reputation recovery

Although I made a wholehearted attempt not to work on Sunday, I could not pass up musing on an article I read on Walmart's new partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund and a few stats on reputation recovery. Thought I could post it today. When companies ask how long it takes to recover and restore reputation, I usually say four years, give or take.  Back in 2005, Walmart's then CEO Lee Scott decided to behave differently and reclaim its reputation. It had a lot of work to do, certainly in the public's mind. One of the ways Scott decided to do that was by reducing its environmental footprint. Fast forward to 2012 (seven years later). In the article, it says that,  "About a quarter of Americans now have a favorable impression of Wal-Mart, about double the percentage that did in 2007 (the earliest available figure for Wal-Mart), according to the YouGov BrandIndex, which measures consumers’ impressions of companies and products." I think that it has been a steady build from 2005 and seven years later, Walmart is seeing the fruits of its reputation labor. [I am not sure why The New York Times refers to Walmart as Wal-Mart but it does. I checked the website and Walmart changed its name to Walmart, no dash and small M, a while ago. ]

A Wall Street reputation study among marketing and communications executives at financial services firms was released this week.  When asked to rate themselves, only 34% gave themselves an above average grade while 9% gave themselves a grade of  "perfect."  Wonder who those 9% are? The remainder -- 57% -- gave themselves average or below.  The survey by Makovsky and Company had some intriguing results:

• 53% said that Occupy Wall Street impacted their business
• 71% said that Occupy Wall Street will last beyond the upcoming election
• 38% were surprised by Occupy Wall Street (time to be better prepared)
• 74% believe that increased regulation of the industry will help to improve financial service firms' reputations and rebuild trust with customers
• 81% are worried about negative perceptions that exist about executive compensation
• somewhat more than 40% believe that social media has a positive impact on their company's reputation; over half only perceive a neutral effect (fair enough)

So what's a company in the financial sector to do? According to the findings, executives believe that management leadership, quality products and service, and a focus on reputation management will help restore reputation. The killer finding is that 96% of executives agree that the industry brought the problems on themselves. You don't get too much higher than 96%. That's a outright acknowledgement. Of course, today I saw an article saying that college students are still dying to get into the financial services industry. Many are waiting to hear news of summer internships and they are eager to make their way to the the cavernous alleys of Wall Street. So be it. However, I do think that this is the time for financial services firms to hunker down and repair their reputations for the long-term. I vote "yes."

I was glad to find these facts about online reputation management companies this week. I've often wondered about the market for them as they have boomed in recent years.  An estimate for spending on online reputation is provided by BIA/Kelsey -- $1.6 billion for 2011 and an expectation of $5 billion by 2015. This is for small and medium-sized businesses.  My sense is that this is the market because one or two negative customer mentions or reviews can really wipe dollars off that precious bottom line. Fixing your online reputation is not easy. If it were, everyone would have a pristine reputation. In fact, it takes years for a reputation to build or recover -- just think about BP and how painful that recovery has been although they are slowly making progress. Even when hiring an online reputation management company, it takes at least a year to see change from what I have been told. And that might be optimistic.  In fact, I went to check out an uncomplimentary mention about an executive I know that first appeared at least four years ago. It was still there although it had a few more positive mentions ahead of it. But four years is a long time to correct something online. This executive did not hire an online reputation management and just took her chances. A quote that surfaced in the article where I found this spending estimate caught my attention, "If the Internet is the Wild West, then online reputation management is Dodge City." Whoah.

It has been an unusually warm couple of months here in New York. I can't    help but think that global warming is staring me right in the face.  I often think of myself as a bear that hibernates when cold weather arrives. I often joke with my neighbors that they won't see me until spring because I'll be going into my bear cave for my "winter sleep" when the first chill arrives.  So the past couple of months have been an anomaly as I have wandered out doors more often than usual on the weekends. Of course I have to go to work and do the ordinary errands that surround my life but given the choice, I stay inside. Maybe that is why I like to write about reputation because it gives me an excuse to sit in my little office cave that is closed off to the world. All of this got me to thinking about how climate change gets communicated today when there is criticism about  the science after controversies arose from the release of stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. This happened a year or two ago.  Undoubtedly this is the perfect case study for how an industry (climate change scientists) suffered reputational damage and now has to recover and restore reputational equity. Climate change skeptics were fairly adept at effectively persuading many in the general public to doubt the scientific validity of global warming. I was glad to see an article in the New Scientist (sorry, you need a subscription) by Robert Ward (policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics) on how some of the reputation recovery methods that I recommend in my book might be applied to regain confidence and trust in climate science.  He sees the situation right, "Even if the claims of misconduct and incompetence are eventually proven to be largely untrue, or confined to a few bad apples, mud sticks."  This is a truism -- no matter how much science you have on your side, it is sometimes never enough when it comes to public opinion.  Sometimes the facts just don't matter as much as they should in a perfect world. Ward is right that hope is not a solution to rebuilding reputation. Many CEOs used to think they could outlast controversy but in fact learn the hard way that it only extends the problem.  "Communicating tirelessly" -- one of my recommendations -- is the right path forward.  "No comment" does not work as it used to. Whether it is finding neutral partners or independent coalitions to bring additional voices into the discussion or actually training climate scientists to transparently talk about and defend the science -- its certainties and uncertainties, communications will do more good than harm in this digital world. An interesting analysis of temperature records appeared in an article in The Economist  which speaks to the importance of bringing in a third, fourth or fifth party opinion to validate scientific findings.  I read it on a plane to Europe in November but kept it because it made commonsense as an approach to understanding the climate change debate -- is it getting warmer or not?  Let me just add here that the topic of global warming is a lot more complicated than I will ever understand -- gaps in readings, different criteria, different types of thermometers, urban settings where temperatures might be recorder higher, etc.  But interestingly, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project stepped into the argument on climate change 18 months ago to test existing analyses. And they did so with the addition of skeptical scientists and funders as well as Nobel prize winners. As it is often said, let's open the kimono and thus they did. And they found that the existing temperature records that the earth was warming was not far off the mark from what had been previously reported.  A peer review is underway and I look forward to learning more about that when it is released.  Next up, however, for climate scientists and institutions affiliated with climate change,would be communicating openly and collectively (and maybe relentlessly) to explain how the newest findings answer questions, raise new ones and guide us as to what we need to be doing Now not Later.

You've heard this statement before. "What you spend years building, someone can  destroy overnight." I have probably written this several times on this blog when talking about crisis and reputation risk and I certainly wrote something very close in my book on reputation recovery. Well today it was cited in an article about GM's former CEO Rick Wagoner. The article was about his graduation speech made at Virginia Commonwealth University. A short 12 minute speech about "taking risks and accepting defeat gracefully."  He has been silent for over three years. Talk about grace.  But in his closing lines, he made the statement about building and losing reputation which Mother Teresa apparently said (I did not know and am glad to have learned the origin of this statement). And he added his own two cents at the end to this famous piece of advice about reputation. He said "Build anyway." A good reminder to those who wonder if being CEO is worth it or leading a country, I might add.

I met Howard Schultz at a luncheon years ago when I was at Fortune. His company was pretty much in its infancy and we talked about Brooklyn.  Needless to say, he's a great one to follow when it comes to reputation-building, engagement and reputation recovery. In an article I read about him recently where he was named businessperson of the year, Bill Bradley, the senator, basketball star and board member of the coffee company, noted how reputation was central to their success. Bradley said, "You don't get millions to support your social networks just by selling coffee. People have to admire the company." 

I have been pretty enamored by Schultz's political action where you can buy an American-made Indivisible wristband in the stores as a thank you when you donate to the Create Jobs for USA Fund. Last week I bought one in our local Starbucks because if my $5 can make a difference for even one person, I'm in. 

As I may have mentioned before, I also met the head of Starbuck's Ethics & Compliance several months ago at a meeting and was impressed by his thoughtfulness and mission. And a young woman I have mentored for many years and is now working her way through college works at a Starbucks in midtown. She adores it and it has introduced her a decent job that has influenced her interest in majoring in business.

There have been many touchpoints with the brand over the years and they all seem to add up.  Just like the wristband says, reputation is indivisible. The whole is greater than the parts but the parts, the touchpoints, can all add up to a halo-like shield that makes a company's reputation harder to destroy and easier to admire. That's reputation at its best. It takes years to build and many bumps along the way. But when it gels, it is a wondrous thing to admire.

23 Tips on Bed Bug Eradication, Cleansing and Reputation Recovery. I thought it was a mistake. I could not figure out what reputation recovery had to do with bed bugs. In fact, it gave me the creeps. I figured it was one of those online snafus where words get mixed up with lots of symbols #)@++&&& or something like that. I was wrong.  In fact, it was an article on eradicating bed bugs and the site was referencing some wisdom from my book.  Here is a snippet from it below. I never thought I gave out buggy advice but maybe I was wrong.

Did you know it can take up to 3 years to gain back the trust of your customers? Below are some thoughts offered from the book Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation. “The best steps to beginning the reputation recovery process range from having the CEO announce specific actions the company will take to respond to the problem, tireless communications through a wide variety of external and internal channels and a comprehensive re-examination of company culture and its commitment to corporate responsibility. A recovery strategy that continues to grow in importance…is the use of the corporate website to relay information, progress and updates about company actions.” There’s more but I’m sure you get the idea. The GM for the hotel must step forward and take full responsibility for the issue and communicate, communicate, communicate. As you can see, bed bugs are a nuisance that cannot be ignored. If you walk away with anything from this series, it should be the knowledge that regular proactive inspections are imperative. As I always state at the end of my articles, addressing the subjects I discuss will increase your revenue, improve your scores or decrease expenses. Being proactive in your bed bug management will in the long run benefit all three areas.  Good luck and let me know how you do.

Took me a few days but finally found a chance to read a fascinating review in the Financial Times of the impact of the insider trading scandal at management consultant McKinsey & Company and its impact on their reputation. Andrew Hill did a fine job providing a historical review of McKinsey's ups and downs over the many years of its storied existence and finding former partners and employees to offer their perspectives. As you already know from the trial of Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group, the hedge fund CEO is accused of insider trading using tips from former McKinsey partners' Anil Kumar and Rajat Gupta, global managing partner who left after several terms in 2003.  What intrigued me of course was how McKinsey was recovering from this reputation catastrophe and how it fit with the best practices in my book on reputation recovery. This is not just a bruise but a serious injury to McKinsey's reputation. Here is what they did so far:

• Communicated regularly with employees and former employees
• Initiated an independent inquiry with the help of a law firm
• Improved processes over protecting confidential client information
• Reviewed its ethics policies and standards
• Redefined what constitutes "material non-public informtion"
• Built a formal "stop-list" of client stocks that no McKinsey person can trade (not just those assigned to the account)
• Added new training procedures
• Strengthened governance

True to its highly analytical way of attacking corporate challenges (they work for 90 of the top 100 companies in the world, among others), they looked back at how they handled prior problems. Coincidentally, the article points out that they had been putting together a comprehensive internal history of the firm which luckily offered them insights on how they have historically dealt with challenges to their reputation and livelihood. The latter best practice is one I highly recommend to others. In my book, I talk about the importance of the Rewind period where companies study their mistakes to from the past to create a better future. Lord John Browne of BP did so after the refinery fire in Texas City and asked the question of how they did not see the pattern of errors that turned deadly sooner. Looking in the rearview mirror may take time that leaders do not think they have but critical warning signs are often present. Retromining is a critical piece of recovering reputation. As the new McKinsey global managing director, Dominic Barton, also did, he studied other thriving cultures that failed. As Barton said in the article, he had been “thinking what happened with the suppression of the Jesuits in the 1700s. This may seem strange, but [it was] an organisation that was thriving and doing well and all of a sudden was severely challenged.”

Another stat to add to the many on how long it takes to recover reputation. Actually I should say...to add to the few. There really are not that many besides the one we did some research on that shows it takes about three to four years after a crisis. However, I found this one from the Ponemon Institute and Experian that says that nearly 850 executives say that it takes about one year to restore an organization's reputation after a data breach.  It also found, depending on the type of breach, that the average loss ranges from $184 million to over $330 million. Or put another way-- the minimum brand damage is a 12% loss which could increase to 25% of the brand value if the breach was horrific. Just as disturbing is the lack of data breach preparedness according to the research. A fairly large 43% had no plan in place to deal with a breach of confidential leak or theft of customer data.  Perhaps this is why there seem to be so many. Most companies are unprepared and do not think of a data breach in the same way they do another type of crisis that is more common. Either way, it is critical to be prepared since if you really want to make your customers mad, a data breach is a surefire way to make that happen.