At the 2024 Meltwater Summit in New York City earlier this summer, Katie Stratakis, Head of Corporate Communications at Samsung Electronics America, shared the company’s approach to proactive brand storytelling and best practices for brand reputation management during crises.
Storytelling Takes Center Stage: From Management to Nurturing
Samsung’s concept of reputation management as it relates to storytelling and brand building is undergoing a shift, Stratakis revealed. “The brands for which we all work and the world in which we operate—those lines are dissolving. And what it's starting to force is convergence practices: the ideas of brand building and proactive storytelling, and then brand management and reputation, are coming so much closer together,” she said.
This convergence has inspired Samsung to take a more “proactive posture” when it comes to reputation management. “We're even dispelling some of that language and moving away from “management” as a word and talking about brand reputation “nurturing.” That automatically starts to shift the mindset,” she said.
Samsung is also focused on using monitoring tools to spot vulnerabilities and make preparations from a risk perspective. “But more importantly, [monitoring allows us to] spot opportunities where we can meaningfully land our brand message or proposition in culture and conversation as they're happening.”
Best Practices in Protecting Brand Reputation
To avoid falling victim to the “expired playbook,” Stratakis said Samsung focuses on the following key principles when preparing for and mitigating reputation crises.
Flexibility. While there will certainly be constants within your process, embracing flexibility is crucial. “You have to get yourself, get your teams, get your organization comfortable around being a little uncomfortable. Some things are going to be variable. No two issues are alike, and frankly, the backdrop of any two issues are not going to be alike,” she said.
Given the speed at which culture moves, she recommends putting a pen to paper on the things you can control, whether it’s stakeholder engagement strategies, escalation protocols or ensuring monitoring tools are intact and ready to activate if something drops. Messaging and scenario planning have to be flexible and fluid.
Reflection. Samsung focuses less on best practices and more on “best learnings,” according to Stratakis. “Every situation, big or small, [we do] a critical evaluation of what worked, what didn't, and what we are going to take forward as far as counter measures to make sure that we improve and optimize in the future.” She recommends cataloging all of your learnings through crises.
Collaboration. When faced with a crisis, companies must move quickly, which can lead to bringing fewer people and voices to the table to avoid slowing down the process. Stratakis warns against following this practice. “We value bringing cross-functional perspectives, diverse perspectives, diverse lived experiences to really evaluate what's in front of us, but importantly, to scenario plan for what might be two, three, four steps [ahead] that we can't even see yet,” she said. “We find when you bring those perspectives together early and often, you actually arrive at really great solutions much sooner. And sometimes they were creative and unexpected.”
Kaylee Hultgren is Content Director for PRNEWS.