Country reputation

It is hard not to think about the reputation that our country has as a civil nation when events like the tragic shootings in Arizona occur. I was on the phone with a colleague in London earlier this week and she exclaimed how horrific it was to watch the news about Arizona over the weekend. She said that it was on non-stop. [And yes, the young man who pulled the trigger was undoubtedly mentally insane and not just uncivil!] For a second, I was taken about because I nearly thought of the killings as our secret and shame. However, I know that local is now global when it comes to news and once again, America's reputation for uncivil behavior needs adjusting. Of course, every country has its moments of tragedy and loss of human life for no reason but the killings and near death of Representative Giffords made us all stop in our tracks and wonder where we are headed as a nation. About six months ago, we surveyed Americans about civility in this country to determine whether it was in fact mounting in our national dialogue, homes, schools and online. The results were chilling and as expected -- we have work to do.  My hope is that we can calm the rhetoric and discuss civility around dinner tables for a long time to come and give our young people a true civics lesson. Perhaps when we revisit civility later this year, we will see a reckoning of sorts.

Scorecards are part of our day-to-day business in building reputation. At Weber Shandwick, we are expert in identifying the right rankings, scorecards, league tables (whatever you might call them) for companies and their leaders. It makes perfect sense to me that vying for the best rankings helps boost reputation. It is but one way to spread the word that your company is worthy of what it is doing. Of course, if you dig too  deep in some of them, you discover flaws. We recently advised a company against issuing a press release on a survey that had fewer than 50 respondents because of its limited sample size and lack of representation. Sometimes you just have to rise above it. Well, companies are not the only ones to compete for these honors. Countries have caught on as well according to an article I just read. "With investment scarce and jobs even scarcer, countries that sparkle in global league tables can send a powerful signal to investors."  Countries are in a race to the top of the World Competitivness Index published by IMD, the business school, or the World Bank's "Doing Business" league tables. Saudi Arabia just made it to the near top (11th place) from 55th place one year ago and Rwanda has moved up from the very very bottom to a more respectable showing. These accolades can go far in convincing investors that a country is business-friendly and investor-worthy. Turning to company awards, I often talk about rankings fatigue and this article on airline awards in the WSJ nailed it. As it said, "The travel world is overbooked with awards these days, with some two dozen organizations around the world giving out annual awards for the 'best.' Each has different selection criteria, different funding and different judging, so they end up with different results."  That's alot of applications to fill out and data to provide. This leads me to think that there should be a new corporate title in 2011 -- Chief Rankings Officer.

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  The USA earned the top spot as the world’s highest-ranking country brand for the first time in the fifth annual Country Brand Index (CBI) from Weber Shandwick and sister agency FutureBrand Buy Cimetidine Without Prescription, . The USA rose from its previous third place spot one year earlier to snatch the top honor, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Las Vegas, Nevada. Cimetidine coupon, Although the USA did not win the 2016 Olympics honor via its Chicago bid, in the CBI beauty contest, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Phoenix, Arizona, Cimetidine FDA approveds, the USA beat out all other countries.  As I expected, the Obama presidential effect of hope and optimism played a major role in the ranking.  As it is with CEOs, japan, craiglist, ebay, overseas, paypal, Cimetidine trusted pharmacy, Obama has become the face of the nation. The same influences that were at work in Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize undoubtedly helped lift the reputational tide in favor of the USA in this widely publicized country brand ranking, buy Cimetidine without a prescription. Buy cheap Cimetidine no rx, The top 10 country brand reputations are:

1. USA


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10. Spain

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  I was reminded today of some information I read a few months ago about President Obama. Apparently his correspondence director makes sure that Obama sees 10 letters or emails every day from average Americans. Some of these letters are positive and some negative but they are clear reminders of how Americans are suffering and thriving today. President Obama also reads them aloud at certain meetings when he looks around and notices that people are losing touch with the common man or woman. I am sure they come in handy. When I wrote my first book on CEO reputation (CEO Capital), I mentioned a CEO who started every weekly management meeting with a tape recording from a call center where people complained about the company's service. The CEO felt that it was important to remind his team that there was still plenty of room for improvement. The Obama example above is similar to the company CEO one I told. I think that this act of customer awareness is a practice that could help many CEOs who sometimes forget that the purpose of a business is to create a customer, to quote from the late Peter Drucker. Both presidential and CEO leadership needs to be reminded who they serve to safely steer their country or company reputations in the right direction, especially in these tough times.

   Good news. Corporate responsibility makes it through the recession. Hurrah. An article in the Financial Times by Michael Skapinker supports his argument by citing that despite the recession where people are cutting down on premium foods, only about 10% have cut back on ethical produce. And Marks and Spencer (M&S) who made a big bet on sustainability with its Plan A (there is no Plan B!), is saving money on its CSR practices. So that’s all good news for those of us who believe that corporate responsibility is an integral component of reputation and one that has not let us down (nor have we let it down).  The last paragraph of Skapinker’s article says it well:

 

“This [saving money] is the key to companies’ stubborn adherence to corporate social responsibility. They have worked out how to make it pay. Many of their initiatives help to cut costs or sustain supplies. They allow customers to continue to regard themselves as ethical during difficult times. They also help the companies to improve their public reputations at a time when business is widely held to be responsible for the downturn.”

 

Not surprisingly when I first read this paragraph, I read public reputations as public relations. In a way, this confirms why I am in the public relations field – to improve public reputations. Since there is no such thing anymore as an UNpublic reputation (everything internal is external today), I can really say that I am in the field of public reputations. I like this twist.

 

On another but somewhat importantly-related subject, I was reading about last year’s Sichuan Earthquake in a newsletter published by knowledge@wharton (you should subscribe if you don't already). I was in China weeks after the earthquake and wrote about it on my blog at the time. In fact, a lot of the media coverage I received was in response to whether I thought companies were doing enough. The recent article does an excellent job of explaining what I experienced about the fiercely negative images of some multinationals (MNCs) in terms of corporate giving perceptions. I saw that some MNCs were on these shame lists that were being circulated online and inciting boycotts and negative opinion. The general consensus in China was that MNCs were not contributing enough and not in a timely manner to the 70,000 earthquake victims who lost their lives and five million left homeless. At the time, I did not know that there was a term for these maligned MNCs but the article references them as “international iron roosters” – that is, birds that do not give up one single feather. In other words, tightfisted. Being sensitive to negative public sentiment, many of these MNCs increased their charitable donations and met with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to understand what was expected of them in China. I should note, and so does the Wharton authors, that even Chinese companies were criticized for insufficient donations to earthquake victims.

 

The article points out three must-dos when it comes to China and maintaining your reputation in challenging times. These should be on every company’s What to Do list if something like this happens again and you want to keep your reputation intact. They are:

 

1.     Get Straight to the Top or Distribute Decision-Making. Since many MNCs have multi-layered levels of management and multi-faceted reporting lines, companies need to have a clear, direct lines to the top when decisions are urgent and reputations are at stake. Companies should prepare processes for determining when a decision is urgent. Much of the problems that beset MNCs were the bureaucracy that needed to be hacked through to get a decision made about how much could be contributed. If this is too hard, companies should give local managers the necessary decision-making authority.

2.     Decide Fast and Make Visible. Some companies were criticized because their contributions came late or they did not make their donations known. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, some U.S. companies kept their donations quiet because they did not want it to look like they were only donating to improve their public images. In addition, many companies in the U.S. are torn between being humble or vocal when it comes to corporate responsibility. But in China during an incident of such horrific magnitude, those companies that kept quiet were seen as non-contributors and blamed for being insensitive and profit-mongers. So speak up.

3.     Find your Advocates and Use Your Online Resources to the Max. Since such a large proportion of Chinese citizens are online, make sure you know what is being said about your company and its contributions. Your reputation matters and myths and rumors spread like wildfire. For all you know, you are on some boycott list and people are picketing your stores and products. Find your fans or advocates and make sure they are there to support your efforts or correct misunderstandings, online and offline.

 

Thanks to Skapinker and to knowledge@wharton for making this a good learning day when I should be outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delightful dinner in Barcelona. Engaging conversation about online reputation management and who is driving the news today. An editor of a well-known Spanish newspaper asked me how people could be satisfied getting their news from blogs and Twitter instead of from the heavily researched and reported media. Not to be too glib, I told him that I have seen research that said that the vast majority of people did not care where they got their news. They no longer trusted sacred institutions as they used to. And in reality, how could they after witnessing the leadership bankruptcy and unaccountability we have seen over the past few months. People would rather assemble their own news and information from the sources they trust. The news of the USAirways 1549 flight that landed successfully in the Hudson was captured on Twitter before the traditional media had the story. Similarly with the recent Turkish Airlines flight crash in Amsterdam from what I hear. How do we manage reputations when others own them first? Although it is still winter, Barcelona is bella. People are outside, walking the streets, eating tapas and clearly enjoying themselves. A nice change. The economy does not seem to be wearing everyone out.

Could not help but notice the reactions of leaders in my search of how countries, politicians, hotels and so forth were being impacted by the tragic events in Mumbai. I went to the web sites of US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Browne, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Zardari. Not all have dedicated sites so I would then wander over to the government sites. No doubt these leaders were extremely busy as this crisis unfolded over days. However , Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (naturally), British Prime Minister Gordon Browne and President Elect Barrack Obama were the only leaders that mentioned the crisis on their respective home pages and blog (Obama has a blog). A few of the dedicated government sites mentioned the events but not many. As mentioned in a previous post, Indian Prime Minister Singh had a stirring message. I was surprised that Sarkozy did not have a dedicated site but maybe I could not find it on Google. Medevev has a dedicated area on the government site but there was no mention of the tragedy. There was nothing yesterday (27^th) or today (28^th) from Pakistan’s Mr. Zardari. Maybe there is some protocol that I am missing but dedicated web sites make sense in today’s unpredictable and fast-moving world.

Just reviewed how some web sites in India are managing the terrorist crisis online.  The two hotels where explosions occurred and hostages were taken – the Taj and Oberi – both had statements on their home page websites deploring the terrorisms and providing phone numbers for people to call. The Taj reported that “We will rebuild every inch that has been damaged in this attack and bring back the Taj to its full glory. 7.30 am IST, November 27, 2008.” The prime minister of India, Dr. Singh, has information on his web site with a text release of his comments and condolences for the top security officer. The broadcast I saw on cnn.com was not on their web site. All of the other sites have relevant information such as the Consulate General of the U.S. in Mumbai letting American citizens know they can get lost passports without delay [“U.S. citizens who have immediate travel plans and have lost or damaged passports can come directly to the Consulate to obtain an emergency replacement passport.”]. The Mumbai police also has emergency telephone numbers to call. One of India’s major airlines had no information on their home page about the crisis. I had read that Fortune 500 Unilever had officers at the Taj but they have information on their global home page and a statement that “Unilever Management Team at Mumbai safe. We wish to confirm that the Unilever Group CEO Mr. Patrick Cescau,  the Unilever CEO-elect Paul Polman and the HUL Management team including HUL Chairman, Mr. Harish Manwani and HUL CEO Mr Nitin Paranjpe, who were at the Taj Hotel (Mumbai) yesterday, had left the hotel last night itself and they are all safe  and accounted for. Our thoughts are with all those who have been affected by these unfortunate events.” Reputations can be damaged during a crisis such as this if information, limited as it may be, is not forthcoming. During the September 11^th attacks in New York, I monitored how companies used the Internet to provide information and one conclusion was that companies learned a vital lesson in crisis management at the time. Many companies learned how to use the Internet to crisis manage online for the first time. Most company web sites were not used effectively to provide news and information to those concerned. Alas, times have changed.

My sincere wishes for a speedy end to a horrific situation.