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Reversal of Fortune

25th February
2012
written by Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross
An interesting study appeared this week from Willis Group Holdings on reputation risk. They examined 600 publicly-held companies.  Here are some of the more interesting details:
  • 95% (a lot) of major companies have suffered at least one reputational crisis in the past 20 years
  • Major companies suffer a "significant" reversal of fortune every seven years
  • One out of two (50%) of these reputational failures were tied to having the wrong business strategy or model; 15% from lawsuits; 10% from merger and acquisition issues. Interestingly, the CEO of Willis Global Solutions Consulting Group said that none of the crises were related to natural disasters until 2011. That is hard to believe since there have been plenty of natural catastrophes over the past 20 years that should have impacted companies such as floods, hurricanes, droughts, food shortages, cyclones, earthquakes, SARS, etc.
Also wanted to mention a recent analysis that came from the 2012 Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient (RQ) and was reported in PRWeek. Harris Interactive reported that advertising has less of an impact on company reputation than social media or new stories. Research continues to show that word of mouth from news stories with negative information about companies drives perceptions more than we realize. We learned that in our Company Behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust. Consumers are talking about more about company wrong doing than right doing and advertising may not be as able as it used to be in rehabilitating brand reputations. Enjoy the Oscars if you are watching tomorrow!    
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Blogroll, Company behind the brand, corporate reputation, corporate responsibility, crisis, Crisis management, reputation, Reputation building, Reputation crisis, reputation risk, Research, risk management

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