A2,
I suspect that you will find this little story interesting given the questions that you are asking.
Firstly, some context. When you perform certain intimate acts with your preferred variety of life partner its called "Marital Relations". When a company wants to do similar things to its shareholders its call "Investor Relations".
Most large companies have investor relations people, marketing people, PR people etc but modern technology and the scale of the exercise has meant that significant aspects of these tasks are largely outsourced to specialist 3rd party service providers, consultants etc. This is almost exclusively the case with smaller companies who simply can't afford to have this expertise in house.
Since the dawn of time, or at least the early days of public companies, there have been times that companies wanted investors to agree to things that the investors weren't so happy about. Often these differences of opinion related to how much money the members of the board of the company took from shareholder funds to line their own pockets. Rarely if ever has a board said to shareholders "we are quite wealthy and get paid more than enough, how about we just keep things as they are again this year !". Although the board and CEO were all actually paid employees of the company owned by shareholders some preferred to look at themselves as the bosses and shareholders as just a nuisance that they had to put up with. Either way some boards were not just happy to accept shareholders using their own minds to decide how they would vote on important things that the board wanted like .... lets say .... approving a remuneration report for example.
So imagine if one day somebody outside the company told the board that in return for a fee they could sway the vote at an AGM and influence shareholders to agree to vote for what the board wanted rather than what the shareholders thought they wanted. Imagine if the board could use shareholder funds, ie company funds, to pay these people to try and influence shareholders. Surely that couldn't happen right?
So imagine your surprise if entire companies were created to perform this type of service for boards. Imagine if you Googled and you found that there were lots of entities providing these services. You might be inclined to conclude that this type of thing happens a lot. Like if you Goggled "Proxy Solicitation Service" for example.
But how would they do such a thing I hear you ask. Marketing and investor relations are a lot about psychology so drawing upon some common statistical and socio-economic data then cross referencing it against the register of members, ie who owns how many shares and where they live (guess who has that data), it seems that it would likely not be too difficult to identify groups of shareholders to specifically target to get extra love from "investor relations" consultants via a surprise phone call. Whilst its not nice to say it, statistically out of any large group there will be a certain percentage of people who are more, lets say "malleable" (gullible) given appropriate suggestions scripted as questions. Marketing people spend endless billions each year perfecting the power of suggestion to influence people to do things so I don't think I need to drill too far into how this works. Its a numbers game and they usually only need to convince a small number to change their point of view in order to get what the board wants. Its called "solicitation" for a reason !
After boards discovered new ways to get shareholders to vote for what management wanted it probably didn't take long before the proverbial light bulb went on and had them asking their new buddies running these services if they could also convince shareholders to cough up more money when the board wanted more money to spend. Hey presto, ring, ring ...... "Hi its Frank from xxxxx. Just wondering if you got the entitlement acceptance form for the xyz corp rights issue ?". "I notice you haven't taken advantage of this opportunity to get these new shares at a 20% discount yet, any reason why?", "Are you aware that other holders can get your entitlement at the discounted price if you don't take it up?" ........ Not actual script and I suggest its more subtle than this but you get the gist of how it could be done right!
Anyhow, in the old days when a telephone was pretty high tech thats as far as it went. Then along came social media. Large groups of people gathering virtually to discuss and argue over common interests like for example a company's stock. That would seem like a perfect place for do some "investor relations" type work would it? For reasons which we shan't go into participants in these social media conversations largely remain anonymous and are encouraged to use made up names so that they cannot be personally linked to the things that they say. Perfect
Since all social media is carried via IP packets across a global data network now "investor relations" work can be carried out from anywhere. No need to have local people doing it. Companies can outsource it to a service provider who has links to sub-contractors all around the world, working all timeframes and at rates of pay which are often a tiny fraction of what it would cost to do them locally. That must be good because its shareholders who are paying for it right? More importantly the internet is open so whats considered unacceptable in one country maybe common practice elsewhere and therefore easier to find people to perform these sorts of tasks.
So if companies outsource such work to external parties and those parties outsource it to sub-contractors how do we know when we are being given special attention by "investor relations" people vs when its just some random nuffy on the internet that has such wonderful things to say about the company? Thats the truly wonderful thing about social media. The fees flow from the company to another company and often off-shore. You rarely have any idea which companies are paying who to target you. And how can a company possibly be expected to know who is actually doing what to achieve the "campaign outcomes" they are paying for?
In the 90s most of us learned not to help that poor Nigerian Prince get his money to safety using our bank accounts for the generous percentage that he offered to let us keep. In the 2000s most people learned that when Microsoft called personally to help you clean your computer of a virus and just needed remote access and your password, it was the sort of help that you didn't want. But now in the 2020s most people are still completely unaware when they are being manipulated on social media, by who and how.
Now, as you lay your head on your pillow tonight try and guess who is who in this zoo?
(20min delay)