One of the key activities for communicators in terms of reputation building is stakeholder engagement. Members tell us that they focus heavily on stakeholder engagement activities and are trying to be smarter about it – prioritizing key, influential stakeholders and keeping a pulse on what they are saying about the company. These activities involve not only monitoring for risks and potential issues, but also take the shape of more proactive engagement through thought leadership events, engaging and meeting with industry leaders, and promoting good corporate citizenship efforts.

Currently, most stakeholder engagement is focused around reputation risk management and justifying or positively reinforcing existing reputation activities. Some of the ways in which communicators manage reputation with stakeholders include:

• Stakeholder mapping and monitoring: this involves keeping a pulse on what stakeholders are saying about you, so that you may identify and preempt potential risks. Think of this one as good “housekeeping” to prevent issues or crises from rising. For example, Monsanto utilizes stakeholder-centric monitoring to prioritize issues for specific stakeholder groups. Other companies identify and prioritize reputation risks by mapping “degree of sensitivity to issue” against “strength of company position.”
• Stakeholder conversations and thought leadership: more proactively, communicators identify influencers and discuss issues of concern with them to establish the company as a thought leader in the industry. This is in addition to other thought leadership and executive communications programs. Chevron for example, holds thought leadership stakeholder discussions on important issues to the company.

These tactics are great if you, the Communications team, were the only ones engaging with stakeholders! But more and more it is your business partners and employees who have more frequent interactions with stakeholders.  Adding additional pressure is the fact that the external environment is becoming increasingly complex as stakeholders become more resourceful about how they access information and form perceptions about you.

The problem is that business partners and employees don’t necessarily know all the risks to reputation as they are having conversations with stakeholders, and won’t think through those interactions as strategically as communicators do. Read More »

Most crisis communications plans that I see are robust when it comes to controlling the things that companies can control.  For example, most plans comprehensively outline escalation rules, crisis team org charts, calling chains, initial holding statements, etc.  These are the resources whose applicability can be predicted with relative certainty, regardless of the crisis.

But after your Communications team has gathered the facts, called together the crisis team, and issued the initial response, what do you do next?  The short answer is – “a lot.” And while I’ll admit that it’s difficult to plan in advance for every crisis permutation, there are several things that you can do to better prepare yourself for managing the ensuing stakeholder debate and impact on reputation.  Here are four strategic activities that I think will help your organization:

(1) Listen to how stakeholder conversations are taking shape.  We all know that the world of communications has become increasingly complex in recent years.  Gone are the days when organizations had significant control over when news would be released to the masses and how the subsequent conversation would evolve.  Now, information flows to stakeholders through their own complex web of influencers.

These principles remain true in a crisis situation, making it critical that companies closely monitor how conversations are taking shape.  CEC members can take check out our profile of different Social Media Listening options to see how to improve non-traditional media monitoring. Read More »

The media are always after a good story. That is of course unless they already have one that is too big for them to handle.  And sometimes, you may think that an unfortunate piece of bad press can do great damage to your company’s reputation only to have it never gain traction in the press.

Certainly when I worked for a major TV news broadcast organization, the aim was never to damage a company’s reputation, but if that happened as the story unfolded, that in itself could make the story more compelling.  So if you think you need to get the media involved, consider the following:

1. Context is everything: If the media is already covering something big, chances are that it may actually pay no attention at all to the event that involves your firm.

2. The media’s attention is relatively short: Just as your company’s unfortunate piece of bad press pushed something off the headlines, in most cases the next big thing will push the event affecting your firm down the pecking order. Read More »

Simply hearing the words — CORPORATE CRISIS – is enough to spike anxiety levels and get hearts beating faster.  Crises present severe and immediate threats to organizations, often endangering people’s safety, the company’s financial position, and/or the organization’s reputation.  What’s worse, they typically occur suddenly, sending communicators scrambling to find their firefighting suits before leaping into the flames.

A new survey conducted by CEB’s Corporate Integrity Practice indicates that 76% of corporate leaders reported a recent increase in media attention on corporate crises.   I suspect that this increased scrutiny may not come as a total shock to you.  Whether it’s a media scandal, product recall, or environmental disaster, there seems to be no shortage of crises in the news these days.  Nevertheless, one statistic from the survey really stood out.

51% of respondents reported an increase in corporate crises that can be attributed to organizational lapses (only 6% said they thought this number had deceased).  This number, coupled with the increase in media attention ought to really concern senior leaders. –Why? –  Because the only thing worse than a major crisis situation is a major crisis situation that could have been avoided. Read More »

Companies’ engagement with stakeholders on Facebook has skyrocketed in the past year. However, given the open and dynamic nature of Facebook, companies have less control over communication exchange and expose themselves to reputation risks. How can these risks be identified and minimized? How can companies adapt to changing rules of stakeholder interaction on Facebook?

Reputation risks could surface in any form. They could be as simple as an irritated consumer complaint. They could be as complex as a systematic, malicious vendetta against your company stance on a policy issue. Even simple complaints, when left to fester, could result in a reputation crisis.

The absence of well-established laws governing social media communications make it challenging for companies to contest reputation damage on Facebook. However, this shouldn’t stop them from putting a proactive social media reputation strategy  in place. Leading food and beverage corporation, Kraft Foods Inc,. has put in place a 6 pronged strategy to address various kinds of reputation risks on Facebook.

We’ve summarized Kraft Foods’ Facebook reputation management processes in the graphic, below:

Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Fact: You can’t make everyone happy. Fact: There will always be naysayers out there criticizing your company. But word-of-mouth bashing is a lot different than online criticism—and thanks to the power of social media and widespread Internet accessibility, “haters” can harshly and anonymously pick on your organization.

It would be futile to try to contain online criticism. This doesn’t, however, mean that you have to roll over while critics walk all over you. Leading communicators recognize that the best way to respond to criticisms is to be proactive and engaging. Your ultimate goal should be to smartly neutralize detractors and have productive conversations with potential supporters.

For example, let’s say you find a blog post or Tweets ranting about your company’s social responsibility track record. When crafting responses, keep in mind the following “5 Ts” of responding to online criticism: Read More »

I was flying back from a trip to the Europe when I encountered, for the second time in recent months, a newspaper article talking about a rising interest among large companies in insurance against losses caused by misdeeds of celebrities they’ve paid to endorse their brands.  While the whole idea sounds a bit strange, the ongoing litany of celebrity sex scandals (the last year has revealed some real doozies – Wayne Rooney, Peter Crouch, and Tiger Woods, to name a few) certainly helps the business case for buying it.  And “death, disability, and disgrace” clauses have in fact been available for decades.

I’m especially curious, however, to hear from folks on the front lines of public relations and reputation management.  After all, an insurer may well pay up under these policies, but damage to a company’s image can take years to repair, and it is very tough to put a price tag on that damage (not to mention the sleep you lose trying to clean up a PR disaster). Read More »

On Monday night, Michael Vick put on one of the most incredible individual athletic performances I have ever witnessed – racking up more than 400 yards of offense and six TDs in a record shattering Monday Night Football game for the Philadelphia Eagles.

As a Philly native, I gobbled up hours of post-game commentary lauding Vick as the season MVP and perhaps the game’s best player.  And yet, less than 24 hours later, as I have my professional hat back on, I can’t help but marvel at the equally phenomenal comeback in his reputation following a conviction for horrific crimes centered around dog fighting.

Let’s examine how Vick seems to demonstrate the capacity for well-directed reputation recovery efforts to redefine a media narrative. First some perspective via the always insightful Google News search results as of Tuesday afternoon: Read More »

How does the world’s largest beverage company prevent its 92,800 worldwide employees from engaging in unauthorized interactions with external stakeholders?

They don’t.

How do the proprietors of the “best-known product in the world” ensure that the uncontrollable Wild West of social media won’t be used by employees in ways that could instigate waves of litigation, damage the company’s reputation, or devalue the net worth of its multi-MULTI-billion dollar brand?

With just five words:  Have fun, but be smart.

Recently, I spent some time perusing Coca-Cola’s online social media principles.  For what it’s worth, here’s my review:  Crisp, bubbly and refreshing.

More specifically, here’s the paragraph that jumped out at me…see what you think:

The Company encourages all of its associates to explore and engage in social media communities at a level at which they feel comfortable.  Have fun, but be smart. The best advice is to approach online worlds in the same way we do the physical one — by using sound judgment and common sense, by adhering to the Company’s values , and by following the Code of Business Conduct and all other applicable policies. Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

We hear it over and over again from companies in Insurance, Healthcare, Pharma, Energy/Utilities, and Financial Services:

“We want to use social media, but we just can’t! There are too many regulations and risks.”

We’ve been investigating this claim and how much of it is true…what CAN you actually do?  Based on conversations with social media pioneers/”survivors” from the highly regulated space and quantitative research from our social media diagnostic (CEC members, take the diagnostic here), we’ve come up with a few conclusions.  Check out our article on Forbes.com about six social media principles for companies in highly regulated industries!  Let us know what you think.