Picture your typical listed company's audience a decade ago: institutional investors, analysts, a NOMAD who needed keeping happy. The language was formal and the channels were fixed: RNS announcements, annual reports, and a quarterly drumbeat written for people trained to read it.
That audience hasn't disappeared. It's just not the only one in the room any more.
Two cohorts, and most companies are ignoring one
Since 2020, platforms like Trading 212, Freetrade and eToro have pulled millions of new, mostly younger investors into public markets. They decide differently. They follow founders on LinkedIn, watch explainer videos, and invest in what they know, not just in companies with tidy fundamentals on a spreadsheet. They're comfortable with volatility, impatient with opacity, and they trust founders who communicate directly far more than polished corporate statements.
Most listed companies are now speaking to two audiences at once:
- The traditional cohort: institutional, formal, data-first, RNS-led, quarterly.
- The emerging cohort: retail, narrative-first, real-time, platform-native, always on.
The second is a smaller pot of capital today, but for how long?
The principle is old. The drumbeat is faster.
When MicroStrategy began converting its treasury to Bitcoin and communicating that decision directly and relentlessly, it built a base of evangelical shareholders who amplified every announcement. Tesla's retail following came years before institutional conviction. Palantir built communities of devoted retail investors long before it appeared on most institutional radars.
None of these are AIM companies. But patterns establish themselves at scale before they reach smaller markets, and by the time this one arrives in force, the companies that understood it early will hold the advantage.
What these companies share is a story people could follow and a founder they could believe in. Warren Buffett's principle of backing businesses you understand and believe in hasn't changed. It's been supercharged. What's changed is how understanding and belief are formed. It's no longer controlled by a prospectus. It's built by how a CEO shows up across media, how a company handles a bad week in public, whether the story holds together everywhere someone bumps into it, and whether a stranger could explain what you do within 30 seconds of landing on your website.
Brand is a capital-influencing variable
Brand is often treated as a function sitting downstream of the numbers. In reality, it's part of how the numbers gain belief in the first place. For NOMADs advising listed companies, the brief has expanded: it's no longer just guiding clients through compliance and disclosure. It's helping them be found, understood and believed.
What adapting looks like
Two things: making sure the right people can find you, and making sure what they find holds up.
Be visible to investors and to AI.
1. Give straight answers. AI tools favour direct answers to direct questions. A clear FAQ, with the answer right under the question, does real work.
2. Use structured data. Schema markup on investor pages helps AI tools read and cite you correctly.
3. Don't bury the good stuff in a PDF. Put a short web-page summary alongside every annual report or RNS.
4. Say the same thing everywhere. Your website, LSE listing, LinkedIn and news wires should agree. If they don't, AI tools won't trust you enough to cite you.
5. Turn up repeatedly. Regular, authoritative content across several platforms tells search engines and AI tools you're a source worth trusting.
Be coherent once they find you.
- Put the founder in front of the filings. A CEO who talks regularly and directly gives the emerging cohort someone to follow.
- Have a plan for the bad week. How you handle a difficult moment in public is now part of your investment case.
- Run the 30-second test. Could a stranger explain what you do after 30 seconds on your homepage? If not, your narrative needs work.
- Check for coherence, not just accuracy. Your website, deck, LinkedIn and annual report can each be correct and still not add up. Inconsistency reads as uncertainty.
The companies building for this now are compounding a reputation advantage that won't be replicable once the emerging cohort has decided who it trusts. By 2035, the question won't be who the new investor is. It'll be why you weren't ready for them.
First published in Brand Book Vol. IV: Shades of Change. Read the full edition.
