ABSTRACT
This chapter explores corporate communications with the wider world, trade show competitive intelligence (CI) and visits to company premises. It also emphasizes the analytical value of garnering soft data impressions, intuitions, feelings as well as accumulating hard facts. Publicly held firms have to communicate with the investment community through presentations given when results are announced and on other occasions when there is something major to report. Trade shows and exhibitions offer splendid opportunities for obtaining a great deal of information on other companies and observing them, the whole point of firms taking part in these events being to tell the world about themselves and what they are doing. While companies attend trade shows and gather intelligence there as a matter of course, visits to a firm's premises can also be enlightening. The CI unit should collect information picked up from visits made by colleagues, particularly the sales force.
