By Bruce Jeffries-Fox
A recent survey from a major PR trade indicates once again that top management, including marketing executives, look to PR to play the lead role in building corporate
reputation. Typically, reputation building does not start from scratch. Most companies have been around a while and have a reputation--for better or worse. In all probability,
the core elements of your reputation are set, and wholesale changes are not necessary.
At the same time, the world is always changing. If your company is growing, this breeds a change in your reputation. Your markets are evolving; your competitors are changing.
In a fluid environment you need to constantly assess where your reputation stands with your key publics and whether you should take action.
Here are five ways to know if the time has come for a reputation overhaul:
1. Are your employees saying you're headed in the wrong direction?
2. Is the financial community saying bad things about you even when your profits are rising?
3. Are you finding it hard to get time with community leaders?
4. Is your share of media coverage smaller than your share of market?
5. Do consumers think you're someone you're not?
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," it's time for some heavy lifting. Let's look at each area in more detail.
Employees: To sustain a desirable reputation, employees must understand their company's business and passionately endorse its mission, strategies and tactics.
Misunderstanding, disagreement or apathy will in time have a negative impact on how employees do their jobs. When customer-facing employees become disenfranchised, they soon
communicate these attitudes to customers; and customer satisfaction and loyalty start to head south -- along with the company's bottom line.
A monthly poll tells you where you stand with employees. This can be simple and inexpensive if you deploy an online survey. You want answers to just two questions: (1) the
extent to which employees think the company is headed in the right direction; and (2) the one thing they want to tell the CEO. This simple barometer provides great insight into
employee sentiment and indicates pretty clearly if you have problems -- and where you may need to take action. Online surveys are useful and inexpensive for this.
Financial community members: In general, if your business is posting good financials your coverage will reflect this, and vice versa. But when you see profits rising and the
financial press giving lukewarm or unfavorable coverage to toward your performance and prospects, you have a reputation problem that needs addressing. Most likely there's some
kind of misunderstanding, or some baggage carried forward from a previous era that is influencing what is being said and written.
A detailed content analysis provides strong indications of the perceptions and attitudes underlying analysts' and journalists' words. You should look for inaccuracies and the
extent to which your company's key strategic messages are covered. This knowledge can structure your objectives for direct conversations.
Community leader problems: It is well known that the more face time you get with community leaders the more you foster two-way understanding. Face time provides an
opportunity to discuss the community leaders' concerns, your company's actions and future agenda and, ultimately, to gain these influential leaders' support. If you or your
community relations managers find it increasingly difficult to get in the door, this is a sure sign that something's wrong.
If you keep track of how many such meetings take place each quarter, look at the recent trend and see if it's going in the right direction. If you don't keep these records,
you might want to start. Meanwhile, just ask your managers about this issue and see what they say. A qualitative feel is a lot better than no feel at all.
News media: Are you getting your just share of ink? It's important that you do because reputations are highly influenced by the media. In general, bigger companies get more
media coverage. But if your "share-of-voice," as it's sometimes called, drops below par, it's time to investigate and make changes to better engage this important reputation-
building constituency.
A simple rule-of-thumb is to compare your share-of-voice (the percent of total stories generated by yourself and vs. key competitors over a particular time period) with your
market share (for your company and competitors) for that same time period. If your share-of-voice is greater than your market share that is good, and vice versa.
Consumer problems: When you listen to the voice of the customer, do you get the feeling it's talking about the wrong guy? Are customers describing someone that perhaps you
used to be, but walked away from long ago? Or are they describing someone with attitudes and motivations totally disconnected from what you know to be the heart and soul of your
company?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, you have your work cut out. You need to quickly get to the heart of the matter so you can understand what you're
dealing with. You might pursue the issue using in-depth interviews with customers and prospects, or you might tack questions onto existing marketing surveys. When you have your
answers, start planning how to turn things around.
Bruce Jeffries-Fox is president of Jeffries-Fox Associates, a Cape May, N.J.-based PR firm. He can be reached at 609.884.8740, [email protected].