First of all, a very happy new year to you all!  It’s that time when you make yourself all sorts of promises and resolutions.  You look forward to a fresh start and lay out all the things you will do differently this year compared to last.  Any chance your list includes a resolution to invest more in the corporate brand?

The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a time of unprecedented challenge.  Patent expiries, regulatory issues, and increased pressures from healthcare providers have combined to create an environment where the sector is associated with lower growth and higher risk.  Clearly focusing on reputation should be everything for you right now? Or should it?

In an industry subject to a lot of scrutiny, we hear the term ‘Corporate reputation’ used a lot.  It is often used alongside ‘corporate brand,’ perhaps even in the same sentence to mean the same thing.  The CEC’s quantitative research from ‘Building Stakeholder Preference through the Corporate Brand’,  however, confirms that reputation and brand are two means to two very different ends.  The end goal for reputation is stakeholder acceptance (i.e., “would I consider doing business with you?”), and the end goal for corporate brand management is stakeholder preference (i.e., “would I as a health care professional choose to prescribe your drug in preference to your competitor’s?”) Read More »

By Laura Newman

It is evident that bankers have now joined the ranks of lawyers and politicians as the targets of countless jokes.  I have to admit my favorite is still the Strongbow cider advertisement I saw in the movie theater in London about a year ago. The sequel isn’t bad either!

With this in mind, it may not be surprising to hear that in my recent conversations with Corporate Communications teams at various banks, the main theme of the discussion has been reputation management.

Beyond the reality that it will take time to heal the wounds of the banking industry’s shattered reputation, here are some of the key ideas that have emerged in my conversations:

• Business partners, feeling vulnerable, are all ears about putting in more structure and controls when it comes to reputation risk. Now is the time to think strategically, establishing an effective system to identify and prioritize risk and embed awareness across the organization. Read More »

This is part 3 in a weekly blog post series about CSR & sustainability.

A running theme throughout this CSR blog series is the idea that, CSR should be a strategic activity, whereby your CSR activities are in line with your core business capabilities.  However, we’ve heard that for a lot of our members, CSR has emerged by way of response to stakeholder pressure – reactive CSR.

In truth, the balance lies somewhere between the two.  Of course, your CSR activities should align with your organizational strategy and with your operational capabilities, but you can’t ignore your external stakeholders’ demands altogether either.

So what rules apply to stakeholder engagement – and particularly to those stakeholders (we all have them!) who go out of their way to criticize you?

Stora Enso (who have been nominated as one of the world’s most ethical companies for a third time) provides us with a great example.  Stora Enso is a large producer of paper and wood products.  As such, their major raw material is wood, and more specifically (and much to the chagrin of environmental activists!) – trees.

Now, the provision of wood and wooden products to the world is a tricky business; despite the high praise Stora Enso receive, the nature of their business attracts a lot of activist attention.  It’s worth looking at how they deal with the negativity that comes their way: 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.

Raise your hand if…you would say that instead of “putting the customer first,” your company actually puts the customer second or even third (behind such goals as chasing profits, serving internal interests and responding to the capricious whims of your executives.)

(SFX:  The sound of zero hands being raised)

Of course, every company in the known universe says “…oh, yes, we are definitely and proudly customer-centric.  Always have been!”  And I’m sure every company sincerely believes they are.

But let’s challenge the truth behind that belief.

Take the following three-question quiz and see if you have to honestly answer YES to any of the questions:

1) Are there a lot of rules and regulations in your customer contracts (fine print, legalese, clearly-spelled-out exceptions for things like “force majure“)?
Whose interests are being served by this tortured language?  Your legal department?  Finance?

Does your company have any clauses to ensure the customer always gets the best end of the bargain, even if it means the company has to take a hit?  (If so, I’m gonna stop blogging immediately, and run over there to sign up!)

2) Does your company measure “net promoter score” (NPS)?
NPS is based on a customer’s willingness to recommend your company, and many companies use this system to measure the overall loyalty of their customers.  Every company wants loyal customers, right?

But has any customer ever said, “I hope that after my transaction with this company, I’ll be willing to recommend them!”?  Companies want loyalty and recommendations.  Customers just want what they want, an interaction that benefits them in some way. Read More »

By Laura Newman

“What’s the most resilient parasite?”  Moviegoers will recognize this question from Christopher Nolan’s recent psychological thriller, Inception, and respond, “An idea!”

Perhaps it’s indicative of a London summer turned dreary (yes, I know, I shouldn’t be surprised!), but living in Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard’s dream world for two hours in the Chelsea cinema this past Saturday was, I’m not ashamed to say, my weekend highlight.

Despite criticism that the film was either too complex or not deep enough, the fast-paced, action-packed drama was entertaining.  Nolan captivates his audience with a world in which it is possible to share dreams – that is, enter into another person’s dream while you are both sleeping – and steal deep secrets metaphorically locked in a safe or other secure location.   But extracting knowledge isn’t enough for the ambitious cast in Nolan’s film; instead the group is challenged to perform inception – to plant an idea in someone’s mind.

This is a particularly dangerous – some say impossible – task because, as one character explains, “the subject’s mind always knows the genesis of an idea.”  In other words, it is not enough to give someone an idea; for them to truly believe and act on it, they need to consider themselves the originator of that idea.

And here is where I can’t help but notice a link to Communications – we can no longer be successful if we solely focus on cascading our messages through channels to reach our audiences.  If the goal is for  stakeholders to act on our messages, we must find a way for them to feel they discovered these messages (and by consequence, discovered us). Read More »

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to generate no shortage of commentary.  Not only on the environmental, political, and economic consequences of the disaster, but also on a topic much more personal for corporate communicators: BP’s communications strategy.  If you’ve seen such commentary from activists (e.g., James Hoggan) or from news outlets covering the broader story (e.g., CNN), you’ve likely noticed a certain schadenfreude that permeates these remarks.  Of course, this makes them interesting, but mostly irrelevant to corporate communications professionals, aside from the minority who are responsible for crisis response in companies capable of major industrial accidents.

For the rest of us – and even for that minority – there are a couple lessons to be gleaned from BP’s handling of the Gulf Coast oil spill.  Lessons that are more subtle than the prevailing commentary and much more relevant.  Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

If you’re like me, you regularly get hit with social media newsletters, blog posts, and expert proclamations that all declare they’ve found the definitive new social media search engine or analytics tool (e.g., ”13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools!”).  However, when I begin playing around with these “essential” tools, I’m often disappointed either because (1) they miss too much or (2) they pick up too much.  This prompts me to ask, “Which free tools are actually worth the time???”  Based on conversations with (often frustrated) communicators and CEC’s research, I’ve assessed some of the popular search tools available and provided a quick review of what they can—or can’t—give you.

As context, here are the basic criteria I used when reviewing a monitoring tool:

• Is it actually free? (If the answer is “no”, it didn’t make my list.  This happened with a couple tools like Jodange and Filtrbox.)
• How relevant are the results?
• How timely are the results?
• How comprehensive are the results?
• Is the interface easy to use and interpret?

In addition to the popular tools that I reviewed in the table below, I came across these other fun tools: Read More »

I am not a journalist (but I blog and tweet). And in most cases, I am not a shareholder (but I could be once my next bonus comes in.) But, one thing I am is a consumer—of information that is. In the last few years of my life I’ve been transitioning from my old, academic self to my real world, professional self. The old me enjoyed debates over issues and theories. The new me craves information about the products I buy, the companies I support, the trends of industries I care about, and, oh yeah—trying to keep up with the political world of Washington DC right outside my window.

The NYT is my homepage and, after Facebook, Google is my most visited site. And let’s say this time I’m looking for information about you. What are you? My cable company? My energy provider? My favorite retailer? It doesn’t really matter, but let’s pretend earlier today I had an interaction with one your frontline staff and said to myself, “Hm, haven’t heard much about them recently. I wonder what they’re up to.”

You didn’t make the NY Times this month and I haven’t seen you in my Twitter feed, so obviously I go to Google—“Company name, news.” Great, first item, Company name—Newsroom. (I really hope it doesn’t say ‘Company name—Pressroom’ and you’re hoping I’ll find information there. I’m not the press. It must not be for me.) Read More »

Free Willy was one of my all-time favorite childhood movies. In addition to a love for MJ’s classic song “Will You Be There,” this movie established my lifelong dream to swim with the orcas.  Willy was anything but “Killer,” and it’s hard to believe “Shamu” would be either.

I’ve been following the story of the recent tragic death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau—both due to my personal interest in the relationships between humans and animals in captivity, and my professional interest in how SeaWorld would respond to this crisis situation.  As a curious millennial, the first thing I did was log on to the SeaWorld website to see what they had to say about the incident.

Day 1 after the incident, I visit the SeaWorld press room—nothing.
Day 2, I try the press room again—still nothing.
Read More »