It’s time to give that important presentation, speech or interview. You’re an expert in your field but can you deliver the winning pitch? Will what you say be remembered the next day or even an hour later?

In my many years working as a journalist at CNBC, BusinessWeek, WABC-TV and WNBC-TV in New York, I found many C-level executives lack the ability to organize their thoughts coherently, emphasize what is important and reach their audience in an effective way.

There are three basic components to any presentation: you, the presenter, your message and the audience.

You, the presenter, are the center of attention with key messages to deliver. Can you present your message so it is memorable, quotable and hits the ball out of the park? In order to achieve success, you have to deliver your message in a concise, interesting and convincing manner.

Research shows that making three salient points in a presentation and reiterating those points in a subtle manner during the presentation will leave the audience with a clear recollection of the message.

Take time to carefully define messages one, two and three. Back those messages up with facts, third party attribution, anecdotes and analogies. Find a way to weave back to those three key points and be 100% sure your information is accurate.

Next, think about who is your audience? The audience wants to be educated, informed and perhaps entertained. Think carefully about how you can relate to your audience. You need to find a connection between your personality, the information you communicate and the listener. Now that you’ve defined your three messages and assessed your audience, it’s time to present.

Remember, how you present counts! Just delivering words off of note cards won’t give you the impact you strive for or allow you to achieve success.

As James Humes, a speechwriter for five Presidents, once said, “The art of communication is the language of leadership.” If you want to lead you must find a clear path to communicate.

Cisco, the maker of Internet routing gear, customized its technology to help China track members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by members of the movement.
The lawsuit, which relies on internal sales materials, also said that Cisco had tried to market its equipment to the Chinese government by using inflammatory language that stemmed from the Maoist Cultural Revolution. <Read the full article>

About one million partly used bars of soap are tossed out daily by U.S. hotels, according to Clean the World Foundation, a non-profit organization that recycles used soap for distribution to developing nations and homeless shelters.

But recycling organizations such as Clean the World, based in Orlando, and Global Soap Project, based in Atlanta, are starting to get more attention from large hotel companies. <Read More>

It’s been called the 800 pound gorilla that you don’t want to mess with. It’s been accused of taking customers from small, neighborhood stores and hurting communities. It’s been accused of predatory pricing, anti-union fervor and paying its employees less than a living wage. It’s been called the United States of Wal-Mart because of its massive control of the American retail scene.

But in the past several years, Wal-Mart also has been going through a major transformation and committing itself to progressive policies in the realm of corporate social responsibility, particularly when it comes to the products it sells and major efforts to promote energy conservation.

The latest initiative that Wal-Mart announced last week, is a five year plan to reduce unhealthy levels of salts, fats and sugars in thousands of its packaged foods and to lower prices on healthier products such as fruits and vegetables.

Wal-Mart is pledging to reduce salts by 25-percent, to eliminate industrially added trans fats and to decrease added sugars by 10-percent. The company also is planning to develop a seal that will be placed on healthier foods, rating those products by their levels of sodium, fat and sugar content.

The massive company, with 8,500 stores in fifteen countries, is the world’s largest corporation by revenue with over $400 billion in sales for 2010. Wal-Mart is planning to use its enormous purchasing clout to force food suppliers such as Kraft, whose total Wal-Mart sales amount to roughly 16 per cent of its business, to make its foods healthier as well.

The changes will not occur overnight. In fact, they will be gradually phased in by 2015 so the company can overcome technical issues and to give its customers an opportunity to alter their eating habits.

This is just the latest major initiative undertaken by the Bentonville, Arkansas goliath. A little more than five years ago, Wal-Mart announced it would implement a host of environmental measures to increase energy efficiency.

The energy initiative included spending $500 million a year to increase fuel efficiency in Wal-Mart’s truck fleet by 25% over three years, to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in seven years, to reduce energy use at stores by 30% and to cut solid waste from U.S. stores and Sam’s Clubs by 25% in three years. Wal-Mart’s philanthropic agency is donating $2 million to food banks around the country to fund energy-efficiency programs.

And back in 2006, Wal-Mart announced a program to sell generic drugs at just $4.00 per prescription saving consumers millions of dollars. Wal-Mart maintains it still makes a profit on pharmaceuticals and is able to do that by the sheer volume of sales.

Wal-Mart is cognizant that consumers are demanding healthier foods, cheaper prescriptions and are more concerned about global warming and greenhouse gases. The company also realizes there are profits to be wrung out of reducing the energy consumption at its stores, using less fuel in the transport of its products, producing goods in a more efficient manner and creating less waste.

Through forging these initiatives, Wal-Mart has figured out a formula to be a good corporate citizen, give consumers great bargains and still make tons of money; $14.3 billion in profits in 2009. It is the consummate win-win-win.

Another upside to Wal-Mart’s moves are that its competitors, companies like Target, K-Mart, Sears and Costco will be forced to follow suit or they will not be able to maintain competitive pricing which would result in the loss of market share to the already gargantuan Wal-Mart.

Of course the company still confronts many negative criticisms. There are estimates that 70% of its employees reportedly leave the company within the first year because of low wages and a poor work environment. Can Wal-Mart, with close to two million employees worldwide, do better on the wage and benefit front with its workers?

Are massive box stores with acres of parking lots really where Americans want to shop? Is there a way of building supercenters without crushing small retailers? As Wal-Mart travels down the corporate social responsibility highway, it must do a better job of melding into communities.

Let’s hope Wal-Mart continues to undertake positive initiatives for the American consumer and the environment and also makes greater strides in compensating its workers and becoming a better neighbor in the communities where it operates.

Let us also hope that Wal-Mart works just as hard to attain a solid reputation abroad as it expands its operations globally.

General Electric has been promoting itself for years as an enlightened company when it comes to climate change and environmental challenges facing the globe. It launched a branding campaign in 2005 called “Ecomagination” spending nearly a hundred million dollars touting the need to press for cleaner, efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and abundant sources of clean water.

If you look at data supplied on its web site, GE, the Connecticut based conglomerate, the 10th largest corporation in the world, has increased investment in ecological R&D projects, reduced water consumption by two percent and reduced energy intensity by fifty percent.

But while GE makes great efforts in the green movement, the company again is stalling efforts to cleanup New York’s Hudson River where it dumped at least 1.3 million pounds of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls or PCB’s which cause cancer in animals and are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as probable human carcinogens.

The Department of Environmental Conservation in 1976 made it illegal to fish the Upper Hudson due to the toxic pollution and warned people of the danger of eating tainted fish.

GE, after decades of legal proceedings that stymied the cleanup process, agreed in 2006 to clean up PCB’s spewed from its plants at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward from 1947 to 1977. GE began dredging the river to free it of toxic sediments last year. Only10 percent of the material was removed.

Now, GE is asking to delay the continuing effort to clean up the river. It wants the E.P.A. to give it another year to decide whether to proceed with dredging, saying it wants to study the effects of the Phase One dredging before moving onto Phase Two.

According to the 2006 Consent Decree, GE retains the option to not proceed with Phase Two of the dredging project. The company also is pursuing a law suit to declare the Superfund law unconstitutional. The 200 miles of the river contaminated with PCB’s stretching from Hudson Falls to New York City is the largest Superfund site in the U.S.

GE in a statement said, “that resuspension and redeposition of PCB’s resulting from the dredging process itself pose significant concerns and warrant additional analysis; that limits should be established on the quantity of PCB’s that dredging is permitted to resuspend and send downstream; that additional data should be collected and analyzed, and that a state-of-the-art, quantitative computer model should be jointly developed by EPA and GE to guide decisions about future dredging.”

GE’s position is backed by a peer review of seven independent scientists who stated that the “performance standards established by EPA to govern the dredging project could not be met in Phase 1 and cannot be met in Phase 2 without significant changes.”

The problem for GE is that these delaying actions further tarnish its image as a solid corporate citizen and negate its Ecoimagination effort. If the company is simply trying to stall the cleanup that puts lives at risk and the economy at stake along the Hudson, it will backfire and damage its already damaged reputation.

If GE really is serious about the environment, it will make every effort to resume the clean up as soon as possible and not try to push the work to a later time.

If the public perceives that GE is balking at its responsibility to restore one of America’s most important rivers for future generations, GE can forget its Ecoimagination campaign which will just be considered Ecohype.

As a journalist for “The Reporters” on the FOX Broadcasting Network, I visited one of Toyota’s largest manufacturing facilities in Toyota City, Japan, a number of years ago. It was a marvel of engineering and productivity. Workers were highly motivated and knew they were playing on a winning team.

It was crystal clear that the Japanese were more competitive than American car makers and they were steadily taking market share. As a result, Toyota eventually passed Ford in U.S. sales and GM in sales globally. Toyota had the reputation of being absolutely the best. My how the tables have turned.

For months now, we have been hearing about the shoddy safety record of Toyota cars, trucks and SUV’s. Nearly every model has been the subject of a recall, from the flagship Camry sedan for sudden acceleration issues, to its premier Lexus because of problems with its electronic steering system, to the Sequoia SUV for sticking accelerator pedals.

The latest embarrassment is coming out of a California lawsuit revealing that Toyota encountered cracking and breaking steering relay rods in the U.S. for at least 12 years before its 2005 recall of nearly a million trucks for the defect.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration now has begun an investigation. NHTSA is demanding that Toyota come clean on why it waited to recall vehicles with safety problems it knew about for years. Federal law states that an automaker must report known safety defects within five business days.

“There is a pattern of covering up defects at Toyota,” according to Clarence Ditlow, head of the Center for Auto Safety, a watchdog group.”It looks to me like Toyota knew about” the relay rod problem long before the recalls, said Ditlow.

Toyota’s badly tarnished safety record overall has resulted in an estimated 89 deaths and 57 injuries between the year 2000 and May of 2009, according to the NHTSA.

Toyota has grudgingly recalled more than 8.5 million vehicles worldwide because of safety defects. The company has been slapped with a record $16.4 million fine by U.S. safety regulators for its handling of the recalls. The fine was the largest ever assessed to an auto maker. And now Toyota faces one of the biggest public relations nightmares in its history.

The $64-thousand or perhaps $64-million dollar question in Toyota’s case, is why wasn’t the safety issue front and center over the last decade when Toyota encountered problem after problem and allegedly hid the issues from regulators and the public?

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, former Toyota attorney Dimitrios Biller claimed the Japanese auto giant regularly covered up evidence of safety problems. Biller was in charge of product liability suits for Toyota before leaving the company in 2007.

“You have to understand that Toyota in Japan does not have any respect for our legal system,” said Biller. “They were hiding evidence, concealing evidence, destroying evidence, obstructing justice.”

Akio Toyoda, Toyota President

The new President of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, has said the safety problems may be connected to Toyota’s rapid expansion as it grew to become the world’s largest car maker. Does that sound a bit like Gordon Gekko talking about how “greed, for a lack of a better word, is good” before being arrested and sent off to prison?

Toyota now is spending millions on a massive advertising campaign in an effort to clean up its badly damaged reputation. The company is bombarding the television airwaves with a steady blast of commercials touting its STAR Safety System and accident avoidance technology.

One ad claims that “everyone deserves to be safe.” Is this something that Toyota just realized? The chief engineer in the spot claims that Toyota “always thinks of safety even in the concept design of our vehicles”. The commercial claims beg the question: What was Toyota thinking over the past 15 years?

I remember when the American car was king well into the 70′s but then Detroit got sloppy and the long descent into darkness began. But today it’s another story. American cars are in many cases superior in quality to foreign brands so Americans and car buyers around the world have the option of saying no to Toyota, a company that so callously disregarded the safety of its customers over a very long period of time.

Nevertheless, Toyota continues to sell vehicles at a competitive clip despite its travails but the public may begin to choose alternatives if many more of these defect and recall stories present themselves.

Going forward, Toyota is going to have to prove that its effort on safety is not just PR spin but is the most critical thing it does, bar none. When a motorist is traveling down the road, there should be no doubt about the safety features of the car. It must be a given that the vehicle is fail-safe.

Toyota’s reputation management efforts will only be effective over the long term if it proves to the driving public, day after day, year after year, that only one thing really matters, the safety of the people who drive its cars. No more hidden agendas. No more secrets. Transparency and honesty, no matter what the monetary cost.

The black, slimy ooze continues to relentlessly pour from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico at the site of the British Petroleum drilling site to surface waters and the toxic mess is being swept to shore where precious wildlife is being wiped out in a torturous death.

The British Petroleum drilling rig that exploded and sank 40 miles off shore, killing eleven workers, is spewing at least 5,000 barrels of oil per day and is threatening to destroy estuaries along the Louisiana coast as well as severely impacting shorelines in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Hundreds of thousands of people who live along the Gulf Coast are bracing for an economic meltdown just as the devastated region was recovering from the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.

British Petroleum has already spent $625 million so far on the cleanup and other costs related to the massive oil spill which breaks down to roughly $20 million a day since the disaster occurred on April 20th.

However, that is only a drop in the barrel compared to estimates ranging from $2 billion to $14 billion to clean up the horrific mess depending on how fast BP can seal the well and how much oil washes ashore.

The complete story of the oil rig blowout is yet to be told. However, one thing is perfectly clear, BP and its partners Transocean and Halliburton, failed to take adequate precautions to install a backup shutdown system that is the standard in much of the rest of the world. The U.S. government is complicit for not forcing BP and other oil companies to implement safety procedures to prevent a preventable disaster.

This is not the first time that British Petroleum has found itself in the midst of an ecological disaster that has claimed lives and wreaked havoc with the environment.

In 2005 an explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company a record $87 million for neglecting to correct safety violations.

Texas City, Texas - BP Oil Refinery

The following year, a leaky BP oil pipeline in Alaska forced the shutdown of one of America’s largest oil fields. BP was fined $20 million in criminal penalties after prosecutors said the company neglected corroding pipelines.  A report issued by the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility stated “BP does not operate in a safe and environmentally sound manner and its management culture appears to place undue emphasis on cost cutting.”

Alaska North Slope - BP Pipeline

One has to wonder if there isn’t a pattern of neglect and irresponsibility on behalf of the company. Needless to say, the tragic episode in the Gulf is strike three.

Investors have fled BP’s stock and the company has lost nearly $37 billion in market value since the disaster took place. Shareholders have watched the stock drop like a stone down some 20 per cent year to date.

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward is saying the British oil giant has enough cash to cope with the costs of the oil spill nightmare saying, “our financial strength will also allow us to come through the other side of this crisis, both financially secure and stronger as a result of what we have learned from this tragic incident and how we have responded.”

BP’s CEO is not only confronting a cash crunch he is confronting a PR horror show. The London based company had been touting itself as a company that was (BP) “Beyond Petroleum” and had pushed a slick public relations campaign on the world’s energy consumers with a new emblem of a blooming flower portraying the company as concerned about the environment and global warming, environmentally conscious and eager to develop alternative energy sources like wind power and solar.

A consumer survey in 2007 found BP had the most environmentally friendly image of any major oil company. The company reported that between 2000 and 2007 brand awareness catapulted from an invisible 4 percent to 67 percent and sales spiked skyward.

The Gulf disaster has wiped out years of ad spending for BP and has also put the spotlight on what a sham the green campaign was. The facts reveal BP has reversed investments in non-fossil fuels. In 2009, BP lowered investment in alternative fuels by $400-million. BP also announced it was shutting its solar manufacturing plant in Maryland. The company with $73 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2010 had a minuscule, less than one percent, being derived from alternative energy.

But the PR Armageddon is only just beginning because the real environmental disaster is just in the early stages. How long will it take before the global public sees the disgusting sight of dead sea turtles, birds, fish, flora and fauna before they decide to pass by the pretty, little flowery BP emblem and head down the street to another gas station putting a crimp in profits.

BP has no alternative at this juncture in time but to press forward fast and furious to cap the leaking well and ameliorate the damage of the spill as fast as humanly possible. The longer the spill is not contained and oil drifts to shore destroying wildlife and livelihoods BP will suffer horrendous public relations hits day after day.

BP also needs to take concrete steps to repair it demolished reputation. First, it should publicly promise to pay for the entire clean-up and not tie the issue up in court as Exxon did for decades when the Valdez was steered into a reef in Alaska spilling 250,000 barrels of crude oil and destroying the pristine waters and shores of Prince William Sound.

Once this disaster is over BP must take resolute action in adapting stringent environmental policies for itself so this kind of disaster can never happen again. BP must install fail-safe shutoff systems at every well head it owns or leases on land or at sea. It must have a near infallible recovery plan to deal with any future oil rig disaster. These protocols should be binding by law and if not adhered to, executives should be sent to prison.

BP also needs to end its bogus “greenwashing” campaign and become serious about alternative energy, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and become a real champion for safe energy extraction.

If BP doesn’t make dramatic changes it should just give it up and change its name. Phillip Morris became Altria after it became evident the company lied about its knowledge of the deadly health effects of cigarettes. BP could be forced to due the same.

This is a watershed moment for BP. The public will never have trust again unless it sees a radically different company and BP will have to prove itself over many years to reverse the monumental reputational damage.

As the Toyota Motor Corp. is learning, none of the perils a company faces is harder to measure than damage to its reputation. Other hazards, from a plant explosion to a terrorist attack to a natural disaster, may threaten a company’s very ability to operate, but a sullied corporate image exacts a price that other risks don’t: devaluation in the eyes of your customers.

Toyota can, of course, compensate buyers, retool its production methods, and invest in image-rebuilding ad campaigns. But it has no real way to predict when, to what extent, or if its brand can regain its former sparkle — or what it may have lost as a result of its vehicles’ infamous acceleration problems.

To be sure, metrics tied to a company’s brand have long existed. In accounting terms, such things as patents and trademarks, business processes, and training policies are referred to as intangible assets and generally thought to be key components of a brand. When a company is acquired, the buyer accounts for the cost of its new intangibles on its balance sheet and continues to hold them on its books as they depreciate.

You can read More at CFO.Com

You can also check out Jim Paymar’s Blogs on Ford, BP and Goldman Sachs

It appears that Goldman Sachs is finally getting the message that the company, despite its remarkable ability to make vast fortunes, is not immune to the harsh sting of public opinion and needs to make drastic changes to its business standards in order to fix a badly tarnished reputation.

The storied bank has been on the hot seat accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of defrauding investors by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in subprime investments it sold as the housing market was collapsing.

According to SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami, ”Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party.”

Goldman Sachs has denied the allegations. In a statement, it said the SEC’s charges were ”completely unfounded in law and fact” and said it will contest them.

Nevertheless, Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, took center stage at the company’s annual meeting last week in downtown Manhattan and pledged to rebuild the investment bank’s reputation after the government leveled the fraud charges.

“I recognize that this is an important moment in the life of this institution,” Blankfein said, and added that he had “no current plans” to step down as chief of the New York based bank although many have called for his resignation.

Goldman Sachs shareholders ignored the critics and sided with Blankfein when it came time to vote. They overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to split the chairman and chief executive jobs, and rejected all other shareholder proposals, including a resolution to demand increased collateral for derivatives trading. All of the other Goldman directors were re-elected to the board.

Blankfein was asked if the hostile public and political scrutiny has impacted business, Mr. Blankfein said Goldman’s reputational beating has “been a strain on clients,” but he said customers have “persevered with us.”

Goldman needs to come to grips with the issues confronting it and that does not mean ramping up a massive and costly PR effort to spin its version of reality. The company doesn’t have to admit guilt, especially if it is not guilty of the fraud it is charged with, but it needs to truthfully confront its crisis.

Goldman and the rest of the Wall Street titans know that they are playing a sleight of hand game with many of their exotic investment vehicles, such as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, that no one seems to understand.

Are they legal? In most cases, yes. Is it right, well for millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck or who are on unemployment insurance after losing their jobs in the Wall Street inspired Great Recession, it is sorcery and the men who make un-Godly sums of money on these investments that have crippled the economy are the sorcerers.

Goldman, in order to turn this reputation disaster around before it causes permanent and irreparable damage, is going to have to take the lead on reforming finance. It is a company with the intellect, the wealth, the power and the connections to do so.

If the company were to become contrite about its financial engineering and work with legislators and regulators on eliminating risky and unsafe investment ventures,  it would go a long way toward reestablishing its credibility. Goldman could take a leadership role with its peers to help Washington create a new structure which allows open and flexible markets but also safeguards the American public so it never suffers through another crisis like the one we are still living through.

Goldman also could use its enormous financial might to create jobs. The firm would contend it is already involved in investment ventures that create employment opportunities but it could redouble its efforts and create massive investment funds that would launch small business, seed start-ups, get more involved in the green movement, increase philanthropic giving to education and showcase its positive work.

Over time this would resonate with Americans. But it would have to be a sustained commitment with monumental resources attached and no wavering from the mission of doing good things for American workers and their prosperity.

Goldman needs to take off where Bill Gates has begun with his foundation, pledging to give his entire fortune away, tens of billions over time, to better the world. Obviously, Goldman as an ongoing business entity cannot give it all away, but in the spirit of Gates it needs to act in that manner.

Before the current financial firestorm began in Washington this year, Goldman Sachs was ranked 8th on the Fortune 50 list of most admired companies and ranked 30th by Barron’s among the world’s most respected companies. One wonders if Goldman will even be on the lists next year if it doesn’t take seismic strides to resurrect its badly tarnished reputation.

You might call it the ultimate reputation management turnaround story. It began in 2000 at Ford, one of America’s oldest and most venerable car companies. It was a rough road at the beginning of the decade, Ford was embroiled in a nasty legal fight with tire maker Bridgestone and its Firestone unit. Ford and Bridgestone were pointing fingers at each other over safety problems that allegedly caused a spate of rollover related crashes that resulted in 174 deaths in the U.S.

Bridgestone claimed Ford’s design was at fault and refused to recall all the tires Ford wanted off the road. Ford ended up shelling out $2.1 billion to recall 13 million tires it claimed were the problem. The two companies severed there 95 year business relationship.

Some say the tire problem was the beginning of Ford’s very long downward financial slide with a string of quarterly losses that ultimately resulted in the firing of CEO Jacques Nasser. Bill Ford Jr., the scion of Ford Motor succeeded Nasser but even with his pedigree Ford was a traumatized and failing company.

Ford also was suffering through a period of shoddy workmanship and was producing less than stylish models. Americans weren’t buying their cars instead they were turning to the Japanese and German brands.

The negative publicity began to take a toll on Ford’s market share, which began a steady and destabilizing decline, plunging from more than 20 percent in 2002 to just 17 percent in 2006.

With the company in freefall, the Ford Motor Company did something radical. In 2006, for the first time in its 104 year history, operational control of the company was turned over to a non-Ford family member. Allan Mulally, a senior Boeing Company executive, was recruited to try to save the ailing automaker.

The company was in tough financial straits but Mulally made a daring move. To keep the company afloat, he borrowed $23.5 billion in cash using most of Ford’s assets as collateral.

That move would turn out to be a watershed moment in the company’s history allowing it to avoid a government bailout in the midst of the Great Recession of 2007-2010. GM and Chrysler are still beholden to Uncle Sam and lack the ability to control their own destiny.

Nevertheless, it was tough sledding for Ford with a balance sheet that turned disastrous. In 2008, the company lost $14.6 billion dollars and there were many on Wall Street who wondered if Ford could remain solvent. The share price dropped to an imperceptible $1.56 a share.

Fast forward to 2010. The company seems to have risen like the Phoenix. Ford had a strong first quarter with a 43 percent sales increase in March. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers delivered 178,546 new vehicles in March. First quarter sales totaled 428,596, up 37 percent.

The Dearborn, Michigan, based Ford now has the highest customer satisfaction with vehicle quality among all major automakers according to a new consumer research study conducted by the Global Quality Research System. Customers are benefiting from higher resale values and fewer warranty repairs.

Ford shares have soared to more than $14.50. The stylish, latest generation Ford Fiesta is officially Europe’s best-selling car for the first quarter 2010. Ford has become a leader in creating eco friendly cars.

Ford executives have also pledged to pay down the debt and the company posted a $2.7 billion profit in 2009, snapping a three-year streak of losses that totaled $30 billion.

Ford has had a stunning turnaround and rebuilt its damaged reputation and brand. The company made bold and decisive moves starting with the hiring of an outsider to lead the company in a time of crisis.

Alan Mulally made tough, smart decisions and executed on his strategy. His laser focus reversed Ford’s downhill slide. He is being called one of the greatest turn-around executives in corporate history. The Wall Street Journal dubbed him “Ford’s Renaissance Man” and Time Magazine named him “one of world’s most influential people”.

Wall Street also thinks Ford’s new offerings are far superior to its competitors which can only bode well for future sales.

The New York Times put it this way, “during a time of crisis throughout the auto industry in recent years, Ford emerged as the sole American automaker in a position to survive the steepest sales downturn in decades without a government bailout. That helped the company improve its reputation and win new customers.”

It is clear. Reputation matters, the public’s perception of Ford has changed dramatically for the better, that in turn has become the key to profitability and is driving share value!