evolve24 Blog

Measurement Objectives: Start with the End in Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:38:00 +0000

Every company presents unique measurement requirements, so it is good that there are many options available for companies looking to begin a measurement program. Measurement firms and agencies organized around a billing model tend to suggest that manual analysis of media is the best way to go (and many have strong practices built on that model), while firms with text analytics software, quantitative algorithms and data warehouse capabilities tend to argue that with the volume of coverage now generated through social media, automated analysis is required for a complete picture of the communications landscape. Of course, technology firms, evolve24 included, admittedly apply manual review to their client’s data, using the automatic translation as a guide to that analysis, while staff-based firms concede the need for automated analysis to help organize large volumes of content prior to review.

And of course, all good solutions also recognize that measurement, whether done manually or through automated systems, is simply a step on the way to actual business insight. The insight is not in the measurement itself (though measurement design and methodology is critical to creating good inputs), and does not ‘fall-out” of manual or automated measurement, but is generated from analysis of the data resulting from measurement, and in the application of that analysis to business-focused problems. Regardless of how you measure, the results of your measurement will always require human analysis to be converted to actionable insight.

There are unique benefits to each measurement approach that a company could chose; what is unique to a technical solution like evolve24 is the capability to collect vast amounts of coverage related not just to the company’s own communications programs, but also around competitors’ communications programs, the conversations taking place in all forms of media about all of the firms in the market and the market in general, and even around larger conversations related to the regulatory environment, special interest or social issues in general that may somehow present a risk or opportunity to the company.

For companies who adopt PR measurement, initial measurement programs tend to be focused on self-examination, seeking to establish the effectiveness and value of work done. The value that firms can create by understanding communications effectiveness and applying those insights has been well established, and are a good first step; measurement allows firms to more effectively establish the desired perception amongst their targets, and allows communications teams to show their value to the organization. However, in the context of providing strategic input for business decision making, measurement of just the company’s own communications presents only a small picture of the overall communications environment, and the impact of that environment on our business. Companies looking to build their communications measurement into a strategic driver for the business need to focus on solutions that will ultimate scale to align and merge with the company’s other business intelligence solutions.

First Principles

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:50:00 +0000

Thinking back on the discussion of social media “listening”, measurement, analysis and engagement I encountered through 2009 – whether encountered online, at conferences and meetings, or in casual conversation – what strikes me in retrospect is the overall focus I perceived toward the “media” side of the social media landscape.

Despite the insistence that the focus was really on shifts in the meaning of “social”, the primary focus of most discussions I encountered last year seemed to eventually return to a focus on the communication media and technology itself, as opposed to the people and motivations at each end of the channel; the very reasons that businesses, consumers and citizens have to be social in the first place.

Having a presence and listening effectively can indeed be very important for many reasons, and there were plenty of great case studies showing the legitimate value of doing these things; whether to demonstrate the potential for success through well-planned social engagement, or to illustrate what could go wrong if one failed to listen and engage around concerns and complaints.

These case studies, even when considered as whole, do not seem to have yet managed to establish a clear business case or approach to a results-oriented “social” strategy framework for business comparable or complementary to something like Porter’s strategic framework. This seems to me to be because many of these cases confuse attention with business impact, and focus on reactions and responses as opposed to actual proactive strategy integrated to business operations.

Take the most obvious case examples: Motrin, United Airlines, or Dominos; perhaps someone out there can point me to the missing conclusions where true business related outcomes of each case are defined.

We know that Motrin did trash a campaign based on blogger outrage, and that surely cost them dearly, but we don’t really know if that was the right decision, nor has it been well established how to even answer that. Was there a sound underlying business reason to completely kill the campaign, or did it just seem like the right decision during a period of panic? There is a clear lesson – don’t be surprised – but this is the problem with most of the best-known cases; they tell you what NOT to do, they provide examples of good and bad reactions to surprises, but don’t really help anyone understand how to be proactive.

There are increasing examples of good proactive approaches to using social media for marketing to targeted demographics, which is the most straightforward and natural (though by no mean simple) approach to the medium, but this is just a narrow slice of the potential value of social media engagement by firms. Throughout this year, I trust we will see greater maturity develop around social media, with a shift away from the hype that businesses need to move into “social media”, and instead toward the recognition that social media needs to become more integrated with business.

Keep all your tools in one box

noreply@blogger.com (Joselyn Howell) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:54:00 +0000

Scot posted an interesting blog last week, reminding us all that it takes much more than a collection of tools and a pile of wood to build a house (and it takes much more than a listening platform to develop actionable strategies). Building a house also requires a good understanding of expected results – do you want a bungalow or do you want a McMansion? You need a blue print to show that you’re moving towards those results each day, that the house will have the appropriate number of walls, that it will have everything it needs, and that it will not collapse when the job is done.

Communication measurement works the same way. We know that measurement in communications is important, but we also know that field of communication is as varied as houses can be. Increasingly, communication activities are overlapping, as social media and traditional media evolve and communication becomes more instantaneous. Measuring communications now requires tools that include the best of various tool boxes.

Many communications teams have started borrowing tools from other departments, but borrowing measurement tools from each other could have a series limitations. Teams could be using different software which requires a new understanding and learning curve, or teams might be using completely different metrics that are not compatible with one another. Most importantly, can the tools each department is using meet the cross functional needs that measurement now demands? This incorporation and overlap demands a tool box that houses all the measurement tools you need to meet not only the demands of your communication department but to integrate other departments and operational teams as well.

It seems that the breadth of measurement tools will only grow and leave way for more fragmentation among measurement strategies between the various departments in your organization. Wouldn’t it be nice to streamline your departments under one measurement tool that could meet all your communication measurement, from media monitoring to message analysis to crisis communication?

You’re Listening; Now What?

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:43:00 +0000

Just as a pile of tools and wood cannot build a house, neither can a pile of software and collected media content build actionable insights. The tools and materials are certainly important, but in order to become something useful, they must be wielded by practitioners with relevant knowledge and skills, and they must be wielded in accordance to a defined blueprint.

There has been an interesting convergence of discussion lately attempting to set realistic expectations around the generation of business insight from the products of media monitoring tools/listening platforms. Two of the best examples come from a Forrester report on the ‘Total Cost of Listening Platforms’, and a blog by Nathan Gilliatt, ‘On the (Non-) Automation of Insight’.

The key insight in each of these examples is that ‘actionable insights’ do not simply fall-out of media monitoring systems, they must be drawn-out by people with analytic mindsets who can frame questions, conduct methodological research, and bring their own professional experience and expertise to the process of creating insight. Unfortunately, much of the hype around “listening” and social media established expectations that are now shifting to disappointment.

We are all aware that the perceived importance of “listening” has grown phenomenally over the last couple of years, and our industry has seen communications and marketing teams racing to collect everything that is being said about them and their competitors. This created a boom for tools that specialized in advanced searching and collection of web-based media at as close to “real-time” as possible, and generated countless large databases of content. The primary concern of the last few years, exacerbated by marketing efforts in the “listening platform” industry, was simply to collect “what they are saying”. During the boom, the question of what should be done with all of this content once it was collected was of less importance than was simply having the content, and having it now.

What resulted from this focus on collection was at best the production of information that was relevant in a specific context in a specific moment, such as understanding of instant consumer response to a specific ad campaign, or real-time knowledge as to what people think of VMA awards. At worst, the listening tools that were installed have yielded a big pile of data, and a collective “okay, now what?”

This is where these recent conversations pick up the thread – at the point where people are left look at their system, waiting for intelligent insights to fall out. Nathan’s post reflects his observation of growing surprise “that software doesn’t do all the work in social media analysis”, and makes a straightforward case that this shouldn’t be a surprise, after all, as Nathan notes, “if you want to make spreadsheets, you buy Excel. If you want financial projections, you roll up your sleeves or hire a financial analyst.” The Forrester report helps establish the full cost that marketing and communications teams should expect to accrue around their “listening” efforts, noting that one of the most significant costs is the allocation of time and resources to achieving listening goals.

Returning to the pile of tools and wood – it should be clear that someone with carpentry skills will be needed to turn this into a house. Why would we expect any different from a pile of software and data? Tools and raw material in the hands of a novice will yield average results at best. In the hands of an expert they will yield lasting architecture.

Lobbying is bad for reputation. It doesn’t have to be.

noreply@blogger.com (Tyler Schario) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:38:00 +0000

evolve24 has been tracking the health care debate to see how it is affecting the reputation of various stakeholders. The project is generating lots of interesting numbers, but the first thing that jumps out of the data is the undeniable impact of the issue on the reputation of everyone involved. We’re following all the key players, from the Executive Branch and Congress to the most invested industry stakeholders and interest groups, and it’s clear that simply being associated with the issue comes with an unnerving amount of reputational risk.

Of course, this isn’t a shocking discovery. There’s a lot on the line, and people are watching. And we know health care is a controversial issue. It’s laced with uncertainty and complicated by the motives of deeply entrenched interests who don’t much care for each other – we would expect the issue to affect reputation. But, even considering these factors, the degree and volatility of reputational risk associated with the issue came as a bit of a surprise, and got me thinking about the unique challenges of managing reputation when involved in high-profile political debates.

Lobbying campaigns often become key drivers of corporate reputation in these situations (think Big Oil). Especially in the age of infotainment, lobbying attracts a high volume of media attention and tends to work its way into conversations about partisan politics and political corruption, which can generate dangerous levels of distrust and skepticism among stakeholders. Lobbying can also spark CSR concerns when sensitive environmental or social issues are involved – sometimes creating entirely new image problems, sometimes undoing the progress of past campaigns. In the worst case scenario, lobbying efforts become the public face of a corporation or industry due to concentrated political strategies, as we’ve recently seen with health insurance companies (remember when healthcare reform became health insurance reform?).

Regardless of how they’re created, most reputation problems associated with lobbying are usually ignored, written off as the “cost of doing business”. This is the wrong approach. Because lobbying campaigns operate at the intersection of business and government, they simply require different reputation management strategies than those employed in the more traditional practices of PR or marketing. In addition to the reasons listed above, these situations deserve special attention because lobbying the federal government can broaden stakeholder networks to include all taxpayers (i.e. pretty much everyone). Understandably, this expansion dramatically increases exposure and, by association, reputational risk. These risks include increased legislative and regulatory threats (it’s easier for politicians to impose costly regulations on groups viewed unfavorably by voters) and the infliction of hard-to-repair reputation damage (when lobbying efforts are used as the basis for opponents’ political attacks).

The good news is that these risks can be neutralized – but not without a clear understanding of the relationship between lobbying and reputation. This begins with the recognition that, critical as lobbying efforts may be, their benefits can be counteracted by the reputation issues they create.

Effective reputation management strategies must integrate lobbying efforts, consider the risks discussed above, and communicate good-faith reasons for participation in the political process. Transparency and honesty are key here: of course lobbying is primarily intended to help business, but that certainly doesn’t imply any wrongdoing. Lobbying is just one small part of corporate activity, so consider leveraging positive reputation from other areas against political attacks: being accused of corrupting the democratic process or using influence for corporate benefit that runs contrary to the public interest? No need to engage in mud-slinging, but why not respond with evidence of how corporate behavior generates benefits that extend far beyond executive offices? When you think about it, it’s easy to see how these things can be tied together. You just have to be willing to confront the “L word”.

Of course, this all hangs on the assumption that behavior can be justified; that lobbying efforts can withstand the scrutiny they so often encounter. When they cannot, there’s not much we can offer in the way of advice. But when this holds true, corporations should stop treating lobbying as a necessary evil too toxic to be discussed in the public forum – such denial only amplifies the problem, and it really doesn’t have to be that way.

Perception = Reality

tina.accorinti@evolve24.com (Tina Accorinti) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:20:00 +0000

So you are measuring the impact of your communications campaigns, and the next logical thing to do is sit down and use the results to design your campaigns’ next steps. But wait, you say, as you take your first look at the results. Can this be true?

Your flagship campaign has not performed for your brand as you would have hoped; consumer sentiment wasn’t as positive as expected, and the reputational impact to your brand was flat. In fact, programs that required less time and money performed better than your primary campaign.

Digging deeper into the results, you find that your program received the amount of coverage expected, but the public didn’t receive or respond well to the intended message. Negative coverage consisted of bloggers lambasting your brand and your product. What had been designed as an offering to make lives easier, and promoted as such, was interpreted by this audience as “impractical” and “insincere”. As you look even deeper into the negative content, you find that people are saying things about the offering that simply aren’t true!

This happens frequently in the exchange of information between companies and the media, both social and traditional. The reality is that media messages may be translated, truncated, or interpreted in a way that we wouldn’t necessarily expect. Sometimes the truth gets so twisted that the responses to our initial communications are off-base and downright false.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter if the claims made against your offering are true or not, and a simple presentation of more facts to correct misunderstandings is not always enough. Why? Because perception is reality. Once an emotionally-charged perception is formed, whether it is through a news article, a blog comment, word-of-mouth, or direct experience, that is how your potential customers will feel about your offering, your brand, and your company until they are helped not just to think differently, but to feel differently. And emotionally-charged perceptions are based on more than your offerings; they are usually based on your offering as filtered through another concern, such as your bonuses compared to their paychecks (think banks), your production methods (think Kathy Lee), your impact on the environment, and a host of other issues.

The good news is that as communications professionals you have the capability to measure and investigate not just the volume of what you said to your audience, but the details of how your audience responded. Now you’re equipped with quantitative results that go beyond ad value equivalency and share of voice. They include more complex metrics that allow you to better understand your target audiences – what are their underlying concerns? How can your media messages help allay those concerns? These metrics can be used to help design your program as well as measure its success after the launch. Armed with quantitative results, you can now make the necessary adjustments to return your potential customers’ perceptions back to center.

Better Know Your Stakeholders: Staff edition

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:44:00 +0000

With the focus on social media, we all spend a great deal of time focused on how external stakeholders can take control of a company’s message, and impact their reputation.

Today, National Public Radio ran the first of a three part story (here) that has the potential to become a reputation issue for several airlines, as well as the FAA. The report is about issues arising from several airlines’ decisions send their airplane repairs abroad in order to cut costs. The key to the most compelling issues raised in the story? The involvement of a primary but often overlooked stakeholder group: employees.

A company’s reputation amongst its own employees is an area of reputation to which firms should pay explicit attention. A sense of shared community is inherent, but the effort to hide issues from this stakeholder group is the most difficult, while the opportunity for direct and immediate communication is strongest. In a reputation crisis, a positive perspective on the firm from an average employee will have stronger impact than a press briefing from a manager, while an otherwise strong external reputation can be eroded quickly by employees who hold the company’s practices in low esteem.

Back to today’s example: In the broadcast version of the story, the reporter indicates that he went to El Salvador to look into one of the companies performing the outsourced airline maintenance. He explains that he sought to speak with management of the firms, but they would not speak with him.

A business refusing to address press is usually not a smart option. In this case, it led the reporter to forget about management’s perspective and instead to track down some employees and ask them about the U.S. airlines they are working with. They were more than happy to oblige, and the result was not great for the firm. In today’s story they discussed having put a crucial part of a door in backwards so that it broke during flight, and tomorrow we are promised that mechanics at the firm will tell us about “troubling practices on the shop floor”.

It is not clear why the maintenance company’s executives would not talk to the reporter, after all, they are simply performing a legal business under FAA regulations, aren’t they? Well, whether or not they are covering up some bad behavior, their mistake was to assume that they could control the message about their company, and their mistake should be a lesson to all companies.

As a very smart client of ours likes to say, the key to a good reputation is to “behave well, and communicate what matters”. If you are a company that is not behaving well in the eyes of some stakeholder group, then your communications will ring false. If you are behaving well, and you communicate what matters to your stakeholders, you will have happy stakeholders, and no cause for concern.

Companies may erect policies to try and control the communications from their employee stakeholder group, but for most companies, this is neither iron clad, nor sustainable, especially if this group has something to say about the company’s behavior. Reputation management involving external stakeholders like customers, regulators and advocates cannot resort to rules and policies around what can and can’t be said, and no company should assume that reputation management for internal stakeholders be any exception. In this case, the airline maintenance company needs to jump on the clueplane, ASAP.

Communications 101: Measure!

noreply@blogger.com (Karin Kane) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:59:00 +0000

A recent post by David Rockland on the PRSA blog commented on the importance of measurement. I completely agree that measurement is critical to successful communications, and am always amazed at how often communicators seem to overlook this. How can you possibly understand if what you’re doing is working if you are not measuring it appropriately?

This is precisely the reason why measurement matters to communications. Communication is an incredibly broad space. It continually evolves as messages shift and change, new communication vehicles develop, and targets become more focused. Every campaign and outreach effort must be continually measured, adjusted and improved upon to ensure successful messaging across this broad field.

Many communicators spend a considerable amount of time planning their strategy. The best of these start with business goals, identify their specific targets, understand how messages must be adjusted for each target and goal, and then design their campaigns. Sadly, even the better communication strategists tend to lose focus once the campaign has launched, or focus on just elementary metrics.

This is a flawed approach. As David mentioned, if you are not measuring, the campaign doesn’t count. You have no way of knowing whether your outreach was successful.

True, more communicators are beginning to grasp the importance of measurement. Unfortunately, many are using only the most basic of metrics – volume, share of voice, or impressions. That may be a starting point, but it is not a stopping point. What good does 10,000 hits from your press release do, if you are not sure who saw them, what impression they made, or what their impact really was on your target audience or your corporate reputation? These metrics only provide the very first step in determining whether your communications campaign is working. They tell you that it might have reached people. The logical next steps are to confirm it reached people correctly – that your campaign really is working, that the people you wanted to reach are the people you did reach, that the message you wanted to convey was, in fact, the message you conveyed, and that the impact on your corporate reputation was exactly what you hoped it would be.

This is where we at evolve24 tend to start when working with communications teams. Our analytics and consulting are designed around accurate measurement, and incorporate everything from emotions generated through reputational impact. We recognize that truly quantifying communications return may require borrowing a few ideas from the marketing teams. Our goal, though, is to provide what too many communications teams lack: a quantifiable, measureable assessment of communications programs.

Balance Targeted Messaging with a Consistent Message

noreply@blogger.com (Karin Kane) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Noah and Scot’s recent blogs have highlighted the unique nature of corporate reputation: it can be an incredible asset or liability to a corporation, but one you will never find on any corporate balance sheet. Instead, the reputation of a corporation is defined in the minds of thousands of different individuals, each with a different connection to the company.

Proactive communications teams have long understood that the needs of all of these stakeholders – whether customers, shareholders, employees, or advocates – must be satisfied, and the proper information provided to each. The best teams have also realized that there is considerable overlap between stakeholder groups, and have endeavored to keep the messaging consistent across these segments. After all, each stakeholder is an individual as well: the portfolio manager who owns thousands of shares may also be a consumer of your product; the employee who handles procurement by day may be a radical blogger by night.

Balancing this dichotomy -- the commitment to maintaining a consistent message, and the requirement of personalization – is where communications teams often run into trouble.

With the current emphasis on social media, many communications teams have focused too much on the idea of targeted messaging by reaching out to bloggers or Tweeters in hopes of getting their message across. Unfortunately, this has caused a backlash against the communications profession. So many people reached to Mommy Bloggers, for example, that there were calls for a week-long boycott of PR pitches.

The overall message has changed entirely. Instead of receiving positive corporate outreach, consumers are receiving messages about aggressive PR tactics. These bloggers are most likely customers, and in all possibility shareholders or employees of the corporations who are now spamming them through PR efforts.

Communications professionals must understand that these tactics will alter the perceptions of brand in the minds of these individuals, which will ultimately influence corporate reputation. What effect will these PR tactics have on corporate reputation in the minds of these individuals?

Targeted messaging is necessary and important; but corporate communicators must never lose sight of the overall message they are conveying. Personalization and outreach to specific groups must always be balanced with overall message consistency and maintaining a positive corporate image at all levels. When communicators lose that balance, that intangible corporate reputation stops becoming an asset and becomes a serious liability.

Marketing Shows Your True Colors

noreply@blogger.com (Noah Krusell) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:28:00 +0000

What’s your company’s non-market approach? Is it to respond only once pressures become too great to ignore, or is it proactive and do you try to anticipate issues and stem them before they take root?

These questions are now facing Budweiser’s marketing department.

Recently the company started a promotion called Team Pride where university themed cans of Bud Light have taken the shelves near major university campuses. This has started a controversy that focuses on the issue of underage drinking.

Opposition against the promotion is growing from groups such as the Collegiate Licensing Co., University of Michigan’s lawyers, and university doctors. Marketing campaigns that touch on volatile non-market issues, such as minors and alcohol, will inevitably attract interest group pressure and wind up hurting the bottom line in the long run.

Take the 1988 example of Hallmark and their graduation cards. In time for university graduations the company printed coming-of-age greeting cards that featured alcoholic beverages on the front; coincidentally one card featured a can of Budweiser. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) rallied against the cards, suggesting that they would promote underage drinking amongst high school grads. MADD captured media attention and ordered the cards off store shelves. Hallmark conceded.

The short-lived cards cost the company printing and delivery costs for a situation that would have easily been avoided had they been more proactive in their non-market mindset. The attack on Hallmark came from an angle that the company perhaps failed to consider – the concurrent release of the cards with high school graduation. MADD’s opposition was an unintended consequence to a message that has wide cultural acceptance when considered in the right context. Hallmark simply failed to see all the possible angles and threats.

Budweiser, on the other, has walked right into a seemingly obvious non-market threat. Even to the uniformed, the company deals with a product that has clear outside threats, which is why this particular campaign reveals Budweiser’s true marketing colors and non-market approach - act now and respond later.

In order to quell some of the opposition, Budweiser may have considered an outreach program prior to the promotion coupled with a different communications strategy. Communication with university health organizations and messaging that stressed responsible drinking would have been effective – Show Your Team Colors Responsibly, rather than Show Your True Colors.

A non-market approach that uses the “act now, respond later” approach is fine given there is preparedness for the outcomes. In Budweiser’s case they made the choice to respond to pressure once it occurred. Their only option at this point is to be responsive, which they have done by responding to requests to remove product from stores near campuses. However, that said, with the incorporation of an anticipatory non-market strategy this campaign would have been more a success.

Untrustworthy Tactics and Receivership

noreply@blogger.com (Noah Krusell) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:51:00 +0000

As Scot noted in the previous post, reputation is held in receivership, a constantly changing equation of perceptions held in the minds of stakeholders.

Your company’s reputation is constantly challenged by various interests in the arenas of media and government. So there are compelling lessons to be learned when the attacking interests within these quarters damage themselves by falling on the sword of their own tactics.

“Astroturfing” in the healthcare debate is a case whereby the organized tactics that set out to damage the reputation of another party and set forth regulation or reprisal were revealed as fraudulent.

Because reputation relies on trust – the willingness of others to be open to our influence – and because integrity-based trust-violations erode the positive perceptions associated with a group, being exposed as disingenuous is typically damaging to the cause of the exposed interests. Scenarios like this present an opportunity for restoring and even increasing the perceived credibility of the entity being attacked, as they counter-balance the negative perceptions that were previously fostered by the attacking interests. Expect to see a shift in healthcare conversation back to a focus on benefits, as opposed to the elicitation of dread.

Before engaging with organized interests, communications professionals should question the legitimacy of the opposing forces and consider the likelihood that the organized interests will be exposed by the forces that oppose them. An analysis that considers the third parties and media forces that work against these groups should be considered. Countering false or staged claims should not be the object of a communications strategy (think the failure of the “swiftboat” response), but rather a trust-oriented re-positioning of discourse that will help expose the opposing agenda, frame them as untrustworthy, and level the perceptual equation in the minds of receivers.

Your Reputation Is In Receivership

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:05:00 +0000

A thought that came to me while reading about bailouts: All companies must come to terms with the fact that their corporate reputations are in receivership.

It is dangerous to think that “our” reputation is truly ours. By definition, our reputation is the perception that others hold toward us, thus our reputation is never possessed by us, but is always a changing equation with the variables distributed among all those who perceive us. This has always been true – and individuals and firms alike have always found it to their advantage to be perceived by as many as possible as trustworthy and competent as opposed to dishonest or incompetent. What is changing with the growth of social media is the capability that exists to test the perceptions that constitute a reputation, and to broadly share consenting or dissenting perspectives on a reputation.

The legal definition of a receiver is a party with custodial responsibility for the property, rights and assets of another party. For me, this sums up well the nature of reputation – an asset of great value to ourselves, held entirely in the custody of others. (This is why we call these others “stakeholders”, we have a real stake in how they understand and represent us, as much as they have some real or perceived stake in our actions).

Since the advent of mass communications, firms have become expert at shaping their reputation by producing not just products that meet expectations, but also narratives about their competence and care for stakeholders, which has helped color the experience of the product or brand. Producing a sub-par product is always a certain way to erode reputation, as is clear evidence of incompetence or dishonesty. But barring disasters, firms have traditionally been able to address the concerns of dissatisfied customers or opposition interest groups largely without these concerns reaching the eyes and ears of all of its stakeholders. With the increasing production and consumption of social media conversations about our firms and our brands, the opportunities for those who have a negative experience or perception to obtain an audience once constrained to a few mass media channels has increased dramatically, and with that, their stake in our reputation has grown.

Ready or not – your reputation is in receivership, and the number of receivers is growing.

Trust of a Salesman: Lessons for Reputation Management

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Williams) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Reflecting on the recent untimely passing of infomercial king Billy Mays (think Oxyclean pitchman) made me realize that in some ways, Billy and evolve24 could have been a match made in reputation management heaven. Thinking about Billy’s work, I realized that Billy innately understood the power of perception and trust in brand reputation management. He realized the need for quantitative measurement of relationships between brand-related messages, customer perceptions, and product sales.

Billy Mays $1 billion dollar empire at the time of his death was built upon the strategies that evolve24 uses to help global companies achieve their financial and strategic goals and realize value through the management of brand reputation. People were buying based on Billy Mays’ reputation as much as they were on the actual attributes of the products he sold. Through the art of audience targeting, program impact measurement and message tracking, he had the insight to make his brand one we knew, loved, and trusted.

A master of his trade, Billy Mays knew his audiences and he knew them well. For those who argue that personal branding does not generate sales, they have not seen Billy Mays in action. Billy single-handedly brought to life 30 popular brand names by having an expertise in brand reputation management. A personal endorsement from Billy Mays resulted in millions in revenue and satisfied customers. Because people trusted him and his brand, he made it easier for them to open up to new products.

Perhaps even more important than his amazing power to influence purchasing was Billy’s requirement to understand and measure every step and facet of his marketing strategies and their outcomes. Through this measurement, he was always evolving his brand strategy and staying one step ahead of both his audience and his competition. A true champion to the evolve24 cause that accurate measurement of perception is the key to brand success, Billy ran exhaustive testing before and during the launch of a broad campaign. He wanted to ensure the product message he was sending resonated with the audience he was targeting. Then through media analysis and customer surveys Billy measured the overall success and impact of his messages on product sales.

evolve24’s Mirror for Marketing would have been Billy’s ticket to taking over the world. Through the Mirror, Billy would have been able to show a direct quantitative link between brand messages, shifts in perception and consumer-purchasing behavior as reflected in media discourse. evolve24’s Mirror would have given him the tools to gain insight into just how valuable and in turn just how powerful the Billy Mays brand could have been.

Nutro Recall: Issue of Trust or Communication?

tina.accorinti@evolve24.com (Tina Accorinti) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:56:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Nutro announced a voluntary recall of its dry cat food products in the US as well as in ten other countries. The cause: excessive levels of zinc in affected food. Typical of situations requiring a recall, the company issued a press release on their website stating the following:

“While we have received no consumer complaints related to this issue, cat owners should monitor their cat for symptoms, including a reduction in appetite or refusal of food, weight loss, vomiting or diarrhea. Consumers who have purchased product affected by this voluntary recall should return it to their retailer for a full refund or exchange for another NUTRO® dry cat food product. Cat owners who have more questions about the recall should call 1-800-833-5330 between the hours 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM CST.”

Pet owners were outraged. In contrast to what the company was saying, consumers were saying otherwise. ConsumerAffairs, a consumer complaint website, has logged hundreds of complaints over the past two years about the effects of Nutro on both cats and dogs. Comments were emotionally charged with reports of severe illness, unaffordable vet bills, and in some cases the death of a pet.

Daniel of Toronto, ON June 16, 2009:
“My cat has been vomitting for the past 3 days. He's in terrible pain (he has never ever been sick before). I told the vet all I fed him was nutro. Now I see this recall and realize the food I'm feeding him has an expiry of June 2010. IT'S THE NUTRO CAT FOOD MAKING HIM SICK. They wanted to admist my cat to intensive care at 2400 for the first 24 hours and 600 per day thereafter. I could not afford to do that. I paid 500 and now my cat is here at home vomitting and very sick. This is ridiculous. Nutro has to be held responsible. Is anyone aware of any class action lawsuits?"

News of the recall, as well as the Nutro’s response to allegations of test results commissioned by the Pet Food Products Safety Alliance (on a food sample purchase after the recall date), has produced unwelcomed media attention for the company. Conversations on Twitter and other social media outlets have been highly negative and critical of Nutro for being unresponsive, uncaring, and most importantly, untrustworthy. Companies that find themselves in this situation need to be aware of the root psychological concerns of their customers and address those concerns in communication strategies.

On first glance, Nutro may have thought the issue was (mis)communication. This would explain their defensive stance on the test results as well as their recent use of Twitter to engage Nutro naysayers and direct them to the appropriate company help channels:

“ReneeATNutro: @WildlifeProtect Hello! I work for Nutro Products & wanted to help get you correct info about recall. Pls see http://tinyurl.com/pztzm8”

However, Twitter comments and online complaints show that trust is the real issue on their customers’ minds. This is not an issue of how to get a timely refund for pet food or vet bills – it’s an issue of trust in a company to produce a safe product.

“Why should I trust a pet food company more concerned w/ damage control than quality control??”

Companies need comprehensive, real-time information to monitor media conversations about their brand and accurately assess the underlying concerns of their customers, not only during times of crisis, but to prevent such issues from turning into crises. Company actions and messages need to address root psychological factors or the issue will never be resolved.

Reputation is More Than Just Online Representation

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:46:00 +0000

It is critical for those who are looking to develop reputation management practices to recognize that reputation is not the same as representation, or image. What is held-out as “reputation management” by the plethora of purveyors who rise up out of a search on that term is often really something else – an expanded form of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which has now grown beyond a focus on Google results to encompass the myriad other places and ways your name may be found online. It is unfortunate that “reputation” has become misused in the marketing of advanced SEO, because at its core, this practice is less about reputation than it is about representation. This is what much of “online reputation” management is really talking about – managing appearances.

To be sure, what people find online when searching on your name or specialty can influence your corporate reputation, but the representation of your brand online is only one of several components that make up corporate reputation. Reputation is about more than appearances, it is about the expectations that people hold, expectations which are built over time via a variety of interactions with the brand. While expectations are influenced by the way you appear online, they are also influenced in many other ways; through direct experience with the brand, through offline word of mouth, and through print and broadcast media as well as social media. Real reputation management needs to focus on measuring, understanding and engaging in all of these ways.

When “online” is attached to “reputation management”, buyers should be aware of what they are not getting. Real reputation management is about strategically and proactively building expectations of the brand which will provide advantages in positive times, and will create a buffer against brand damage should a reputation crisis arise. The better your reputation, the more it may be used to competitive advantage, and the more “benefit of the doubt” you will receive when troubles or accusations arise.

Reputation is built over time – and this is where its (mis)use as a term for marketing advanced SEO becomes so concerning. Because while real reputation management is long-term activity focused on building positive expectations amongst the full array of key stakeholders that may impact your brand, on-line representation and visibility is all about immediate results in a specific medium. If a potential or active reputation crisis arises around your brand, systems and services that promote your visibility online and seek to control other results may hold off the appearance of conversation about the problem (at least for a while), but they do nothing to help understand or resolve the reputation crisis itself.

2 Billion Dollars and I All I Got Was This Lousy Television Commercial

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Williams) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:43:00 +0000

I was reading the Wall Street journal article on the effects GM’s bankruptcy is going to have on prices for TV ads and I got to thinking about how GM’s bankruptcy filing could have an even greater effect. It could force those rooted in network ad purchasing processes that date back to the 60’s to take a step back and rethink their advertising and marketing strategies, perhaps even reassess the greater purpose for advertising and marketing in the first place.

GM clearly needed sales, but they also needed to improve their reputation. It’s no secret that traditional advertising media such as print news and television are no longer converting ad space to sales the way they used to. In fact, as far as television is concerned they are not even reaching audiences the way they used to, so it’s not clear that GM buying $2b in TV ads last year was the right path to sales.

And advertising is certainly not a path to improving corporate reputation. Reputation is about building trust, and think about it, who really trusts what a company says about itself in advertisements?

So what was the point of the 2 billion dollar ad program? $2b in ads won’t fix the fact that GM was making cars that weren’t appealing to the market in general.

Just as GM lost touch with consumers in the auto market, perfecting designs that appealed to very few in any demographic, so it lost touch with consumers in media. Unfortunately, for GM and their advertising agencies, social media marketing, viral marketing, web news, blogs, online television, dvr, on demand, and mobile internet have changed the game so drastically that I think the only companies that should still be advertising via traditional mediums such as television are those that clearly understand their market, and have a strategy that not only incorporates the ever changing media market, but thrives on it.

Hulu, for example has begun using clever television marketing campaigns to target the perfect audience delivered by TV; those people still watching television. It’s a simple strategy, yet one that GM could not get right. A successful marketing and advertising strategy understands audiences first and foremost. If you’re tuned in to your audience, they’ll tell you everything you need to do and say to keep them coming back all the while succeeding yourself. Presenting an image that is in accord with the needs and wishes of your audience is the way advertising and marketing is supposed to work.

Case in point, while networks are hurting for ad sales due to companies defecting to Hulu for advertising, Hulu is turning back around and using network television to gather more business by targeting audiences with messages that network TV is a dying breed and they should get off the sinking ship and watch commercial free TV on Hulu.

In an unprecedented entrance into online television, Hulu has created a household brand name that is being made as distinguishable as FOX or NBC through their ads. Further, they have established their brand as the leader for an industry that has yet to come to fruition. It’s a strategy that was born from Nielsen ratings and focus groups, but now thrives in twitter and Facebook, you tube and blogs. It lives and breathes in your audiences, and in their beliefs about brand authenticity, what your brand stands for and their connection to that belief. GM failed due to a poor business strategy but their efforts to reach out to consumers for help (by way of purchases) failed because they no longer understood who their target audiences needed to be, no longer understood their media for effective advertising and marketing to those audiences, and therefore no longer had an audience or a market.

Without knowing their audiences, GM’s advertisements became just another image on the screen, their message, just a bunch words on a billboard and their brand became just more words on a page.

So I guess what all this boils down to is; you'd better know your target audiences and you'd better know them well. As we see with GM you can have an unlimited advertising and marketing budget, the most sought after ad space, a well-recognized brand, even a good story to tell; but without knowing who you are trying to appeal to, and listening to them as much as you talk to them, you may as well have said and done absolutely nothing at all.

The Collapse of Trust in the Banking Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Karin Kane) — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:16:00 +0000

Discovery@Olin, the magazine of the Washington University Olin School of Business, recently featured an article from evolve24 discussing the “Collapse of Trust in the Banking Industry.” You can read the article here.

The article noted that the current financial crisis has destroyed consumer confidence in the banking and financial industry. This will lead to a number of issues for financial firms over the longer term, including increased regulatory attention, lower respect and trust from their core customers, and far greater challenges in attracting new customers.

To overcome these obstacles, we suggested three key steps for the banking industry. First, banks must recognize that, if they have accepted TARP funding, their stakeholders now include all US taxpayers. This is an important step. These new stakeholders might never have considered working for, buying the stock of, or opening an account with these banks. Now, however, because they do consider themselves stakeholders, they will monitor the industry closely -- and they can wield considerable influence.

Second, banks must be transparent in their lending practices, their governance standards, and their sponsorship plans. This will be imperative to avoid increased media and governmental scrutiny.

Finally, banks should proactively create a new code of conduct, one that addresses the emerging risks of corporate spending and pay scale standards, corporate responsibility practices, and consumer lending, and publicize this widely to engender trust and reinforce their commitment to their new stakeholders. By creating these feelings of trust and commitment with a much wider audience than they had previously been exposed to, banks may actually be able to capitalize on the publicity and attention generated by the financial crisis. If they can establish trust with this broad stakeholder group, their potential pool of dedicated new employees, of interested new shareholders, and loyal new customers will increase significantly, providing the banks with a clear path towards previously unanticipated long-term success.

Increased Media Attention Presents Opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (Karin Kane) — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:17:00 +0000

An article in the New York Times on Monday discussed an interesting step Chevron took to protect their corporate reputation. Chevron learned that it would be the subject of a 60 Minutes report on oil companies in the Amazon rain forest. The report focuses on an ongoing trial in Ecuador, which could leave Chevron liable for up to $27 billion in damages. To counteract any negative reactions the report might receive, Chevron hired a journalist, Gene Randall, to create his own video report on the project.

The NYT article quotes activist Mitch Anderson, a campaigner for Amazon Watch, as saying that “Chevron had resorted to ‘embarrassing public relations tactics’” with the video.

This is an interesting claim. Chevron, a large, well-known, public company, has been the target of activists for years. The activists have certainly used a number of tools to make their case to a wider audience. Amazon Watch, for example, has created a website with the URL “ChevronToxico.com,” which contains links to a number of videos, interviews, pictures and press releases. These are certainly “public relations tactics”, and Amazon Watch does not seem embarrassed at using them, but now that Chevron is using the same tools, the activists are suddenly expressing outrage at the use of media to present a perspective.

They shouldn’t be too upset yet. As of today, the Chevron video had less than 3500 views on YouTube. The 60 Minutes report, which Amazon Watch clearly felt was favorable to their cause, had 12 million viewers. But the New York Times article mentioning the story was read by an estimated 1 million subscribers, based on the paper’s subscription rates, and their stories tend to be picked up and highlighted by a number of other bloggers and papers. Indeed, the controversy generated by the 60 Minutes report and Chevron’s own video may generate more interest than the lawsuit ever did. Of course, the attention could swing viewers’ opinions either way. Some may be more inclined to Chevron’s side of the story; others could fall more on the side of the activists. Either way, it works well for both parties. Chevron presented a counter-perspective for the 12 million who did see the 60 Minutes piece. And the activist groups who would have otherwise had to rely on their own public relations efforts are now featured prominently in mass media.

In order to shape the next stage of this conversation, both sides will have to try and use the media to create emotional resonance for their perspective with media consumers. At evolve24, our analytics software will be tracking the presence of “communicated risks” around the arguments that each side is making. The key insight for both sides is that having a story is not enough – that story must appeal to listeners on a variety of emotional levels. The media attention has been ramped up on this topic – now it’s time to see who is more effective in establishing or resolving the concerns that arise from each side’s story.

Swine Flu Lifecycle and Interest Group Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Noah Krusell) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:02:00 +0000

This weekend we watched as swine flu inched its way across a CNN map of the world.

Geographically, we know where this outbreak exists, but how many of us know where this issue is in its lifecycle?

Similar to the situation with the avian flu, companies in the restaurant, food, and pharmaceutical industries will need to monitor this issue for changes in issue lifecycle. We can expect this issue to move from its current reporting phase to a position of advocacy, whereby interest groups will leverage this outbreak as an opportunity to affect change in policies and promote agendas.

As this issue migrates into the advocacy position, companies in the industries listed above will need to garner global media intelligence that will help them: i) identify media outlets and authors in the advocacy role ii) understand and interpret the underlying concerns of these groups iii) develop counter messages and processes that deal with threats to reputation, i.e. drug availability, employee safety, etc. Furthermore, a global monitoring approach will also help communications professionals understand the international nuances of the issue, i.e. differences in global advocacy positions, disparities in the quality and nature of the news coverage from different regions.

In cases like these organizational preparedness will be scrutinized. Companies need to monitor perceptions during the crisis to customize a communications plan that fits with the issue lifecycle, and to be prepared for the next crisis window after the issue lifecycle has completed.

Interest group politics never go away; they simply wait for new windows of opportunity to open, and then present arguments that will affect change and potentially harm reputation and license to operate. We’ll keep watching and follow the changes here.

Better Know Your Stakeholders' Beliefs

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Worth repeating: this post on recognizing that more important than the technology behind social media itself is an awareness about the people behind the technology; about what can happen when the beliefs of an important and active stakeholder group are not understood. Social Media is not the cause of diversity of desires and beliefs amongst a brand’s consumers; that diversity has always existed, social media is simply making this diversity visible, and dangerous to ignore.

Marketing campaigns are usually targeted to particular “stakeholders” and their values based on market research and investment in campaign design. In the mass media world of one-way communications, a sample of audience sentiment was pretty safe, but in the new environment of instant feedback, samples are not good enough, as they may miss small but influential stakeholder pockets.

To understand what communications will appeal to specific stakeholders, we must understand their beliefs. Our beliefs about the world can be understood as the source of order in each of our worlds. Beliefs are simply structures that we use to bring rational and emotional structure to the world we perceive and move through. Beliefs create emotional safety, as they resolve uncertainties about our past, our present and our future; uncertainties that would otherwise create anxiety. Because their greatest value comes from bringing order to the perception of our world, beliefs become most unstable when risks arise and the sense of order is threatened.

Beliefs are a driver of behavior – we like to respond rationally to perceptions, evaluating our perceptions to choose appropriate responses rather than simply reacting to perceptions. We like to have and know the rationale and beliefs that support our actions, and we like to act on our beliefs. And as we act, we seek confirmation that our actions are based on sound judgment (i.e. are understood as legitimate) thus seeking confirmation of our beliefs from others. Belief systems are feedback systems, with individual beliefs influenced by culture, and with culture shaped by individual beliefs.

Marketing and communications strive to associate their brand with the beliefs of the audience that bring order from chaos, the beliefs that create sense of things and let the audience feel grounded, comfortable and safe with their world. As social media brings together and gives voice to more groups sharing more broad and diverse deeply-held beliefs, communicators must be aware of the ways in which beliefs will generate both desired and unexpected behavior amongst the recipients of messages.

Reputation: Last Line of Defense

noreply@blogger.com (Karin Kane) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:06:00 +0000

A letter from John Browne, the head of Strategic Advantage, our UK partner, was published in The Financial Times Adviser last Thursday. John writes:
“The ding-dong between practitioners and regulators seems to drag on forever. The pages of Financial Adviser show that the age-old arguments and entrenched positions are continually repeated and remain unresolved.
It is blatantly obvious that there is something fundamentally wrong at the very heart of regulation. It has the wrong purpose. As a reader, but industry outsider, let me have a go at a solution.
The problem is that the same thinking that created the current regulatory framework – you know, the one that has failed the nation - is now being used to create and staff a so-called new regulatory model. Here we go again.
The consequences are dire. It is imperative that the government, regulated firms and the general public are crystal clear on the overarching purpose of regulation which should be ‘to enhance and protect the reputation of the financial services sector, the City and, ultimately, the UK.’
Reputation has little to do with PR and spin. [Among other things], reputation is about the behaviour of management; the reality of how industry and regulator staff behave and how they manage risks. It is clear from the past few weeks' events that government ministers, regulators and senior financial services managers have no intention of changing their behaviours, whatever they may say. That fact is reinforced daily throughout the sector (rewards and pensions for failure, as I write).
Instead of treating reputation as the industry’s most valuable asset, regulators strengthen their position as "rule enforcers" and industry chiefs live in the world of spin and damage limitation.
With a fresh regulatory purpose, focused on reputation, the FSA and the industry stand a fighting chance of getting the strategy right and rebuilding the public’s trust that has been squandered. Without a reputation focus we are in trouble. UK plc has little else to fall back on if you guys go down.”
As published on www.ftadvisor.com, Thursday, March 12, 2009

National Business Media: Do You Buy It?

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:45:00 +0000

The feud between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer has been interesting to watch for its entertainment value, but Stewart’s case that Cramer and business media in general could and should have done more to expose the increasing dangers in the market may also be an important step toward rebuilding an investing environment that “regular” investors can trust. The question is; will Cramer and CNBC be a part of that environment?

Stewart’s assertion that the business media was misleadingly optimistic about the markets reminded me of a report that we ran late last year looking at the use of “emotionally charged” language in the media’s discussion of the economy. What we found then was that in each quarter of 2008, the use of emotionally charged language such as “catastrophe”, “meltdown” and “collapse” decreased within top-tier (national and international) media , while increasing within second-tier (regional and local) and social media.

These findings led us to ask what might influence top-tier media differently from these other outlets. Three considerations came to mind, and all of them might be relevant to explain what was happening with Cramer and the business media in the lead-up to the banks’ collapse.
One concern that major media outlets have is a financial concern. As they command much more in advertising revenue, often from the firms that they report on, their editorial take on financial performance of these firms and the economy in general may be biased toward giving the “benefit of the doubt”.

The second concern that may influence top-tier media’s “optimism” (or at least lack of pessimism) is an interest in maintaining access. Clearly, business leaders would not respond to having their perspectives presented in a tone of criticism, hyperbole or fatalism. Giving firms, markets and banks the benefit of the doubt in reporting on the economy ensured that media outlets would be perceived as “reasonable” enough to continue to carry important talking points and have access to the occasional interview. Surely Cramer and CNBC were motivated by an effort to maintain friendly relations with important sources.

The third concern is that top-tier media actually understands the influence they have over behavior, and may choose to use less emotionally charged language in a spirit of responsibility. I am certainly not capable of determining Cramer’s motivations, but he very well may have felt some responsibility for keeping people from panicking.

Cramer himself admitted that Stewart was right in his assertion that Cramer and the business media bear some responsibility for the losses in personal investments and retirement funds that are the casualties of this market. This is because Cramer knows that despite his own and others’ observations that Cramer is truly more entertainment than advisor (and that smart people should understand that and discount his advice accordingly), in his position as the host of an investment program on a financial channel, he also had the undeniable appearance of an authority and credibility, and accordingly, people trusted him and took his advice seriously. Will they still, or will Cramer and his ilk now be understood as clowns, and thus fade from relevance in a new media environment?

Three Hundred Million Stakeholders

noreply@blogger.com (Karin Kane) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:50:00 +0000

As sales and stock prices sink, companies are shifting away from using them as the only measures of corporate reputation. In this environment few firms would want to be described by their share price or sales. Even if they are examined under the broader metric of Performance, they’re still just one facet of broad reputation picture. There are other aspects of the reputation puzzle, including a firm’s products and services, its innovation, workplace, governance and leadership. Each of these contribute to the perceptions, beliefs, admiration and trust required to create a strong reputation.

Unfortunately, they don’t always move in unison, and different stakeholder groups may focus on very different things, as Northern Trust experienced last week. When it sponsored a golf outing and Sheryl Crow concert, the firm was focusing on creating a very positive experience for its customers, one that would no doubt ensure their loyalty for years to come and would enhance the reputation of their product and service offerings. In years past it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, and its shareholders would have considered the events a normal part of Northern’s cost of sales. Employees who attended the event no doubt felt much the same way its customers did.

However, because they received TARP funds last fall, the firm has a much broader group of stakeholders than its customers and shareholders. U.S. taxpayers are now very interested in the firm’s activities and, perhaps most importantly, its governance practices. The groundswell of negative sentiment had an overwhelming impact on the firm’s reputation, which dropped sharply points over the three day period after the story broke.

Should Northern Trust have focused on the opinions of these people? Many of the commentators expressing concern about the issue may never have heard of Northern Trust before, might never have considered working there, buying a single share of its stock, or opening an account with the bank. But, because they do consider themselves stakeholders, they now feel that this issue has affected them personally, and their influence over others who might have been shareholders, customers and employees may be tremendous. They may start writing to their congressman suggesting stricter repayment of TARP funds or tighter regulation of bank expenses. They may ask their mutual fund companies to sell shares of NTRS from any index funds they hold. And, years later, they may convince someone else who might have been a shareholder, customer or employee of the firm that it’s better to stay away from the bank.

A plug: Our report on “Reputation and Risk in the Banking Sector,” which examines these issues more closely, will be released later this week.

Kindle 2 Controversy - A Stakeholder Astigmatism

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:38:00 +0000

Last week Amazon began shipping the Kindle 2 amidst speculation in technology press and social media that the Kindle 2 might bring the e-book on status with the iPod. At the end of the week however, discussion around the Kindle had changed from whether it would carry e-books across the chasm, to what it would NOT be doing; providing the text-to-speech function that had shipped with the device for all books available on the Kindle. Thus, thanks to a failure to anticipate conflicts among its stakeholders, Amazon allowed the conversation around the Kindle to move from the innovative nature of what the Kindle could do, to reflection on Amazon’s willingness to 1) develop industry changing technology without consideration of its impact on other stakeholders and 2) sacrifice its consumers’ interests as soon as it was challenged. In other words, with a single move Amazon managed to lose the trust of both suppliers and consumers, and turn what should have been a reputation enhancing coverage of an innovative product into reputation eroding conversation about their strange failure to anticipate some very obvious stakeholder concerns, and their willingness to “cave” at the first sign of trouble.

Opposition to the Kindle 2 text-to-speech function was voiced on Feb 25th in the New York Times by the president of the Author’s Guild. This editorial, published a few days after the Kindle 2 began shipping, made the claim that automated text-to-speech actually means e-books are ALSO audio-books, and so should be licensed from authors as both types of media, not just as e-books.

Amazon appears to have agreed with this argument, as its response to this editorial was to begin work on changing the software so that the text-to-speech could be turned off for titles if authors did not wish to provide that option to readers. Amazon did make a point of establishing that the functionality was indeed legal, and that they were making these changes voluntarily out of deference to the rights of authors. And while this is a very valid stance and respectful of authors’ copyright concerns, it has not been sitting well with Kindle customers who spend time blogging and tweeting about Amazon abandoning their interests, and analysts like CNet’s Greg Sandoval, who points out that this is “exactly the kind of public relations blunder that Amazon can ill afford as it attempts to breathe life into the digital-book market.”

Readers of this blog will understand that such “mistakes” are more than “public relations blunders”, and are really the drivers of reputation. As mentioned, Amazon’s approach to this software resulted in a lose-lose situation, they eroded their reputation with authors and publishers when they sprung this technology on them with no advance discussion of the copyright impacts, and they then eroded reputation with consumers when they “caved” to concerns that reversed the benefit of the product to consumers.

It is strange that Amazon did not anticipate the reaction that authors would have to a technology that challenged copyright interests. Addressing these concerns in advance would have likely resulted in the ultimate outcome of allowing authors to choose whether an e-title would be available for text-to-speech translation, but without the interim step of alienating suppliers and consumers alike. Amazon’s errors in this case should remind us all to maintain an awareness of our stakeholders and their interests – not just as a PR concern, but in product development and marketing as well.

Reputation Stimulation - Stimulus Bill Coverage and Tech Firm Reputations

noreply@blogger.com (Scot Wheeler) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:45:00 +0000

Our blog archives are growing full with descriptions of evolve24’s underlying perspectives on reputation, risk and stakeholder management, and we’ll certainly be back to visit these topics we love some more very soon, but this is also a place to share some of the insights we gain through these methods. Here’s a quick analysis of the effect that the last 30 days of coverage mentioning the stimulus bill or stimulus legislation have had on some major tech firms.

Taking a quick look at Apple, Dell and Sony over the last 30 days on this topic within Twitter, blogs and web, and online video shows that coverage of the stimulus bill has afforded none of these brands with a reputation boost, and that association with the topic has actually adversely impacted Apple and Sony, and been just neutral for Dell.

A quick glance at this coverage reveals that the problem for these brands lies in nature of the association between them and the stimulus bill; most joint references mention the stimulus bill in the context of the economy, then bridge to the firms’ financial performance also in that context. This is a natural pairing of topics, macro-economic conditions and firm performance, but it is not the best topic of coverage for most firms right now, and it is certainly not the only association that could be made between technology companies and economic stimulus.

We know that Financial Performance is one of the key components of corporate reputation, but there are five other drivers of reputation, a couple of which are strongly aligned with economic stimulus. Firms that are actively managing their reputations during a period of economic turmoil and in a context of increased attention on an issue like the stimulus bill should be seeking ways to associate mention of their brand in the context of stimulus with reflections on the firm’s strengths in Innovation, Vision and Leadership.

There is plenty of coverage within the last 30 days around the topics of innovation, vision and leadership in technology endeavors linked to the stimulus package; but most of it just has nothing to do with these established brands. Google and IBM managed to link their innovative sides to this coverage, and faired well in terms of reputation on the topic (even while Apple’s stock outperformed IBM’s for the 30 day period). The coverage of innovation and vision with regard to technology’s role in stimulus has also been focused on small entrepreneurial firms.

As has been said here before, knowing what’s being said about you is a good start, but it’s just a start. This case shows that what’s NOT being said about you can also have an impact.