Posts Tagged ‘safeguarding reputation’

  Where is privacy going?  Do all newborns have digital footprints in addition to those inky-stained ones on birth certificates? Are we going to need pre-natal reputation managers in the near future?

A survey by AVG  among mothers in several countries found that 81% of children under the age of two had some form of digital profile including photos online. This percentage was even greater in the US where an astounding 92% of children under two have an online profile.  It gets even stranger so hold on. Nearly one quarter — one in four! — have uploaded their pre-birth sonograms online. Again, US moms are more prone to sonogram-posting (34%).  Is technology getting out of hand? And nearly one in 10 (7%) moms have picked out an email address for their young ones with nearly as many having a social network profile already.

Privacy has to be among the greatest risks facing humankind as we march into the future. Parents have to learn to be extra cautious with their privacy controls if they want to maintain some sort of safeguard for their growing children. Of course, young parents today have only known life online.

All of this makes me wonder if  in year 2050, we have to employ baby reputation managers to protect our children’s backgrounds and photographs from being used improperly?

We have a lot of work ahead to understand the true dimensions of privacy loss and how it will affect this generation coming up. We have already seen the downsides (along with the upsides of course) in recent years but the early warning signs of concern are here.

When asked whether CEOs take as much action as they should to protect their company reputations, CEOs came back with a resounding yes in research by NYSEEuroNext. A full 76% believe that they are on top of safeguarding their reputation. The remaining 24% probably thinks they are not doing enough which is also a good thing.  However, considering that it is the job of the CEO to be the company’s reputation guardian, why would 2010′s figure be lower than what CEOs believed in 2006 (84%) about being ready to defend their reputations.  Could it be that CEOs recognize that as prepared as they may be, there is always something around the corner that will surprise them.  They are not as confident perhaps as they were several years ago when they may have thought that reputation protection was about branding well and getting their Web site up to par. I think the past year has humbled the best of them.

       Industry reputation is critical to companies today. It is many times more important than it used to be. Years ago, one company could have its reputation damaged and it did not tarnish the reputation of its peers. Today, one rotten apple affects the entire industry which is why we now hear so much about sectors when it comes to reputation – the financial sector, the pharmaceutical sector, the oil sector, the automotive sector, etc.  The media frequently reports on various industry associations banding together to promote their reputations. Industry reputations rise and fall but whatever problems they may have, the reputation after shocks for industries seem to linger for a long time. Whereas individual companies can repair their reputation in due course, it often seems harder for industry reputations to do the same. Weber Shandwick asked this question of executives a few years ago in our Safeguarding Reputation research and found that executives the world over consider industry reputation much harder to manage than company reputation (57% vs. 39%).

Harris Interactive’s latest research on reputation among consumers asked about sector reputation.  The greatest year over year reputation improvements were seen in the retail and the automotive industries.  Of 13 industries studied, only the pharmaceutical industry declined from 2008 to 2009. The financial services sector which is often in the headlines increased which I found interesting.  Perhaps the recovery is lifting perceptions of that industry and people believe that reform and stablility is finally on its way. Maybe they feel that there have been enough apologies and it is time to move on. Hard to know without asking.

Annual RQ 2009 USA, April 2010

When it comes to overall corporate reputation, consumers are not as negative as they were one year ago, according to Harris Interactive’s research. In 2009, 81% said today’s reputation of corporate America was not good or terrible. This compares favorably to 2008 when 88% said so. Still the figures are damming.  Harris Interactive reports that the increase in perceptions of good corporate reputations in the U.S. is the first increase in four years. We will take whatever we can get.  Let the “good” times roll.

   Someone asked me where I got 99 tips to safekeeping reputation. I thought it was a good question and it made me think about the process. I started by reading the books I wrote, reread various reports we have done at Weber Shandwick on safeguarding reputation and reviewed our most recent study on online reputation. I then yellow-highlighted all the steps to safeguarding reputation that I thought were important in preserving reputation and keeping reputations safe.  I stopped at some number around 65 and thought that maybe I should pare the list down to 50. However, I liked the number 99 because that is what I originally set out to do. So I went back to articles I have written over the years to find more tips and before I knew it, I had about 103 reminders. It did not take much to reduce the 103 to 99 tips.

Looking through all the 99 tips to safekeeping company reputation, it appears to me that the mainstays of lasting reputation are transparency, ethics, leadership, culture and responsibility. Regardless of what companies do online or offline, these values must be in place and religiously adhered to to sustain reputational trust during good times and bad. Of course, reasonable financial performance must be in place as well. As someone else has said, flat is the new black.

As the recession lingers and trust in business erodes, company reputations are at greater risk than ever before. Since October is around the corner, my mind turns to the distribution of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies ballots which should be out the door momentarily.  Respondents are soon to be asked to rate the world’s largest companies on their reputational success or failure over these past difficult 12 months. What will it take to gain admired status in times as unprecedented as these ? Not an easy question to answer but some of the answers are in those 99 tips.

 Today at Weber Shandwick we just issued a new reputation offering that I particularly like. As safeguarding company and brand reputation continues to rise to the top of executive agendas, 99 Tips to Safekeeping Reputation provides a simple visual roadmap to navigating crises and restoring reputations. We think it will come in handy for anyone interested in reputation. Enjoy and let me know what you think or would like to see added in our next version. I am thinking of doing this annually.