It’s that time of year when us pundits make bold predictions about upcoming trends in 2011. I had considered putting on my Nostradamus cap and making some reputation management predictions, but then I discovered my fellow reputationista Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross had already staked-out that turf!
Oh well, I’ve never been one for predictions, anyway. So, how about some certainties instead? Some solid, often unwritten, rules of reputation management that will pervade 2011–and beyond?
OK, here goes!
Law #1 – Everyone has an online reputation
We all have an online reputation to maintain. Don’t believe me, go ahead and “Google Yourself”–I promise you won’t go blind! Even if you don’t find anything written about you, then that’s still your reputation–or lack thereof. In 2011, you should make sure that what’s found in Google, Facebook, Twitter et al is something you’d be equally comfortable showing your mom or your boss!
Law #2 – Your reputation is an extension of your character
It doesn’t matter how hard you work on managing your reputation, it will only ever be as solid as your actual character. Tiger Woods had a reputation of being the greatest golfer–and a family man. His character revealed otherwise. As Abraham Lincoln once said,
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
Law #3 – Every reputation has an achilles heel
While Toyota may have spent years telling us that its cars are the most reliable in the world, sticking gas pedals told a different story. In fact, even though Toyota tried to deny the increasing incidents of sticking accelerators, its customers were the ones steering the car manufacturer’s reputation in another direction. Instead of denying the issue, Toyota should have been the first to recognize it! When you recognize and acknowledge your weaknesses, before your customers, you have the opportunity to craft a response before the public outcry. Do you know your reputation’s weakness?
Law #4 – Listen twice, act once
OK, so I’ve plagiarized this from the saying “measure twice, cut once,” but it’s appropriate, when it comes to listening to your customers. I tell our customers at Trackur that they should spend twice as much effort on listening as they do responding. It’s too easy to simply jump in and reply to that tweet or Facebook post–without fixing the underlying problem. Instead, you should spend time actively listening to the feedback you’re collecting about your reputation. Listen for trends. Listen for opportunities. Listen, listen, listen–ok, that was three listens, but you get my point. When you actually take onboard what your stakeholders are saying about your reputation, you do more than just fix a problem, you make sure you fix the underlying issue that created the problem in the first place! GAP’s customers weren’t so much angry that the company’s logo was changed, they were mad that the company hadn’t initially thought to listen to their feedback–a decision the apparel company quickly reversed!
Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action. Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.
Roy Disney said, “You need branding when your product has nothing to offer.” Roy’s uncle, Walt, invented Mickey Mouse and created the Disney empire. At the time, the word “branding” was reserved only for cowboys branding herds of cattle by the fiery iron.
The word “branding” is dangerously overused. Many people use branding as a cure for all kinds of problems in all kinds of businesses. To lay claim to a deeper understanding of this elementary word, branding agencies all over the world have developed some cute variations of it, from “emotional branding” to “primal,” “sensory,” “musical,” “internal,” “external,” “holistic,” “vertical,” “abstract,” “nervous” and all the way to “invisible” branding. However, to see these distinctions, you will need special 3D spectacles.
The list of branding types is almost like the three MIT wizards who took an academic conference for a ride by submitting a paper in all fake jargon: “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.” Their paper was accepted.
Haphazard Branding
There are hundreds of such branding terms pointing to the same thing. Let’s analyze and see how this historical process of branding ownership marks on animals got transformed into a word circus, bending the state of mind among corporations, institutions and many governments.
Branding is often presented as a culturally, emotional or lifestyle crazy, sugarcoated packaging process. Sometimes it is like rap music, with spinning colors or psychedelic pastel overtones accompanied with hip-hop idea drivers. Other times it comes with esoteric concepts to camouflage the products or services just long enough to get the customers’ attention. Most of the time, it comes as juicy ideas under some new blanket term of branding that is designed to create a safe and secure feeling for the corporation while waiting for the thunder from the charge of anxious customers.
For some reason, if the highly anticipated traffic doesn’t show up, then the term is changed immediately to the likes of “primal branding,” with a twist or a new style dance added to the circus. The same single promotional process is re-named repeatedly.
The idea is that when share prices fall, call the branding team and let it apply its “fiscal branding” to mail fancy brochures to shareholders. When products fail, let the “visual branding” make logos makeover, and when elevators don’t work, give it to the “yo-yo branding” unit, as they are real experts in north and south mobility. Floor please.
Today, branding is a mixed bag of basic, traditional advertising tools, simply waxed and packaged to appear as intellectual advice with an expensive price tag. It is targeted to fit any hungry frame of mind, and is designed to make corporations feel ever so comfortable with terms like “verbal,” “digital,” “audio,” “smelly,” “silent” or “loud” branding, as all these terms are designed to offer great safety and invisible lifelines to sinking ships. But does it work?
Just Promotional Tools
At times it does, as corporations do need solid and real branding. However, it most often fails, frequently due to lack of substance, quality, intelligence and experience. What is now being offered in the name of branding includes perfumed stationery at the banks, as sensory tickles, jingles and chimes for the funeral parlor — just raw promotional tricks.
These approaches fail because they are just basic promotional tools and skills and because they are trendy quick fixes. Branding has been defined so many times by so many experts that it is almost useless to redefine it. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.
The presentation of fancy fireworks at a huge marina as a big branding exercise might be merely ordinary to some other company. Hundreds of hired people walking on a busy street with their foreheads painted with the names of products might be kinky, tacky or too smart, all depending on the culture and mental level of the client.
Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action, to others it is getting the word out at any cost.
Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.
Most of the time, the creative powers overtake the process, and fancy jargon becomes the Band-Aid while the Laws of Global Corporate Image, Rules of Corporate Nomenclature and Name Identities, Cyber Domain Management, Principals of Marketing and Global Branding are all completely ignored as being too rigid, too serious and too formal.
Solid Training, Thorough Skills
Let’s face it, these branding rules are very hard to learn and very difficult to apply because they require solid training and thorough skills. Simple, raw promotional skills backed by big budget fireworks are only “accidental branding” at play, where everyone becomes happy as long as there is some noise. In the recent past, this is how “high volume” or “intense” branding got the center stage. Today, in this budgetless environment, it is only a dream for most agencies to get such mega breaks.
U.S. businesses are still very much overdosed with over-branding. Massive turnover in the advertising and branding industry, compounded by the Internet , e-commerce and outsourcing has created a large glut of branding consultants with too many faceless, nameless consulting services and Web sites.
The market is simply glutted. Western branding agencies are losing their grip by not producing world-class standards and are becoming a laughing stock by adopting, in a panic, monkey-see-monkey-do campaigns.
In reality, you definitely need proper branding today; the type is not the issue. However, first you must have something very good to offer. You also need highly specific and proven branding with highly tactical positioning skills, under proper corporate and brand name identity and image laws, rather than raw graphic and promotional tools.
‘Useless Branding?’
Empty concepts and poorly designed and beaten up products and services can’t be resurrected with some abstract branding terms along with some flashy campaigns. Big money spending will not buy big image anymore. It worked in the past, but times have changed. Today, the latest cyber-branding techniques are in big play. Corporations are opening up to a debate on this subject among senior management and ignoring the old, traditional branding methodologies.
As e-commerce matures by the minute, the masses of customers have successfully ignored the expensive blitzes and pretended to have some type of an early Alzheimer’s condition to justify their memory loss. Nothing sticks in mind any longer.
The blasted, useless messages are instantly forgotten. The 15-minute fame suggested by Andy Warhol is now only a 15-second blip on the global e-commerce landscape. What was previously shoved on 24-7 ad campaigns and lasted at least a year is now completely forgotten the very next day.
Should we now re-define branding all over again? Should this word be re-invented? How about “useless branding?” No, not yet.
– Naseem Javed
– 7-27-05
If you’re the head of your company, you have to be able to define not just what your company does, but why it does it.
Having difficulty? That’s normal. You can blame it on the way your brain works. The part of the brain that contains decision-making and behavior doesn’t control language, so when you’re asked questions about why you do what you do, it’s natural to get tongue-tied.
That’s where great leadership comes in. Leaders are required to put in to words what a group does; they’re required to cross over between the decision-making and behavior sphere and the language sphere. Leaders are great because they’re good at putting feelings into words that we can act upon.
So it’s up to you, as company leader, to define your “why.” Here are four reasons you should, if you want to survive as a company.
1. Your company’s “why” generates loyalty.
Apple can sell phones not simply because they have the smarts to make phones; every single one of their competitors can make phones too. What gives Apple permission to sell products beyond computers is the fact that it doesn’t define themselves as a computer company; rather, it is a company that stands for something. It represents an ideal: Down with “the man”; attack the status quo; champion the individual.
As long as Apple’s products are consistent with its cause, the company has the freedom to do things other companies cannot. Those who identify with Apple’s cause, in turn, will say they “love” Apple–even if they think it’s because of the products.
2. Organizational success (or failure) often dates from inception.
Most great companies were founded by a person or small group of people who personally suffered a problem, went through an difficult experience, or had someone close to them face a tricky challenge–and then came up with a solution or alternative. That original solution to that original problem is what they formed their company around; it’s why they do what they do.
Organizations that just look to capture some market opportunity, or are born out of some market research, often fail (or else need endless pools of money to keep going). No one has passion for a problem revealed in market research. People have passion to solve their own problems or to help those they care about.
Fortunately, it’s easy to build trust in a business relationship. Here are the rules, based on a conversation with a true expert in trust-building Jerry Acuff, author of The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success.
1. Be yourself.
Everybody on the planet has had unpleasant experiences with salespeople, and many have walked away from a sales situation feeling manipulated. So, rather than acting or sounding like a salesperson, simply act the way you would when meeting with a colleague.
2. Value the relationship.
If you want people around you to value having a relationship with you, you must truly believe that relationship building is important. You must also believe that you honestly have something of value to offer to the relationship.
3. Be curious about people.
People are drawn to those who show true interest in them. Curiosity about people is thus a crucial element of relationship building. Having an abiding fascination in others give you the opportunity to learn new things and make new connections.
4. Be consistent.
A customer’s ability to trust you is dependent upon showing the customer that your behavior is consistent and persistent over time. When a customer can predict your behavior, that customer is more likely to trust you.
5. Seek the truth.
Trust emerges when you approach selling as a way of helping the customer–so make it your quest to discover the real areas where the you can work together. Never be afraid to point out that your product or company may not be the right fit.
The story of reputation management in a crisis is fairly common: a businesses finds themselves in the center of a controversy spinning out of control on the web.
The generally begins with an executive who happily fell asleep one night, only to awake the next morning with dozens of emails in the inbox and a team anxiously awaiting a “master plan” that will save them. The executive finds themselves wasting valuable time researching facts they should have known, trying to educate themselves on basic best practices, and hesitating to take action due to a fundamental lack of understanding.
This article takes a good look at why real reputation management is not just SEO, but an integrated and holistic communication strategy that ties into multiple parts of a business. By examining questions regarding reputation management to avoid a crisis elements, a business can have a healthy and positive online footprint that grows into a strong business asset.
REMEMBER, In a crisis, the simplest actions become the most important ones.
While this exercise is written for a larger organization, all of the questions leading towards a good reputation management plan are valid regardless of whether your company has $25k or $500m in revenue.
via barryhurd.com
When mistakes are made, fight the urge to defend and minimize. Spinning and shaping a message to look “positive,” only makes a leader look weak, evasive and less than honest.
Realize that no matter how hard your organization works, mistakes will be made. Most people understand this. You won’t get points for it, but you won’t be vilified if you communicate in a straight up fashion: “We screwed up. This never should have happened. We’ve got to get this right. The stakes are too high. We apologize to the American people.”
Final advice: “Go with your gut when communicating under pressure.
Ask yourself, “If I were on the other end of this message, would it seem credible to me? Would I believe the person saying it?”
If your answer is no, you can be confident your communication strategy is on a very dangerous path.”
Steve Adubato speaks and coaches on leadership and communication. He is the author of the book, “What Were They thinking? Crisis Communication: The Good, the Bad and the Totally Clueless.”
Sometimes questions are more important than answers. In a crisis situation, you need to know the questions to ask before you have answers to questions.
This starts with the many “What ifs” that need to be asked as you develop the crisis plan or plans for your company, institution or organization. Never rush in believing you have all of the answers. You may have overlooked some important questions that need to be asked.
Fred Thompson, former managing partner of the Earle Palmer Brown public relations firm, says when you think you are in a crisis you need to ask yourself three questions:
- “Who has the most to gain or lose in this situation?” Prioritize the issues.
- “Is there a fundamental misunderstanding?” A basic misunderstanding might be resolved by an explanation or presentation of the facts.
- “Can this be ended with an apology, admission or wrongdoing or simply saying ‘we screwed up’?” This could create conflict with the legal counsel who may want to avoid any such admission or statement of regret.
Thompson believes answers to these questions will define the strategy to best deal with a situation before it turns into a crisis.
Andrew Stern, chair of Sunwest Communications, Dallas, believes in asking a number of questions before a crisis as part of being prepared. “If a crisis is ready to happen, you don’t have time to go through steps one through four. You must be prepared in advance. The plan should have a scenario so that when a potential crisis is ready to happen, every member of the team knows instinctively what to do,” says Stern. Here are some questions he asks:
- Does the situation stand the risk of escalating in intensity?
- How intensive can it become and how quickly?
- What can we endure?
- Does it present hazards to people off-site (away from the workplace)?
- To what extent will the situation be reported by the news media?
- To what extent will the media coverage be monitored by government agencies?
- Will local news media call to inquire?
- Will there be regional, national or international coverage?
- Does the organization typically report whatever kinds of incidents occur to local, state or federal government agencies or officials?
- Are injuries or deaths involved?
- Will the crisis interfere with operations?
- Will business be conducted as usual despite the situation?
- Will people be interrupted in doing their normal duties?
- Will work come to a halt?
- Will outside organizations be affected?
- Will this crisis affect the reputation and good image the company has with customers and the public?
- Will it affect the confidence people have in the institution?
- Will sales or products or services be impacted?
- Did the crisis happen because of anything the company did? Or did it just happen?
- Is the company the victim of external forces and events beyond its control?
- What extent could the company be injured financially? Politically? Sales and profits?”
Start making a list of questions you need to ask.
Note: Rene A. Henry is vice president-public relations for Innovative Communication Corporation, a privately owned telecom and media company with operations throughout the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Belize, France, Sint Maarten, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe and Martinique. He also is the author of six books including “You’d Better Have A Hose If You Want To Put Out the Fire – the complete guide to crisis and risk communications,” “Marketing Public Relations – the hows that make it work!” and “Offsides! – Fred Wyant’s provocative look inside the National Football League.”
by Rene A. Henry, Fellow PRSA, © 2001
6-14-5
It’s no longer enough to have a sleek website, social-media presence, and consistent brand aesthetic online. The new rules of branding your business on the Web have a lot less to do with presentation, and a lot more to do with interaction. In order to bring you up to speed, Inc.com has compiled nine of the most innovative and ingenious tips from articles, guides, and interviews in Inc. and Inc.com over the past year. These are the new rules of branding online.
1. Don’t just start the conversation.
Be an integral and evolving part of it. “Social media has one very important perspective to share with brand management—the conversation. Like branding, social media is all about the conversation and building effective relationships. They are perfectly suited to one another,” says Ed Roach, founder of The Brand Experts, a brand management consultancy in West Leamington, Ontario, the author of The Reluctant Salesperson, a free e-book available at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca. The rules for brand messaging through new media versus traditional channels haven’t changed, but “the game sure got better and more interesting,” says Roach. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you must participate in the conversation by making regular posts and replying to direct messages from your customers. Ron Smith, president and founder of S&A’s Cherokee, a public relations and marketing firm in Cary, North Carolina, agrees, adding that you’ll want to stay on top of what people are saying about you and your brand online. “Monitoring social media is a must for all companies. Social media has shortened the time frame for company responses to complaints or accusations. These days, companies need to acknowledge any issues and control the messaging in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days,” says Smith. Read more.
2. Either keep your personal brand out of it…
So you have 10,000 Twitter followers. Does it matter to your customers? Tim Ferriss, the entrepreneur behind the sports nutritional supplements companyBrainQUICKEN and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, told Inc.com contributor John Warrillow: “Unless you’re in one of a handful of businesses like public speaking, I think managing and growing a personal brand can be a huge distraction for company founders. I see all of these entrepreneurs trying to collect Twitter followers, and it reminds me of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. In this case, the founders are the bull. The bullfighter moves the flag away, and the bull comes up with nothing but air. Steve Jobs has a personal brand, but it isApple’s product design that makes it such a valuable company. He isn’t jumping onFoursquare to develop his ‘personal brand.'” Read more.
3. …or dive in and make all the headlines you can.
Appearing in the media as a source of expertise can go a long way toward building your brand, Inc.’s April Joyner reports. To gain press, identify media outlets that are most applicable to your particular areas of expertise and send them targeted pitches.
Why do weaker creative brains have a tendency to steal in broad daylight, and why is big money spent in promoting look-alike names, despite knowing full well that these names are stolen from other famous brands? Is it really human nature or just sheer stupidity? Unfortunately, some lack the basic skills for recognizing The Three Golden Rules of Naming.
Millions of entrepreneurs and thousands of account executives from major ad agencies all over the world are losing their sleep these days, most sleepwalking in search of new names with some extra “OO”s to ride along with the success of Google’s name.
During the day, they daydream about coming as close to this name as possible. Copy, modify or steal, who cares, as long it as sounds like Google. OOGLE, BOOGLE, FROOGLE, NOODLE, POODLE, CABOODLE, who cares? Just leave the Google brand name alone.
Look-Alike Names
Why do weaker creative brains have a tendency to steal in broad daylight, and why is big money spent in promoting look-alike names, despite knowing full well that these names are stolen from other famous brands? Is it really human nature or just sheer stupidity?
Unfortunately, they seriously lack the basic skills necessary to recognize The Three Golden Rules of Naming:
- Rule One: Do not hide under someone else’s umbrella, you will still get wet. Don’t be a copycat. It is very bad to copy or borrow from an established identity. A look-alike, sound-alike name, resembling the personality of a powerful, established, legendary name would be fruitless in the long run. Stay clear of legendary names.
In the current battle with Froogle, Google has the full right to challenge as the spelling of frugal was changed to appear like Google’s. Just like in the past, Apple, as in computers, faced copycats called, Pineapple, Banana and Cherry, but all perished in the copycat game. There were also Boohoos, UHOOs after Yahoo. Creative agencies love to steal. That is why there are ALTIVA, ALTIPA, AMTIVA, by the hundreds or ENGENT, PANGENT, and CANGENT. Ever wonder why most cars, beer, banking, medicine commercials are just the same? The corporations pay millions and do endless research that is all wasted in the end, as the resulting names or ads are always just the same. Surely, they are not all out of new ideas — or are they?
- Rule Two: Creativity is a spark of genius. Over-creativity can cause fire and damage. Don’t get too creative. Do not twist, bend, stretch, exaggerate, corrupt or modify alpha-structures to their extremes in naming. It might result in difficult, confusing, unpronounceable and only silly names. Avoid overly creative solutions. Studies have shown again and again that most ad commercials or strange branding themes and names, which surely win top awards from their peers, are simply shut out by customers. Next time, just check the top 10 most-awarded campaigns and their related sales performances. Here, raw creativity is rewarded whether it rings clients’ cash registers or not.
- Rule Three: Work locally, think globally and name universally. Do not short-change. No matter how small or local the project, think of the future and think of this small planet. A name is only good when it is free and clear to travel around the globe, without encountering translation problems or trademark conflicts. Name for the universe. Ninety-five percent of the corporate and major product names will fail a test of global protection and suitability. It is so easy to have a global name identity.
Clarity Needed
Global branding and rules of corporate branding in just about every sector are faced with the massive proliferation and commoditization of leading brands. This factor alone demands clarity in the name identity and a precise definition in the marketplace. Copying and stealing famous names is the first step to a big failure.
Globalization is at a serious crossroad. Nationalistic posturing is demanding localization of brands at a much faster rate. At the end of the day, global corporate nomenclature is the most sought after issue of any serious branding exercise. This process is not to be confused with name branding exercises that are primarily looking at global directories and stealing famous name ideas by changing a letter or two, all in the name of big branding.
Creative agencies should pack up all gear, leave the success of Google’s name alone, and wake up and smell the coffee.
By Naseem Javed
10-07-05
Deciding whether to grow or to remain hunkered down is a key issue for America’s business leaders today. Companies can do more to take their future into their own hands and move forward faster in the economy by addressing their brand. Here are five critical steps that a company can take to drive growth through branding.
1. Know where you are relative to the competition.
Continuously monitoring your competition will help identify where you are today and set the direction for the future. It will help to determine whether your positioning is still unique or if it needs to evolve to better separate yourself from the pack. It will also gauge the momentum of your corporate brand on multiple attributes. Familiarity and favorability measures versus your industry and the competition can provide key strategies for future growth.2. Develop a long-term five-year brand strategy.
Your brand strategy should support your business strategy. Base the branding budget on what it will take to achieve specific revenue and asset growth goals. Branding is an investment, so establishing long-term goals today is critical for future success.3. Communicate to the world.
Show that you are serious about your growth plans. Demonstrate how you are retooling your brand to reflect a current look at who you are. You might refresh your logo or your brand identity. Whatever you do, communicate your new brand position to both internal and external audiences.
How much planning has your organization dedicated in enhancing (or, God forbid, establishing) a creative corporate culture?
First, let’s get a grip on the “creative” in creative corporate culture. Creativity isn’t just for design firms, art studios and elementary craft projects. Creativity and creative thought is necessary for all agencies and communication professionals who seek innovative strategies for their clients. Consider your organization’s best and brightest idea—was there not a light bulb of creativity that popped on (even flickered) that lead you down the path of project righteousness?
It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like? Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your agency’s product. Once we begin tapping into these quirks, culture begins to form.
As daunting as the idea of a creative corporate culture may seem, fear not my fellow PR and marcom professionals. If you are one of the bold and daring to take on the challenge of building said culture in the New Year, here are a few tips for your right brain to digest:
1. Get a desk tchotchke, already. Culture is built by sharing parts of our personality with those around us—what better place for that than your workspace? If your personality could be personified by something small that fits on your desk, what would it be? Find that thing, embrace it and share it!
2. Build a community space. Forget the archaic days of water cooler chats. People like to hang in hip spaces—gather ‘round a Wii, create a community bulletin board or have a reading nook filled with industry related publications. As the saying goes, “if you build it, culture will come.”
3. Play games and buy toys. Incorporate games (and yes, even toys) into traditional office activities. Play a round of Apples to Apples before a staff meeting, or leave baskets of building blocks around the office. Using different parts of the brain is important to creativity and improving the overall quality of our ideas.
4. Find a platform and give back. A surefire way to build corporate culture is engaging team members in charitable activities—it feels good to give back, and when you do it as a group it creates unique bonds and fun memories. Find a kooky charitable activity in your town and make a day of it!
5. Eat, drink and be creative. The easiest way to enhance an organization’s culture is eating together. Consider a monthly potluck where staff can bring their favorite fares for teammates to enjoy. Encourage exotic recipes and fanciful presentations—these always create a buzz around the office.
It’s no longer enough to have a sleek website, social-media presence, and consistent brand aesthetic online. The new rules of branding your business on the Web have a lot less to do with presentation, and a lot more to do with interaction. In order to bring you up to speed, Inc.com has compiled nine of the most innovative and ingenious tips from articles, guides, and interviews in Inc. and Inc.com over the past year. These are the new rules of branding online.
1. Don’t just start the conversation.
Be an integral and evolving part of it. “Social media has one very important perspective to share with brand management—the conversation. Like branding, social media is all about the conversation and building effective relationships. They are perfectly suited to one another,” says Ed Roach, founder of The Brand Experts, a brand management consultancy in West Leamington, Ontario, the author of The Reluctant Salesperson, a free e-book available at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca. The rules for brand messaging through new media versus traditional channels haven’t changed, but “the game sure got better and more interesting,” says Roach. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you must participate in the conversation by making regular posts and replying to direct messages from your customers. Ron Smith, president and founder of S&A’s Cherokee, a public relations and marketing firm in Cary, North Carolina, agrees, adding that you’ll want to stay on top of what people are saying about you and your brand online. “Monitoring social media is a must for all companies. Social media has shortened the time frame for company responses to complaints or accusations. These days, companies need to acknowledge any issues and control the messaging in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days,” says Smith. Read more.2. Either keep your personal brand out of it…
So you have 10,000 Twitter followers. Does it matter to your customers? Tim Ferriss, the entrepreneur behind the sports nutritional supplements companyBrainQUICKEN and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, told Inc.com contributor John Warrillow: “Unless you’re in one of a handful of businesses like public speaking, I think managing and growing a personal brand can be a huge distraction for company founders. I see all of these entrepreneurs trying to collect Twitter followers, and it reminds me of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. In this case, the founders are the bull. The bullfighter moves the flag away, and the bull comes up with nothing but air. Steve Jobs has a personal brand, but it isApple’s product design that makes it such a valuable company. He isn’t jumping onFoursquare to develop his ‘personal brand.'” Read more.3. …or dive in and make all the headlines you can.
Appearing in the media as a source of expertise can go a long way toward building your brand, Inc.’s April Joyner reports. To gain press, identify media outlets that are most applicable to your particular areas of expertise and send them targeted pitches.
WHEN STEVE JOBS INTRODUCED THE IPHONE IN 2007, he said: “I skate to where the puck is going to be…not to where it’s been.” He often borrowed that saying from Walter Gretsky, who said it constantly to a boy named Wayne.
Poignant words that I resolutely believe drive breakthrough brands. It’s not enough merely to improve on your competition. You must innovate. To do that you must imagine where the puck will be, not where it is.
That said, if you were to ask me where the puck is going in social media, from a business perspective, I would say without hesitation: reputation management.
Mark my words. This will be a major growth industry over the next decade. Think about it: Companies invest thousands, millions, even tens of millions of dollars–and untold hours–building precious brand equity and erecting a beautiful brand image. And, it can be unraveled online in hours. Very few people, or companies, know the art of reputation management.
If you were considering a career to pursue, marinate over this one. If you can help companies listen to the online conversations about their brand, draw actionable insights from that, develop strategy and make measurable progress, you can write your own ticket. This is a brand new field. There are no “benchmark salaries” for this kind of job. It’s all “value based fees.” You could waltz right in and say: “Look, you spend $11 million a year on advertising to build your brand. You should pay me 10% of that to protect it.” If you are an expert in reputation management, you will be able to charge a fortune — and get it.
Deciding whether to grow or to remain hunkered down is a key issue for America’s business leaders today. Companies can do more to take their future into their own hands and move forward faster in the economy by addressing their brand. Here are five critical steps that a company can take to drive growth through branding.
1. Know where you are relative to the competition.
Continuously monitoring your competition will help identify where you are today and set the direction for the future. It will help to determine whether your positioning is still unique or if it needs to evolve to better separate yourself from the pack. It will also gauge the momentum of your corporate brand on multiple attributes. Familiarity and favorability measures versus your industry and the competition can provide key strategies for future growth.2. Develop a long-term five-year brand strategy.
Your brand strategy should support your business strategy. Base the branding budget on what it will take to achieve specific revenue and asset growth goals. Branding is an investment, so establishing long-term goals today is critical for future success.3. Communicate to the world.
Show that you are serious about your growth plans. Demonstrate how you are retooling your brand to reflect a current look at who you are. You might refresh your logo or your brand identity. Whatever you do, communicate your new brand position to both internal and external audiences.
Purchase Jim Gregory’s Turning Stakeholders Into Brand Champions – Replay
Sometimes it’s darkest just before the light. Here are 11 great articles to assess the times we’re in, and plan for better days.
Five C’s for Communicating in this Crunch
We’ve developed a gut-check list of “Five C’s” to help guide communications on dire economic subjects, from news releases to corporate Web sites to internal communications.
10 Tips for a Challenging Economic Environment
9. Communicate authentically. Strong leaders acknowledge the challenges they struggle with and, by doing so, build trust among followers. Rather than being a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.
Marketing and PR tactics, budgets likely to change during recession
What companies don’t realize is their marketing budget will go a lot further and create much more buzz in a down market. As your competition pulls back, you should become much more aggressive. When you do, you will achieve top-of-mind status and grab market share as the economy stabilizes and will be able to remain on top during the next upswing in the economy.
Are You a Media Savvy Leader? How Agency Heads Can Boost Results in a Tight Economy
I think the inability of the PR business to really comprehend what Web 2.0 is about is shocking. So, real leaders get in there and they take a look at the trends in media and online and get active there. For example, if you’re going to offer a CEO blog, you have to be prepared to spend an hour a day doing it—not every other day. Also important is understanding and respecting the online world’s mindset of sharing—it’s all about developing conversations with constituents.
Your website can thrive in a recession
It is 14 times cheaper to allow a customer to complete a task on a website than to have the customer complete the same task over the phone. The Web is 35 times cheaper for completing such a task than a face-to-face interaction. Isn’t that a compelling business case for a website during a recession?
The range of possible futures confronting business is great. Companies that nurture flexibility, awareness, and resiliency are more likely to survive the crisis, and even to prosper.
Time to Reboot: What to Expect in Politics, Policy and PR in 2009
For those in consumer PR, this will be a tough year as product-side clients retrench. But if you are engaged in advocacy PR, public affairs or crisis communications, 2009 may be a robust year for your business, especially if you can hitch things to the “change” agenda in Washington and on Wall Street.
Social Media Begins Forcing the Totally Transparent Layoff
The combination of social media technology such as Twitter—where people post updates about themselves online at Twitter.com—and a cultural shift toward greater personal disclosure means more and more employees will document details of their dismissal, said Jennifer Benz, a communications consultant based in San Francisco.
Give Data a Human Touch to Weather the Economic Storm
The key, say many experts, is to use customer data and analytics for its original purpose: forging stronger customer relationships.
Market Smarter in 2009: Make the Right Choices
Remember two words: frequency, consistency. Even with finite resources, it’s vital to maintain a level of frequency and consistency. It is crucial to stay in front of your customers and prospects. You should never disappear for stretches at a time. If that means you need to focus marketing efforts on a few of your strongest market sectors, do it.
5 Lessons on Marketing for the Recession
Lesson: Keep hiring channels open and be pickier than ever. For anyone who hasn’t read Hard Times or any of the Studs Terkel interview compilations, they are an incredible insight into people’s attitudes and behaviors throughout history. I highly recommend
All businesses are vulnerable to crises. You can’t serve any population without being subjected to situations involving lawsuits, accusations of impropriety, sudden changes in company ownership or management, and other volatile situations on which your audiences — and the media that serves them — often focus.
The cheapest way to turn experience into future profits is to learn from others’ mistakes. With that in mind, I hope that the following examples of inappropriate crisis communications policies, culled from real-life situations, will provide a tongue-in-cheek guide about what NOT to do when your organization is faced with a crisis.
To ensure that your crisis will flourish and grow, you should:
Play ostrich
Hope that no one learns about it. Cater to whoever is advising you to say nothing, do nothing.
Assume you’ll have time to react when and if necessary, with little or no preparation time. And while you’re playing ostrich, with your head buried firmly in the sand, don’t think about the part that’s still hanging out.
Only start to work on a potential crisis situation after it’s public!
This is closely related to item 1, of course. Even if you have decided you won’t play ostrich, you can still foster your developing crisis by deciding not to do any advance preparation.
Before the situation becomes public, you still have some proactive options available. You could, for example, thrash out and even test some planned key messages, but that would probably mean that you will communicate promptly and credibly when the crisis breaks publicly, and you don’t want to do that, do you?
So, in order to allow your crisis to gain a strong foothold in the public’s mind, make sure you address all issues from a defensive posture — something much easier to do when you don’t plan ahead. Shoot from the hip, and give off the cuff, unrehearsed remarks.
Let your reputation speak for you
“Doesn’t anybody know how important we think we are?” you complain. You: big business Goliath. Me: member of public who doesn’t trust big business. You lose.
Trust the media like the enemy
By all means, tell a reporter that you think he/she has done such a bad job of reporting on you that you’ll never talk to him/her again. Or badmouth him/her in a public forum. Send nasty faxes. Then sit back and have a good time while:
- The reporter gets angry and directs that energy into REALLY going after your organization.
- The reporter laughs at what he/she sees as validation that you’re really up to no good in some way.
Get stuck in reaction mode, rather than get proactive
A negative story suddenly breaks about your organization, quoting various sources. You respond with a statement. There’s a follow-up story. You make another statement.
Suddenly you have a public debate, a lose/lose situation. Good work! Instead of looking at methods that could turn the situation into one where you initiate activity that precipitates news coverage, putting you in the driver’s seat and letting others react to what you say, you continue to look as if you’re the guilty party defending yourself.
Use language your audience doesn’t understand
Jargon and arcane acronyms are but two of the ways you can be sure to confuse your audiences, a surefire way to make most crises worse. Let’s check out a few of these taken-from-real-situations gems:
“The rate went up 10 basis points.”
“We’re considering development of a SNFF or a CCRC.”
“We ask that you submit exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.”
“The material has less than 0.65 ppm benzene as measured by the TCLP.”
To the average member of the public, and to most of the media who serve them other than specialists in a particular subject, the general reaction to such statements is “HUH?”
Assume that truth will triumph over all
You have the facts on your side, by golly, and you know the American public will eventually come around and realize that. Disregard the proven concept that perception is as damaging as reality — sometimes more so.
Address only issues and ignore feelings
“The green goo which spilled on our property is absolutely harmless to humans.”
“Our development plans are all in accordance with appropriate regulations.”
“The lawsuit is totally without merit.”
So what if people are scared? Angry? You’re a businessman, not a psychologist — right?
Make only written statements
Face it, it’s a lot easier to communicate via written statements only. No fear of looking or sounding foolish. Less chance of being misquoted. Sure, it’s impersonal and some people think it means you’re hiding and afraid, but you know they’re wrong and that’s what’s important.
Use ‘best guess’ methods of assessing damage
“Oh my God, we’re the front page (negative) story, we’re ruined!”
Congratulations — you may have just made a mountain out of a molehill….OK, maybe you only made a small building out of a molehill. Helpful hint: you can make the situation worse by refusing to spend a little time or money quietly surveying your most important audiences to see what THEY think and if it matches the perception created by the media.
Do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results!
The last time you had negative news coverage you just ignored media calls, perhaps at the advice of legal counsel or simply because you felt that no matter what you said, the media would get it wrong. The result was a lot of concern amongst all of your audiences, internal and external, and the aftermath took quite a while to fade away.
So, the next time you have a crisis, you’re going to do the same thing, right? Because “stuff happens” and you can’t improve the situation by attempting to improve communications — can you?
© Jonathan Bernstein. All Rights Reserved.
Veteran crisis management professional Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Communications, Inc. and publisher of Crisis Manager, an award-winning free email newsletter written for “those who are crisis managers whether they want to be or not.”
Jonathan has also written several important manuals and reports. For more information visit TheCrisisManager.
Richard Rawlinson, Ashley Harshak and David Suarez from Booz & Company have written a good article with some tips and results from a recent survey that their organization has done on change. No question, boards and senior management have really focused on change management so much more and given it the proper attention it deserves with regards to corporate strategy.
You can check it out here.
They also produced another article that might be of interest: “Change Management Graduates to the Boardroom: From Afterthought to Prerequisite” (PDF), Booz & Company white paper, June 2008: Results of the Booz & Company survey on change management (mentioned in this article) of 350 senior executives who have led major transformation initiatives at large organizations worldwide.
At the Blog Business Summit this week my blogging Yoda’s Robert Scoble, Buzz Bruggeman and Anil Dash tackled the thorny topic of crisis communications. They emphasized how blogging can help when things get bad by projecting a human face or voice for an organization and by providing a forum for soliciting specific feedback from customers. In the immortal words of the Hulkster, “Amen brother.”
Read full article on Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog.
The Levick Strategic Communications desktop reference instantly assists C-Suites, boards, and counsel during the first moments of a crisis. It discusses what happens next after a crisis first occurs, the ongoing communications risks involved, and the steps to take to minimize and, in some cases, transform the crisis into opportunity.
The Crisis Communications Desktop Reference is fully searchable and downloadable, rich in best practices and tips for two-dozen diverse crisis and litigation challenges, from bet-the-company lawsuits to wholesale blog assaults on corporate reputations.
The Desktop Reference is available for download on the Levick website: http://www.levick.com/crisis_communications_desktop_reference/
The basic idea behind “brand alignment” is pretty simple – When it comes to delivering on your marketing promises, make sure everyone in your organization knows what’s going on and they’re able to walk the talk. Living up to that ideal, though, isn’t simple at all. It takes a concerted effort to get everyone tuned in and turned on to the principles and practices that align the “do” with the “say.”
Promise Broken
One revealing way to test if an organization is living the brand is to observe how they deal with customer complaints. I recently had an experience with a new service I subscribed to online that told me a lot in a hurry about what they believe and how they operate.
Within an hour after subscribing, I got a notice that the first program would be broadcast that same evening. They described the event and what the participants would learn during the one-hour session. I didn’t want to miss it, but I already had another meeting scheduled. Reluctantly, I contacted that person and asked if we could reschedule for the following evening. She agreed, so I was set to take part in the new program
About halfway through it, they still hadn’t talked about the topic that was advertised. I was getting suspicious that I had been sold a bill of goods – that this was yet another company that promised one thing and delivered something else. By the end of the program, they still hadn’t discussed the topic they had promoted, and I was fuming. It had been a long day … I was tired … I had wasted an hour … and I had put off another meeting.
Customer Disappointed
I decided to share one of my Inside Out lessons with them in the form of a “strongly worded” e-letter to what I thought was some nebulous person in the ether-world. To my amazement, I got a reply the next morning from a sales manager named James, expressing regret for my problem and promising to look into it. Later that day I had my next pleasant surprise. I got a real live phone call from James explaining how I had been connected to the wrong program. He also thanked me for informing them because they were able to contact other people who experienced the same problem. Then he said I would be set up in the near future to participate in the program that had been advertised.
Relationship Renewed
That would’ve been good enough, but then I got a call from David, their head of marketing. He had received my e-letter, too, and he also wanted to apologize for what happened. Then he really floored me – he said he wanted to give me a FREE lifetime subscription to their service. The only thing he asked in return was for me to give him occasional feedback on how I felt the service was meeting their customers’ needs.
I told him I thought his offer was very generous but I probably over-reacted a bit in my note, and his compensation was way more than I expected. To his credit, he would have nothing of my attempt to downplay my initial disappointment, and he apologized again for “wasting my time” and failing to give me what I was promised.
Execs in some companies might say he was crazy to give away so much. But I’m betting they don’t get many complaints like mine, and when they do, few people raise a fuss because the service is probably impeccable most of the time. Since it’s an online program, it’s not really “costing” them anything to give it to me free, but it still speaks volumes about their commitment to delivering on their promises – and living their brand.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that one of the surest ways to raise suspicion about someone’s motives is for the person to say, “Trust me on this?” That’s certainly true when it comes to employees and customers.
In the workplace, few challenges have obsessed and perplexed the business world more than the issue of employee trust. The reason is obvious. With it, virtually any obstacle can be overcome in an organization. Without it, every day is filled with uncertainty and anxiety, no matter what else the organization does right.
In the marketplace, few things are treasured more passionately than loyal customers – those people who come back time and again, and even refer new customers to enjoy the same experience.
When you get them both right, it’s business paradise. The crucial thing to understand is that the two go hand-in-hand. Without employee trust, customer trust suffers, as well.
Management Credibility Factors
One reason organizations fail to foster a culture of trust is because they focus mainly on interpersonal factors. They’re important, to be sure, and here are key behaviors that managers have to exhibit to gain employee trust:
- Caring – Genuine concern about employee wellbeing is where it has to start.
- Honesty and Openness – Dance around the truth or hide important information, and people tune out and turn away.
- Responsiveness – Listening and taking action on what you hear tells people you’re sincere.
- Competence – If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s hard to win a following.
- Reliability – Can people count on you to do what you say?
- Apology – If you can admit mistakes and apologize sincerely, trust goes way up.
In a recent article I wrote for Communication World called “Cracking the Culture Code,” the communication VPs for Southwest Airlines and Enterprise Rent-A-Car talk about how their companies observe those behaviors in their extraordinarily successful cultures.
People-First Systems
But…that’s only half of the equation. You also have to design the systems, policies, and processes in a way that tells employees unequivocally that they are trusted. We call those People-First Systems, and they fall into five main categories:
- Measurement
- Rewards and recognition
- Communication
- Learning and development
- Continuous improvement
Of course, many organizations have some type of mechanism in place for all of those areas. But do they really demonstrate to employees that they are trusted? Do they truly reinforce the oft-heard mantra that people are our most important asset? Fact is, systems in most organizations are designed to protect against the miniscule number of irresponsible people, and those constraints wind up stifling the vast majority of employees you can count on like clockwork.
Bottom line, you can’t have performance excellence without sincere trust and belief in people. If you have doubts about the merits of that philosophy, consider the wisdom of renowned statesman, Henry Stimson, who said, “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement