revolutionary. ideas. awarded. innovation.
Legal & General, Continuously innovative
From the beginning, Legal & General was a customer who knew precisely what they wanted, and constantly tested the limits and possibilities of the online report.
Fritz Einzinger
Those who stand still, don’t progress.
That probably best describes our cooperation with Legal & General.
Chart Generator 2010 One could say it was good timing when we had the opportunity to present ourselves to Legal & General in the autumn of 2006 following a cold call. Web Editor, Tristán White, und Corporate Communications Manager, John Godfrey, were so enthusiastic about our services and references that they were confident in facilitating our entry into the UK market.
From the beginning, Legal & General was a customer who knew precisely what they wanted, and constantly tested the limits and possibilities of the online report. Innovation was always the overriding aim, and Tristán White always worked on implementing the occasionally revolutionary ideas (see generic iPad landing page of the 2010 Annual Report) within the company, e.g. face to face with those responsible for the Corporate Brand. The result is generally known to justify the means - and did so from the very beginning.
2007 – The cross-medial approach
Cover of the printed report 2007 As early as the 2007 online report, we placed management videos on the start page in an innovative carousel, which also appeared on the cover of the printed annual report. This created a never-before seen link, and in doing so drew a high level of attention from the offline to the online report. This cross-medial approach received the highest possible award in 2007 from the UK IR Society as Best Annual Report FTSE-100 (Print & Online). That was, of course, enormously important for our self-confidence in the first year of our cooperation, and it convinced Tristán White and John Godfrey that they had made the right choice in coming to us.
An important concern for Tristán from the outset was also to achieve the best possible level of accessibility. For this reason, all of the reports fulfil the highest requirements for use by people with disabilities on a website. 
Landing page 2007 video Detailed alt texts, text explanations of graphics and diagrams, as well as transcripts of videos and an explanatory text of functions also contribute towards optmizing the report as much as possible for use by the blind and visually impaired.
After we had made a good start on the 2007 report, we were also able to implement the 2007 Sustainability Report, which was able to impress with the same recipe for success used for the annual report.
2008 – Focus on online and added value
Landing page 2008 The use of videos was boosted even further in the following year. The number rose to nine, which could no longer be sensibly accommodated on the start page. That’s why we used a special video webcast page. To simplify access to the report and to lead the user more quickly to the desired contents, I initiated the use of a moving 3D tag cloud. In 2008, we also integrated our interactive PDF Manager, with which users can compile a tailored report in PDF format. This gave the online report, other than the interactive key figure comparison and our alternative topic access, another useful tool for offering users web-appropriate added value.
Webcast video 2008
The sustainability report, which we also implemented this year, even had 19 videos in use at the time. The video webcast page was naturally also offered again. In the end, the report consisted a great deal of videos, which naturally made it particularly attractive and interactive.
In return for this, we also received another order from Legal & General for the Customer Experience Report. In the case of this report, the focus was on the online version, 
Webcast overview 2008 to which we later added interactive diagrams. There was no printed document - only a Word file - which we beautified with diagrams from our online report. The interaction between our technical leadership and the innovative online first setting of Legal & General is particularly clear here. An online report has so much more added value than a printed report, and this should be exploited.
2009 – New design
Landing page 2009 In 2009, the main focus of attention lay on redesigning the website. The online report was to follow the new Corporate Design of Legal & General. The coordination process achieved that year was enormous, especially as the actual relaunch of the Corporate Website took place after publication of the report. That’s why I had to have our designers come up with a large number of design suggestions on the basis of the - as yet not finalised - online style guide, and have these approved by the people responsible for branding at Legal & General. As expensive videos had also been produced this time, I had a 3D video flip designed for the start page. Cross-references in the printed report - as in the year before - directed a lot of cross-medial attention to the videos in the online report.
2010 – The triumphant march of mobile tablets
Generic iPad simulation 2010 The triumphant march of mobile tablet computers made it clear that Tristán’s sure sense of innovation was close to the parallel implementation of the 2010 online report as an iPad app. While we pushed on with the complex programming of an iPad framework application, Tristán was pursuing the idea of designing the start page of the online report as a generic tablet. On the basis of his Photoshop suggestions, I had our Flash designer create a revolving prototype, which in addition to having a fully functioning search function, also offered the possibility of re-arranging the linked icons as desired. For a time, we even played with the idea of doing away with a conventional start page altogether, and enabling access to the report solely with the generic iPad. Concerns that this would confuse and place excessive demands on the user caused us to back-pedal slightly. Thus the generic iPad was only offered as an alternative start page and gimmick, leaving the usual start page as the standard entry point to the report.
Landing page 2010 Implementation of the iPad app itself presented a great challenge. As Apple needs several days to approve an app, it was clear that we needed an idea of how we could make the new report available on time to synchronise with the go-live of the online report in the AppStore. We therefore created the app with the contents of the 2009 report and only uploaded the new contents on the publication date. A particularly important point was that all the content of the report should be available in the app in order to combine the strengths of the online medium (search function, direct linkabilitylink ability or multimedia use) with the strengths of a printed report (e.g. offline availability).
Board of Directors 2010 The idea of advertising the actual app in the AppStore with the generic Flash iPad generated a lot of attention. In addition to several media reports, e.g. in the online edition of the Financial Times, the online report was also nominated for various awards, receiving, amongst others, the DigiAward for “Best online annual report” from CorpsComm. We fervently hope that even more awards will follow.
Outlook
In any event, it will be exciting to see where this fruitful customer relationship will lead us, because - as so neatly expressed: “After the report is before the report!”