Posts Tagged ‘trust’

While I am on the subject of Social CEOs (see my last post), I wanted to mention a study that was released by BRANDfog, a firm that helps executives get social.  Survey respondents report that more than 80% of respondents believe that CEOs who engage on social media are better equipped than their peers to lead companies in a Web 2.0 world. What’s more, 93% of respondents believe that CEO engagement on social media helps communicate company values, and grow and evolve corporate leadership in times of crisis.  Similarly, 82 percent of survey respondents said they were more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team engage in social media. Since reputation is all about trust, it sounds like the demand is there....we've just got to supply it with examples and role models.

I am traveling in Asia so have not had alot of time to write in my blog.  I just read this interesting perspective on what eBay said their real accomplishment was: "...neither their clever technology nor the marketplace they created. Rather, it was to build trust between people who had never met." That's reputation building at its core -- building reputation between people who've never bought or come close to the company's products. I have been traveling to different markets to discuss my article on Reputation Warfare. In one meeting, a corporate communciations officer told me that after a recent crisis, the previously shy CEO said he now realized he was the company's PR chief. And to keep it coming. It often takes a crisis to turn chief executives into media hounds.

  Found this fascinating article about the financial services sector and reputation.  Saw it referenced on Twitter. It’s titled Rebuilding Trust with Enterprise Social Networking and describes how some financial services companies are using ERM (enterprise relationship management) effectively to network internally for external relationship-building.  If you are into that sort of thing, read it.  What interested me were two sentences at the top of the article: “Reputation and brand won’t carry the weight they did before the crisis. In this new world, where reputation is no longer enough to create confidence, people turn to trusted individuals.”  Although I realize the author was referring to internal trusted individuals who provide colleagues with access to relationships to grow business, it got me thinking about individual vs. collective reputation.  I think that most people are disenchanted with trusting individuals as much as they did. They just need to remind themselves of CEOs, presidents, investment advisors, politicians, journalists and many more that have let us down. The trust levels of most people of influence could not be lower.  Let’s not forget that many smart people trusted Bernie Madoff with their life savings because of his carefully built exclusive reputation. The recession has revealed many phonies behind those once golden reputations.   In my way of thinking, I believe that company and brand reputation are still going strong (with less fanfare than before) despite being misled by certain individual leaders.  Many company and brand reputations in select sectors are dented but not smashed. My sense is that there will be a resurgence of intense reputation-building as companies get back on their feet and realize that they must build enduring reputations for the long-term that are based on credibility, accountability and sound leadership. I think we haven’t seen anything yet!  Individual reputation-building might take a back seat to company reputation for a long while to come. Individual reputation-building will have to be carried out on behalf of the collective company reputation to really ring true.

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.