduce itself, that's when the same B2B company would require a brochure to leave with the client and that's when their potential corporate client before forming a business deal would look out to their website and media reports to their own understanding or reference check.
The lack of understanding amongst the sponsors of the companies' pose serious challenges to the Communications professionals in proving the worth of the company beyond numbers and figures. Companies more often dwell deep in following the numbers on the balance sheet. Effective communications strategy in place not only gives vision to the company but also bridges the gap between the company and its stakeholders both internal and external. Besides, translating the strengths of the company, The objective of corporate communications function is to create an impact - an impact that translates businesses strengths', that carries the art of story telling the success of the day to day business, that impacts the perception of the company in the minds of its stakeholders.
Interestingly, companies aspiring to listing on the stock exchange often discredit the role and need of having effective and sufficient communications material with them before approaching the investors at the road shows. Believing the investors to believe in investing in the IPO stocks over power point presentation and prospectus is now a lost game. Investor community cannot be approached and treated with same fashion as the consumer market, they expect a deeper understanding of the company, its production unit, its scale of operations, the culture and history of the company and the experience shared by the employees through visuals and videos. This brings us back to the same notion of designing the drawing room of your house and the board room of your company that comes with extra delicacy and sophistication as you are conscious enough of your image in the market and the society you operate. Companies often overlook that they need to be as much conscious in projecting their infrastructure, employees, culture, production process as everything speaks about the company and carries a certain image of the company. Companies communicating effectively yield higher transparency and enjoy greater, deeper and stronger image in their respective market. At times the image of the company outweighs the figures it produces. IPO's for companies is an art of selling their tangible and intangible assets that may not produce greater impact from power point presentations alone. IPO's are not just about exhibiting the financial health of the business, its as much an affair of projecting the internal corporate health of the company with the external community - the investors.