Posts Tagged ‘survey’

Interesting to hear that The Wall Street Journal is outright asking subscribers how the Murdoch scandal at News Corp might be impacting its own reputation. Many companies prefer not to bring up an issue they are facing, even when it is often the elephant in the room.  Some companies, however, think that surveying customers about an issue or self-inflicted crisis is a smart way to demonstrate that they care enough about their reputation to ask the tough questions or they simply want to know in the name of transparency.  Apparently the WSJ is asking subscribers, of which I am one, “What impact, if any, do the illegal acts by News of the World journalists have on your impression of The Wall Street Journal?” or something close to that. And my favorite question from what I have read this morning is whether the CEO of a company should be held responsible “for all the actions of all its employees, no matter how large the corporation is” on a 1 to 10 scale (disagree completely —>agree completely).  I think I know the answer to that one. My guess is that 75% to 85% of subscribers, AKA business executives, will give this statement an 8/9/10.  All in all, as my colleague said to me….a brave move.

As you may know if you follow this blog, Weber Shandwick took a deep look at where executives of the world’s most admired companies spoke in 2009 compared to earlier years. The analysis  (Five Star Conferences) showed that executives are ramping up their speaking engagements in an effort to get their messages out and narrate their company stories. At Weber Shandwick, we have a group dedicated to executive engagements that ultimately help boost and solidify company reputations. They are called our Global Strategic Media Group and they do fine work, including the analysis just mentioned! Since my days at Fortune, I have always been fascinated by executive conferences so it is a continuing interest of mine. Executive speaking is definitely one tool in the reputation tool box just like awards and scorecards, among other things.

We thought it would be equally interesting to see what executive communications professionals think about the executive conference scene and teamed with Vital Speeches and David Murray to query this segment. If you are an executive communications professional or executive speechwriter that positions CEOs and other C-level executives at top tier executive conferences, please take several minutes to answer this survey. We would greatly appreciate and will share the results once they are in!