What are the major private equity communications deliverables?
It is increasingly imperative that private equity firms generate informative and compelling content in the interest of demonstrating transparency to their constituent audiences – Limited Partners first and foremost perhaps, but also parties to a transaction, management teams of existing and prospective portfolio companies, customers and constituents of those companies, and current and potential employees at the firm itself. Toward this end, sponsors find themselves responsible for more longform content than they did five years ago, the generation of which is no small feat.
Private Equity PPMs – boring legal document or brand positioning opportunity?
Every private placement fundraise requires a PPM. This document can be copied and pasted from the prior fund, perfunctorily formatted, designed, and published, or it can be an opportunity to influence LP perception regarding the advances in performance and organization that a firm has made in the interval. We occasionally hear some version of the statement “nobody reads PPMs anymore” – are we certain that is true? At the very least, at large institutional LPs, these documents are carefully read by analysts who prepare summaries for Investment Committees; at best, some segment of the decisionmaking audience prefers written exposition and will draw inferences from the document’s narrative, information, and packaging.
ESG Reports – sustainability in a sleek wrapper
ESG or Sustainability Reports, while barely of notice five years ago, are now proliferate, and many mid-sized managers are rushing to achieve industry standard.
The Year-In-Review – an easy marketing win for private equity firms
Year-in-Review marketing pieces are another increasingly popular longer format communications medium. These documents can be disseminated via email, social media, and/or posted on a sponsor’s website. (Best practice is to plan ahead and build the YIR piece as an actual page within a firm’s website, and then elegantly circulate a link via the above channels.) Some firms even send these missives twice yearly or quarterly.
How can Darien Group help?
Over the past eight years, Darien Group has assisted with dozens of the above pieces of longform branded content, both LP-exclusive documents such as PPMs and DDQs, and public-facing materials like ESG Reports and Year-In-Review pieces. We have assisted all types of managers, from large cap GPs looking for fresh perspective on an eighth flagship PPM to newer managers seeking to leverage our knowledge of best practices toward the same medium.
We offer the same set of skills to these longform documents that we do toward websites, pitchbooks, and other vehicles: messaging strategy, positioning consultancy, content development, copywriting, formatting, and graphic design and production. Some clients might use us only for graphic design, others want a more integrated and holistic scope of work.
The key difference between longform documents and other assignments such as pitchbooks is that lead times are longer. Laying out, formatting, and graphic designing a 120 page PPM takes understandably longer than doing the same for a 25 slide presentation. Additionally, because these pieces tend to be relatively static in their content, we frequently recommend using the Adobe software suite rather than Microsoft to allow for substantial incremental upgrades with respect to aesthetics.
