When uncertainty rules the hearts of investors, wise companies communicate. Amid all the nervousness over the scale of the developing economic slowdown, a trawl through the trading updates and other announcements of mid-market companies short-listed for this year’s award is a calming – and thought-provoking – experience.

An Asian oil and gas producer and explorer still has plenty to cheer about. If people do not move house, they may replace those worn-out carpets. Parents may cancel the family fortnight in a Spanish luxury villa, but they will not pull the plug on their children’s educational trips. Nor will local authorities, and other organisations, drop capital projects they have spent years developing.

Winner: Holidaybreak

Carl Michel has a novel way of communicating with investors. The chief executive of Holidaybreak took a group of shareholders and investment analysts to Lincolnshire for a swaying rope-walk 50 feet above the ground.

First-hand experience of the activities offered by PGL, an acquisition that provides adventure holidays for children, helped the investment community understand the Holidaybreak strategy, says Mr Michel.

It also shows investors some of the properties acquired, the level of out-of-season visitors, and gives them a chance to check the quality of management down to divisional level. “I think it shows them that the company can let its hair down and still feel the same,” says Mr Michel. “It also gives a very tangible quality to the investment.”

Investor days such as the Lincolnshire outing can be a time-effective way to communicate in depth with prospective and present investors, Holidaybreak believes.

Prising analysts out of their London offices is not easy, but a widespread swing in investor sentiment in the past six months makes it more necessary, says Mr Michel. Blue-chip companies with easily-traded shares are crawled over by analysts. If you are a mid-market company, “you have to work harder,” says Mr Michel. “There has been a reduction in liquidity in the small-cap sector.”

Holidaybreak has a particular communication challenge. Its industry is dominated by two Anglo-German groups – Tui and Thomas Cook – with market capitalisations of £3bn ($6bn). Holidaybreak, valued at £300m is a tenth their size, and its Aim-listed rivals are smaller still.

So Mr Michel and his fellow directors use the internet as a “leveller”. Holidaybreak’s dedicated investor relations website is a model of easy-access information. Called Investor Centre, it allows visitors to click-and-compare the company’s share price performance with those of rivals and key indices. It lists broker forecasts and recommendations, and it posts the company’s presentations at investor days, so that private investors, or those unable to attend, have the same access to the information as professionals.

The company’s quick breakdown of its activities includes the revenues and profits from brands offering different types of holidays, providing an instant view of the size of the business, together with click-through panels to access more detailed information. What results is a website that makes it remarkably easy to get a feel for the business. “We have not invested a huge amount of money,” Mr Michel says. “We found a simple design and a fresh look.” That is complemented by paper documentation designed to be a model of clarity.

That is not to say that this year’s investor communication champions are blinding themselves to a slowdown. But by telling their stakeholders in a timely and transparent fashion about their operations, they provide a valuable reminder that for most companies, business goes on pretty much as usual.

As Bob Hartley, finance director of White Young Green (WYG), an engineering and town planning consultancy, remarks, conveying messages is important when economic uncertainty stalks.

“What we are seeking to say is that we have a broadly-based business,” he says. “We have no particular dependence upon a particular sector of the economy or a particular client, but are well-placed to take advantage of opportunities across the economy in a challenging environment.”

A decade ago, the same message might have filtered out through an interim trading statement, posted to shareholders, or summarised in a perfunctory newspaper report. Five years back, you could have read a comparable message on the clunky website of a blue-chip corporation.

But today, vanguard mid-market companies have taken the internet to their hearts, and grasped its virtues as a powerful tool with which to lead investor communication.

The target audiences, objectives and strategies of investor communication have changed little in the past 30 years. But thanks to the development of the financial public relations sector, competition for investor funds, and better understanding among company boards, the standard of investor communications has been transformed.

Each of the shortlisted companies sets its communication objectives at board level. Each articulates its strategy in terms of key messages. Each uses external financial public relations consultants to help manage the communication process. The aim, says Mr Hartley, is to enable investors to make informed choices about whether to buy or retain shares in the company, while ensuring the company knows what is driving investor decisions, giving it a chance to respond.

Victoria, a carpet manufacturer that supplies retailers such as John Lewis, says its goal is “to ensure potential investors and stakeholders have the opportunity to fully understand our business and strategy”.

For Salamander Energy, an independent oil and gas producer focused on south-east Asia, it is essential that investors understand the way it balances risk. Eighty per cent of its capital is allocated to production assets, and the balance to exploring for new reserves.

Carl Michel, chief executive of Holidaybreak, the acquisitive travel company, says investors must understand the company strategy to give context to the news-flow that forms another plank in communication.

Each company on the shortlist has stepped up efforts to deliver timely news about its activities via its web-site. WYG has introduced contract announcements. For Salamander, communications management now includes an in-house press and investor relations department to deliver news while freeing executive directors to develop the business. Victoria is creating a library of photos of its carpet designs on its website, so investors can see another aspect that helps to set its products apart. Annual reports have received careful thought. For many investors, they remain a financial reference document. But the finalists have found ways of breaking up the statutory text with boxes or sections that contain their main communication messages.

Investors in these mid-cap companies often include the same insurance companies and funds that own the leading blue chips on the London Stock Exchange. But they do not receive the same saturation coverage from investment analysts. So, directors concur, they have to try harder.

They organise investor briefings and encourage their owners to visit their facilities. They make themselves available to meet investors, provide briefings and answer questions. And they use financial public relations experts who can spot newsworthy developments within their business, and help win coverage where it will be read by investors.

Holidaybreak’s Mr Michel meets his public relations advisers at Brunswick Group every month to brief them on developments. Because it is based in Cheshire, Holidaybreak needs a conduit to London-based investors, analysts and business journalists, he says.

A good business inevitably has a good story, or stories, to tell investors. Thanks partly to the internet, there is no longer any excuse for communicating badly. But doing it well creates understanding and loyalty, not merely among investors, but among staff and the communities where the company operates too.