We admit up front that Time Warner is not a consumer brand—Warner Bros. and CNN and HBO and Cartoon Network and DC Comics and dozens of our other brands are what people across the world look to as media consumers. But we have critical corporate reasons to ensure a strong identity. One is simply to avoid confusion with Time Warner Cable, which is a consumer company providing cable television subscriptions in the U.S., and with whom we have not been affiliated for several years. More importantly, we needed to explain to stakeholders in the press, investment community, industry, and our thousands of employees what we stand for after concluding the separation with Time Inc.: being the home to the world’s best storytelling in a fast-changing media landscape. A printed annual report can seem an archaic construct, but we used the design of the annual report as the basis for a wide range of communications of our brand message, including digital and video materials. For example, we’ve enclosed the “walk on” video we created to open our annual meeting as well as an investor day we held last fall, which has the additional flourish of nodding to our digital leadership.

2014 was a milestone year for Time Warner in which having a cohesive and progressive corporate message was never more important. Shortly after completing the spin-off of Time Inc. in June, the company received an unsolicited takeover offer from a competitor, on terms that the company considered to not be in the best interests of its shareholders. During the tense period before the hostile bid was dropped, Time Warner’s clear corporate messaging about its new focus, structure, and future potential was front and center and under intense scrutiny. And that continued with a special investor day that was held in the fall. While our design work and the campaigns surrounding it can’t take credit for any these outcomes, they did contribute to the successful introduction of the “new” Time Warner to the marketplace, which included our company achieving the leading shareholder return of 30% (including a strong rise in our our stock price) among our peer companies for 2014. To give context, the average total shareholder return among companies in the S&P 500 for the year was 13.7%.