Public Relations / Public Affairs Ideas To Use

Corporate Reputation: Where’s Your “Sustainability Sweet Spot”?

Can companies adopt sustainable business practices and increase profits?  Andrew W. Savitz, author of The Triple Bottom Line, points to several companies, including GE and Pepsi, that are reaping profits that Savitz believes come from a sustainable business culture.

In this podcast, Savitz and I discuss how a company can adopt a culture of sustainability and find its “sustainability sweet spot”.  Our interview was recorded June 15, 2007.

MP3 File (13 min., 53 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 sustainability savitz

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Corporate Reputation: China's Reputation Lesson

Jarvis Cromwell of J-2 Consultancy recently wrote about China’s reputational black eye.  First there was the discovery of an industrial chemical in pet food imported from China.  Then came news of an anti-freeze ingredient found in imported Chinese toothpaste.

If you like your pet fed and your teeth clean, you’re probably keeping your distance from Chinese products that do both.  This goes directly to Cromwell’s perspective on reputation management:  Trust problems are at their heart organizational performance issues.

Earning a positive reputation and keeping the trust of the public and your stakeholders is primarily about how your organization performs.  It isn’t about how well you respond to a crisis.  It isn’t about your corporate social responsibility program.  It isn’t about your philanthropic largess.

Don’t get me wrong.  Crisis communications planning and preparedness is important.  Corporate social responsibility is important.  Corporate philanthropy is important.

What builds and maintains a positive corporate reputation at minimum are reliable performance, ethical behavior, and safe production.

Short of that, any corporate social responsibility programs, philanthropy, or “do good” PR is merely a cosmetic fix – a facade – that hides what lies underneath.

Cromwell’s blog, The Reputation Garage, is available at http://reputationgarage.blogspot.com.

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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: 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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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: 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.

MP3 File

crisis+communications crisis+management baron

How Do You View Crisis?

Corporate or government leaders can view crisis as either an interruption or a test of their stewardship of the organization.  When crisis strikes, how you view it naturally influences how you and your organization respond.

Writing in Strategy & Leadership, Helio Fred Garcia looks at good and bad examples of crisis response.  Garcia says Exxon’s ineffective response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill led the public to believe that the company’s primary concern was not the harm the spill caused.  The government’s response to the New Orleans flood showed a similar indifference.

Garcia compares President George W. Bush’s response to the attacks of September 11, 2006 to his response to Hurricane Katrina, where the President seemed “disengaged, uninformed, and unconcerned.”   Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown's admission on CNN that the government was unaware that thousands were stranded without water at the convention center added to the feeling that government leaders were indifferent to the plight of New Orleanians.

The perception of indifference is the single largest contributor to reputation harm in the aftermath of a crisis, especially when there are victims, says Garcia.

As for examples of good crisis response, Garcia points to the McDonald’s Corporation and the Boeing Company.  McDonald’s left little room for speculation about its future and minimized its stock volatility by swiftly appointing a new CEO just two and half hours after announcing the death of CEO James Cantalupo.

Harry Stonecipher was tapped by Boeing to replace CEO Phil Condit after a scandal involving the recruitment of Pentagon employees.  Stonecipher, who instituted a revised Code of Conduct, was quickly dismissed after the company learned that he had violated his own code by having a romantic relationship with a female subordinate.

Both McDonald’s and Boeing understood the importance of the “Gold Hour” of crisis response.  Garcia says the Gold Hour refers to the observation that incremental delays in responding to a crisis have greater than incremental impact on the outcome.

Here is Garcia’s lesson for leaders:  Effective leaders (1) demonstrate situational awareness in a crisis, grasping the significance of the underlying event and its likely impact on the company and its stakeholders, and (2) see crisis response not as an interruption in their stewardship of a company, but as the test of that stewardship.

Garcia, Helio F. "Effective Leadership Response To Crisis."

Technorati Tags: public relations, crisis communications

Merck & Co. Discusses Its Corporate Social Responsbility Program at Ethical Corporation Conference

Despite many years of charitable contributions and philanthropic support, Merck & Co. historically did not publicize its corporate social responsibility record.   The company’s commitment to CSR may be rooted in one of its earliest leaders, George W. Merck, who said:

We try never to forget that medicine is for the people.  It is not for the profits.  The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.

I invite you to listen to my discussion with David Ruth, Merck’s vice president of corporate communications, about the company’s CSR record and its decision to communicate its CSR efforts.  I met Ruth at Ethical Corporation’s “How To Communicate Your Corporate Values to Consumers” conference earlier this week in Philadelphia.

MP3 File (6 min., 42 sec.)

Merck has also published its first corporate responsibility report, which you can download at http://www.merck.com/cr.

Technorati Tags: public relations, Merck, pharmaceutical industry, corporate social responsibility, CSR, business ethics

Ethical Corporation Explores How to Communicate Corporate Values to Consumers

Today I attended Ethical Corporation’s “How To Communicate Your Corporate Values to Consumers” conference in Philadelphia.  The conference examines how companies are communicating their values and corporate social responsibility efforts to consumers and attracted corporate communications experts and corporate responsibility leaders from around the world.

While there I spoke with Toby Webb, Ethical Corporation’s founder.  Based in London, the company is an independent publisher and conference organizer on issues related to the ethical business practices of corporations.  It publishes a monthly print magazine (Ethical Corporation Magazine), a daily website (http://www.ethicalcorp.com), holds conferences around the world, and produces reports on business ethics in big firms.

I invite you to listen to my discussion with Webb in which he describes Ethical Corporation and explains why he founded the company.

MP3 File (7 min., 16 sec.)

Technorati Tags: public relations, corporate social responsibility, CSR, business ethics