MARKETING MATTERS
What others think of your company can make or break it Taming the Tiger Called Reputation By Phil Turtle, Managing Director, Turtle Consulting PR
Introduction The reputation of a business is a highly intangible but critically influential factor in a company’s ability to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in its markets.
Marketing and PR consultant Phil Turtle looks at the ‘wild tiger called reputation’ and how firms can tame it.
Does Reputation Matter? Yes. Have you ever seen a Ratners Jewellery store? Probably not, because in 1991 CEO Gerald Ratner told a Confederation of British Industry meeting that his company’s products were “total crap.” His ‘joke’ wiped £500 million off the group’s value almost overnight. Today, RiM is struggling to stay alive
as a result of a massive network outage that ruined their reputation and share value. It is your reputation that gets your sales people through the door and winning business. It is your reputation that gets you repeat business. It is your reputation that drives recommendations from your customers. It’s your reputation as an employer that gets you the best (or worst) staff.
How to Define Reputation Many academics have tried, but I think one of the best working definitions is: ‘Reputation is what people say about you when you’re not there.’ Actual
reputation is not necessarily what your company is or does; it is what those people believe your company is or does. Every company has a number of
different ‘publics’ that matter to it, to greater or lesser degrees. These ‘stakeholders’ can include employees, suppliers, investors, the bank manager, competitors, the media, politicians, non- governmental organisations. Often most of these are ignored or, at best, are seen as peripheral. Another good working definition is: ‘A stakeholder is anyone who can bugger up your business.’ So can your employees bugger up
your business? Sure they can. Your suppliers? Yes. Your bank manager? All too easily. Your investors? Of course.
Taming the ‘Tiger’ Let’s look at the ten basic elements of reputation management: 1. Draw up a reputation score card. Just list your stakeholders and the reputation issues that managers and staff think are important to each. Put them into a matrix and colour where you think your reputation is strong, weak or variable. Immediately, you have a visual tool.
2. Get some external validation. Consider commissioning some
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simple research to find out what issues stakeholder groups believe to be important and where you really fit on those scales. Think about engaging a PR agency to help you with this – they can add significant value. Or you can use SurveyMonkey to do your own free survey.
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Identify differences between what stakeholders think and what you know to be the truth. These are areas where you need to concentrate on communicating your true position.
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If there are areas where your reputation is below par, look at what lies behind that. For example, if your stakeholders think that your reputation as an employer is poor, then you probably are a poor employer. No amount of PR can fix this until you’ve fixed the problem.
5. Consider how you communicate your messages to stakeholders. Remember that if you don’t tell them, no one else will.
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Include your staff in the reputation management process. Listen to their views. They know what’s wrong and if you’re not fixing it, they’ll be telling everyone else.
Insert one simple question into the business decision making process: “How does it affect our reputation if it goes wrong?”
8. Build a crisis management plan by brainstorming with staff all the things that could go wrong and devising a plan to manage it. The CEO needs to be seen to be involved in solving any crisis. Heads in the sand don’t save reputations, honesty and action do.
9. Don’t think of this as a one-off exercise. Review company reputation at least quarterly.
10. It takes many years to establish a reputation and only minutes to ruin it. Look after it with great care.
40 NETCOMMS europe Volume III Issue 1 2012
www.netcommseurope.com
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