CAP GEMINI, PARIS / FRANCE

Company annual reports illustrated by artists

The Annual Report
(excerpt from : " From SOGETI to CAP GEMINI / 1967 - 1997 A 30-year history ")

The group made another important decision in 1975 : to publish a complete Annual Report on its results, its organization and its activity, even though under no obligation - legal or otherwise - to do so. At once a communications tool and an instrument of group cohesion, a medium for the group's image and a sales support, this Annual Report very quickly set itself apart by its originality. This originality manifested itself, from page one, in the style of its " Letter from the Executive Chairman, " which systematically avoided jargon and platitudes in favor of a very direct analysis of the group situation (" I have a reputation as someone who listens a lot and says very little, " notes Serge Kampf, " so when I do talk, it might as well be to say something. "). It was also manifested in the fact that the entire text was written inhouse by members of the Executive Committee (Michel Jalabert and Michel Berty would be the autors most often put to the test), then reread and corrected, line by line and from beginning to end, by Serge Kampf himself. Dealing with a different theme each year, its continuing exploration of the world of information technology always caught the attention of the profession. Finally, the artwork, carefully selected each year by Kampf, was always striking and presented a departure from the usual stiffness of this sort of publication.*

Thanks to these qualities, the group twice received the prize for Best Annual Report awarded by the magazine La Vie Française - in 1985 for companies quoted on the the Secondary Market of the Paris Stock Exchange (La Bourse), in 1988, for companies quoted on the Regular Monthly Market - and, as a result, to be declared " out of competition " for succeeding years.

* This trend began with the 1977 Annual Report, with drawings by the well known illustrator, Sempé. In particular a " story without words, " spread over two cover pages, which some readers only " figured out " many years later.

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