Not paying your bills can be dangerous – especially when the creditor in question has access to your company website. The results can be messy, as a restaurant in Tønsberg, Norway, found out recently.

Visitors to the restaurant’s website were greeted with this message:

“Welcome to the restaurant that hasn’t paid for its website.
Do you work at the restaurant? You should answer my email.”

(I’ve translated that myself from the Norwegian, apologies for any errors.)

Long-time Eye for Image customer FLSmidth has been named best Large Cap company in the Nordic region in terms of investor communications. FLSmidth got the award from the IR Nordic Markets 2009 study, based on research carried out by the analytics institute REGI Research Strategi.

FLSmidth beat off some tough competition to claim the award. More than 150 Nordic companies were considered for the awards. And each company was judged on 21 investor relations-related criteria, including daily IR communication and reports.

Congratulations to FLSmidth from all of us at Eye for Image.

You can read more about the awards on the Dansk Kommunikationsforening website.

Cyclists: Are you bored of battling to get the final slot in the bike rack?
Pedestrians: Are you fed up of fighting past a herd of parked bikes to reach your favourite shop?

This could be the answer. It’s an underground ‘bike tree’ developed by Japanese company JFE - and it can store around 6,000 bikes in one go.

You can see it in action on this video on the Guardian newspaper website.

Now, that would be useful at Norreport Station.

Annual report. These two words are top of mind for many communications managers right now – so what’s hot in the world of annual reports?

More companies have realised that their annual report is an essential company profile, read by customers, competitors, employees and shareholders – and they are increasingly creating annual reports that are like company brochures, highlighting the best that the company has to offer. And over the last couple of years, the format of annual reports has changed, too.

PDFs online
Most companies still produce a printed version of their annual report – and make the PDF available on line for people to download. But last year Hempel took a more radical approach. The company decided to produce a compact annual report that’s only available online. It can be emailed to the relevant people and anyone can download it from the website. For Hempel, it saves money in printing and distribution costs – and shows that the company puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to cost cutting.

Online annual report sub-sites
Novozymes went one step further, and created a complete sub-site for its annual report. Each section of the report had its own webpage. You navigate like a normal website – and it can be updated throughout the year with the latest news.

Online interactive annual reports
But this year, perhaps the big move will be interactive online annual reports. TDC took the plunge last year, with an online CSR report that included embedded video and expandable tables and maps. (If the link doesn’t work, you can find the report here.)

Many companies seem to be interested in doing something similar this year. Why? Online interactive annual reports are new, and make your company seem cutting-edge. And they are exciting – so they grab attention. The skill, though, is making sure they hold attention once the bang of the moving images has died down.

Spotted any other trends? If you think something will be big in annual reports this year, let us know.

Some Copenhagen train stations have recently added a sign to their escalators which tells travelers where to stand. (The principle is simply that you stand on the right and walk on the left, so people in a hurry don’t have to fight past dawdlers.) But the translation may confuse more English speakers than it helps.

Stand right? What is the wrong way to stand?

Whether you are a fan of The Daily Show’s irreverent humour or not, it may be worth checking out this interview with Peter Schiff. Schiff was one of the few people to predict the financial crisis, and has firm opinions on why government bail-out packages are not the answer.

This fine article on Brand Channel looks at the reasons behind the success of some Scandinavian brands. Interestingly, the article moves freely between Nordic and Scandinavia, often lumping Finland and Iceland into the Scandinavian region. So why is this interesting?

This shows that outside the Nordic countries, most people don’t understand (or care about) the difference. But many Nordic countries do. In fact, many Danish companies are keen to stress their Danish roots. Why?

My guess (and it’s no more than that) is that it’s done for two reasons: (1) national pride; and (2) the first market most Scandinavian companies export to when they start to expand is within Scandinavia.

This is fine within Scandinavia. But when companies begin to market themselves further afield, the country-specific focus loses power. Scandinavia has a reputation. It’s a ‘brand’ people associate with a trust. The same can’t always be said for Norway, Denmark or Sweden.

So why tell someone you use Danish design and not that you use Scandinavian design? By saying Danish design (or Swedish or Norwegian) you have to educate the consumer about what this is. But if you go for Scandinavian, the consumer already has a feeling for what you are referring to - and this creates an emotional link to whatever product or service you are selling.

To get an idea of images the word ‘Denmark’ conjures up in the minds of an international audience, you could check out the informal survey in this article.

The UN Climate Change Conference will be in Copenhagen in December, bringing together leaders from 192 countries in an effort to solve the world’s climate issues. But will ordinary citizens have any influence on preceedings?

Hopenhagen would like to think so. And a postive influence at that. Created by the UN and the International Advertising Association, it hopes to create a global community that will lead our leaders into making the right decisions.

Simply visit the site and add your message of hope to the list.

Looks like there’s more bad news for Iceland. Not only has the country’s economy taken a battering, but now it’s been knocked off the top of the Global Peace Index by New Zealand. In fact, Iceland has dropped to fourth in the rankings, behind Denmark and Norway.

The Index uses 23 criteria to grand the countries, from involvement in foreign wars to number of murders. And the Scandinavian countries have done well again in the list (Sweden is in the top ten). Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it?

(Our very own David Hoskin visited Iceland recently to speak at a Trade Council of Iceland symposuim and came back unharmed, so it’s not that dangerous.)

This story about Neils Yard Remedies (NYR) is a valuable lesson in online PR, especially for companies with green credentials. NYR is a British company that specialises in natural remedies and organic skin and body care products - and a company that should, almost by definition, score highly on the green stakes.

NYR agreed to take part in a Q&A session on the Guardian newspaper’s website - part of a series called You Ask, They Answer. The line of questioning soon focused on NYR’s stance on alternative medicines, in particular a previously withdrawn homeopathic malaria remedy. Amazingly, NYR refused to answer questions on the topic and eventually pulled out of the debate. But this did nothing to calm the flames.

The silence left by NYR was filled with negative comments from readers - and soon other blogs, like this one, had picked up on the situation. NYR’s stance is surprising, not least because it leaves the debate one sided, fanning the flames of negativity.

But more importantly perhaps, green credentials go hand-in-hand with honesty. Companies are like people. If they make a mistake and ignore it, you may not trust them again. But if they make a mistake, and show us that they have a way to remedy it, we tend to trust them even more in the future.

We choose a ‘green company’ because we trust it to be doing the right thing - and for that trust to continue, the company must be open, especially about mistakes.