Public Relations / Public Affairs Ideas To Use

Corporate Reputation: Conversation with Jeffrey T. Resnick

Jeffrey T. Resnick is president of Opinion Research USA.  He describes corporate reputation as the aggregate result of the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders groups.

Resnick warns executives that they are probably not doing enough to protect their company's reputation and that they lack the information necessary to accurately determine where reputational risks reside in the company.

I met with Resnick Thursday morning in his Princeton, New Jersey office.  You can hear our conversation below.

MP3 File  (20 min, 5 sec.)

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Corporate Reputation:  Links and Resources

Corporate Reputation:  Events and Conferences

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corporate communications corporate reputation corporate social responsibility public relations opinion research

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Conversation with Pheedo's Bill Flitter

Bill Flitter is founder and vice president of marketing for Pheedo.  Flitter’s company converts RSS feeds into “rich, dynamically updating advertising that engages your audience.”  I spoke to Flitter about Pheedo and RSS feeds at Monday’s ClickZ Advertising in Social Media Conference.

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Pheedo ClickZ Bill Flitter

Conversation with Technorati's Peter Hirshberg

Yesterday I attended the ClickZ Advertising in Social Media conference in New York.  While there I interviewed several leaders in social media, including Peter Hirschberg, chairman and chief marketing officer for Technorati. Hirshberg discusses Sun Microsystems' use of social media and upcoming changes to Technorati.

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Technorati ClickZ social media

Corporate Reputation: Early Warning System

Do corporations do enough to protect themselves from unexpected damage to their reputations?

Not according to Jeffrey T. Resnick, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Opinion Research Corporation.

Resnick believes companies will be at risk until executives actively manage perceptions.  He warns that executive management needs to treat corporate reputation as the significant business risk it is, not just as a public relations campaign.

“A company’s reputation is the external manifestation of its people, internal practices, culture, management talent, and overall competitiveness,” says Resnick.

Writing in the Journal of Business Strategy, Resnick argues that companies need an “early warning system” that monitors reputation and provides the intelligence for managers to take corrective action.  They key is to identify and fix reputational weaknesses before they distract the company from its core mission. (Resnick, Jeffrey. "Managing Corporate Reputation: Applying Rigorous Measures to a Key Asset." Journal of Business Strategy 25(2004): 30-38.)

But few organizations have the tools and information base necessary to effectively manage their reputation, says Resnick.  The basic – and obvious – step is for companies to learn how their relevant publics perceive them.

He points to a multi-stakeholder measurement approach; what he calls the Stakeholder Reputation Matrix.  This matrix, much like the Linkage Model, helps identify company stakeholders.

Stakeholders’ opinions are critical in driving reputation, but perceptions of the company can vary among key constituencies.  The task is for a company to achieve positive alignment across all stakeholder groups, says Resnick.

According to Resnick, future CEOs will be judged not only on how they manage their business infrastructure, “but also the degrees to which they build and use corporate reputation as a competitive weapon.”

Resnick’s article is available by registering (free) with Opinion Research Corporation.

I plan to interview Resnick for an upcoming podcast, and I’ll have more details on when that show will be available later this week.

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Corporate Reputation:  Links and Resources

Corporate Reputation:  Events and Conferences

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corporate communications corporate reputation corporate social responsibility public relations opinion research

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Corporate Reputation: NYU Discussion on Reputation Management

Last January, New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies (www.scps.nyu.edu) hosted a roundtable discussion on "Recent Lessons in Reputation Management: Are Corporations and Other Organizations Heeding Them?".

Thankfully, the school recorded and posted the discussion on their Website.  You can hear it here.

Ronald J. Alsop, news editor and senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, said he believes the public’s attitude toward corporation reputation is still poor and that the public doesn’t believe companies are living up to their word.  He points to customer service and executive compensation as drivers of negative corporate reputation.

Companies are in a Catch 22 situation when it comes to communicating their corporate citizenship, says Alsop.  If you over publicize what you do, the public will view it as self-serving.  If you don’t publicize it, you get no credit.

“Developing a good and clean reputation as an organization is a necessary – but not sufficient – component for success in reputation management and success in engaging, retaining and recruiting employees,” according to Dennis Garritan, academic director and clinical associate professor of the M.S. in Human Resource Management and Development program at NYU-SCPS.  “What is both necessary and sufficient is to develop a reputation for quality.”

Barri Rafferty, an instructor at NYU-SCPS who specializes in public relations and brand marketing, challenged companies to name the 75 to 100 people who can truly impact your company’s reputation and stressed the need for companies to find advocates who will support and back you during a crisis.

Other roundtable participants included moderator John Doorley, academic director and clinical assistant professor in the M.S. in Public Relations and Corporate Communications program at NYU-SCPS, Helio Fred Garcia, adjunct professor at NYU-SCPS who teaches crisis communications and reputation management; and Bruce Baulch, senior director of information technology and administration at the NYU Medical Center.

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Corporate Reputation:  Links and Resources

Corporate Reputation:  Events and Conferences

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corporate communications corporate reputation corporate social responsibility public relations

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Corporate Reputation: Measuring Your Reputation

Do you know your company’s reputation among stakeholders and the public?

Ronald J. Alsop, writing in 18 Immutable Laws of Corporation Reputation, says it is too risky to navigate the reputation process without an accurate measure of your reputation.  He points to two companies that are serious about knowing their reputation:  DuPont and AT&T.

Research helps DuPont monitor its reputation and guide its reputation strategies.  Research during the 1990s revealed that the public viewed DuPont as “aloof scientists in their ivory towers.”  The company responded with an advertising campaign featuring brief profiles of individual DuPont scientists.

“We very systematically measure reputation to know what’s resonating and what isn’t,” says Katherine Forte, DuPont’s VP of global public affairs, in Alsop’s book.

AT&T produces bimonthly reports on how they’re viewed by not only the general public, but their individual stakeholder groups, too.

Below are links to several companies that conduct corporate reputation research.  Some of their sites include papers and other information on reputation research.

• CoreBrand (Stamford, CT)
• Opinion Research Corporation (Princeton, NJ)
• TNS (London, UK)

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Corporate Reputation:  Links and Resources

Corporate Reputation:  Events and Conferences

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corporate communications corporate reputation corporate social responsibility public relations

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Corporate Reputation: Ideas and Concepts

When someone says a company has a good reputation, what does that mean to you?  Does it mean they treat their employees well by providing workers with growth opportunities, solid benefits and good pay?  Does the company provide an outstanding service or a reliable product?  Do they enjoy healthy profits and provide a good return for their shareholders?  Do they have a good environmental record?

A good reputation can mean different things to many people.  But the general feeling people have about companies with a good reputation is trustworthiness.  They trust that the company will – or at least honestly attempt – to treat their employees well, sell a reliable product or service, earn profits or treat the environment kindly.

If a company wants to plant the seeds for growing a good reputation, what does it need to do, what does it need to know, and how does it need to change?

Over the next several weeks, I will blog almost exclusively on corporate reputation.  I plan to podcast interview leaders in corporate reputation and review books and articles on the subject, including:

• The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset by Ronald J. Alsop,
• Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image by Charles J. Fombrum, and
• Building Reputational Capital: Strategies for Integrity and Fair Play that Improve the Bottom Line by Kevin T. Jackson.

Upcoming podcasts are expected to include Eileen Kohl Kaufman of Social Accountability International, Alyson Slater of Global Reporting Initiative, and others.

I’ll provide links to useful and interesting resources when I find them.

Since establishing this blog nearly two years ago, I have tried (sometimes successfully, sometimes perhaps not) to be true to its title by providing communications ideas you can use.  I hope the upcoming entries will introduce you to new concepts and ideas, and that you will be inspired to learn more about and apply what you’ve learned here.

Paraphrasing Anderson Cooper, I hope you’ll keep me honest.  If there is something about corporate reputation that you think I should blog about, please let me know.  If you disagree about what I’ve written or what a podcast interview subject has said, tell me about it.

You can hear my previous podcasts on corporate reputation, including interviews with Charles J. Fombrum of the Reputation Institute, Leslie Gaines-Ross of Weber Shandwick, Toby Webb of Ethical Corporation, Eric Jackson of FedEx, Paulo Henrique Soares of Companhia Vale do Rio, and Engelina Jaspers of HP, here.

corporate communications corporate reputation corporate social responsibility public relations

Using Technology for Crisis Communication

The tragedy at Virginia Tech highlights the importance of communication during a crisis.  I recently spoke with Gerald Baron, president and CEO of PIER System, about VT’s emergency notification response.

PIER is a web-based communication tool that enables corporations, universities, government and other organizations to instantly communicate with workers, students and the area community. Text messages, e-mails, notices on Facebook and voice message can be managed and deployed instantly from the PIER console.

PIER is available at http://www.audiencecentral.com.

Gerald Baron’s crisis communications and management blog is available at http://crisisblogger.wordpress.com.

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crisis+communications crisis+management baron