After the level of expectation and coverage around the BP announcement of a new CEO, the actual announcement may seem somewhat anti-climactic. I can imagine the commentary now:

BP’s board of directors felt it was time to effect a transition (gasp), and they’ve selected an American CEO in an effort to repair their image (imagine that). And Mr. Hayward seemingly gets his wish….and gets his life back.

Leadership transitions always present a unique set of challenges and priorities for those of us in the communications and reputation management business. And sudden or abrupt changes can create chaos…like the night I spent in Bethlehem searching for video crews when Bethlehem Steel changed CEO’s shortly before filing for Chapter 11, requiring an entirely new set of communications toolkits, employee videos (with subtitles) and letters to all constituencies because the new CEO had a new point of view and message.

But leadership transitions in the wake of a crisis can be a really positive thing – an opportunity to create a “fresh start” or at least mark a BC (before new CEO) and AD (after new direction) for a company struggling to preserve, protect or rebuild reputation.

It’s sort of like the first day of school…a new teacher, who (in theory) doesn’t know that you were the class clown, the brain or the homework slacker…you can (at least partially) reinvent yourself…if you change your behavior. A fresh start can be a reputation reboot….if the right changes are made to support the new leader and the new message.

BP is facing a massive loss of trust…one that that they earned by their actions and their inactions in the wake of the Gulf spill. I talked to Ad Age about this very topic…and I am optimistic that a new leader will mark the beginning of a new era for BP. But like most of you, I plan to wait and see what comes next.

cwinters Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility, General Corporate Bethlehem Steel, BP, CEO transitions, Tony Hayward

I went to a networking meeting today where journalists spoke about the state of business in New Jersey. When the floor was opened for Q&A, the conversation immediately turned to how to get your Company in the news. After the session, some members of the group approached me to ask about crisis management and how to put a positive “SPIN” on bad news.

Ahhh, the inevitable SPIN DOCTOR implication.

Let me say for the record, I am NOT in favor of SPIN. The best counselors in public relations may not agree on much, but we agree on this…you can’t “spin” negative news. I am actually astonished about this continued misperception in light of all of the discussion on trust and transparency.

And really, isn’t that what all of the hype about the Steve Jobs press conference is about? He didn’t follow the “rule book” and appear contrite and apologetic, then follow up with some attempt to put a positive spin on the fact that the iPhone drops calls every time you touch it? (A common complaint for previous versions of the iPhone, BTW.)

Authenticity is the buzzword of the day…that is what Steve Jobs gave us. Who he really is. He is not happy that the iPhone isn’t performing. He shouldn’t be whistling zip-a-dee-doo-da – this isn’t the iPad launch.

What did Jobs do?

He acknowledged that the new iPhone isn’t perfect. That he isn’t perfect. That Apple isn’t perfect. And promised to work to make customers happy, even offering a few possible solutions.

Isn’t that the transparent, authentic response we claim to want?

Mickey Mantle once said, “You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.”

Maybe Steve Jobs isn’t either one of those things.

cwinters Executive Visibility, General Corporate Apple, Authenticity, iPhone, Spin

If you’ve followed this blog or tuned in to the webcasts where I’ve been a panelist, you know that I’ve been saying that 60 seconds is the new “first hour” – the textbook window of time when a Company must take control of a situation in order to preserve reputation. And while that is a somewhat hyperbolic statement, the Miracle on the Hudson is my case in point – and was the day that I began to rethink everything I had learned about crisis communications 101.

Today, I heard that BP’s cap may be leaking. An editorial in the New York Times calls Congress to the carpet for not taking detector tampering in the Massey Mining explosion that was the industry’s worst in 40 years. But the furor and public outcry seems to be losing steam.

Certainly, the intensity and speed with which information moves creates some unique and new challenges for crisis communicators….but does it also create opportunities? Are memories shorter? Does interest wane more quickly? Do we move on to the crisis du jour and give reputations a pass?

Has the plethora of “worst events in history” in the past few years desensitized us to the significance of these issues? Or does the pervasive mistrust of all things big – big banks, big companies, big governments caused us to expect the worst?

Big questions for a rainy Monday morning…

cwinters Crisis Communications BP, Crisis Communications, Massey, Mining, Miracle on the Hudson, oil spill, Public Relations

Move over LeBron. Your moment is over.

Today, the sudden and shocking death of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner has spawned a plethora of commentary, tribute films and interviews with the some of the greatest sports legends of our time.

I grew up in a little town in NJ that was the home of the Yankees in the 70s. Thurman Munson and Catfish Hunter lived in my town, ate in our pizzeria and came to our school plays. Don Gullet and Graig Nettles came to our little league games.

Everyone in Norwood had an opinion about Steinbrenner. He was controversial, to say the least.

George was the man that everyone loved to hate….he fired Billy Martin, repeatedly. He dished out tough love. And he took a struggling baseball franchise and with determination and force of will created what is perhaps the most iconic team of our times.

George Steinbrenner was a game changer, in the truest sense of the word. He transformed a team, a city, a sport and some would argue an entire industry. He wasn’t always popular. His critics were many. They accused him of buying championships. Micromanaging talent. And in general, bullying everyone around him.

Just hours after we learned of his death, the conversation about his legacy became the topic of the day.

But what about the legacy of the Yankees, who lost both their face and with the passing of Bob Sheppard, their voice this week?

I’ve often mused about the relationship between an organization’s reputation and that of its leaders. Can a leader be so iconic that his or her own “brand” overtakes that of the organization they represent? Did that happen to the Yankees…is the Steinbrenner brand so iconic that the Yankees will never be the same?

Only time will tell.

cwinters General Corporate George Steinbrenner, Legacy, Yankees

For as long as I’ve been in the PR business, we’ve been counseling our clients to tell their story….and helping them craft the messaging, the platforms and the proof points to do so. I’ve done this for almost 20 years….and I’ve often found myself telling clients that we can’t tell their whole story….that certain items and issues are too inside baseball, too granular or simply not newsworthy or noteworthy enough.

However, it seems that those of us in the reputation business need to ask a new question…

Is this the whole story?

Today’s NYT has a front page story about SmithKline Beecham’s failure to disclose that a new drug for diabetes had a risk of cardiac problems.

It also has a story about BP’s relentless pursuit of growth at all costs prohibiting them from learning from their mistakes.

The Toyota crisis will go into the text books as a classic case of trying to minimize or cover up an issue, making it worse.

When I started in this business, no one talked about transparency…they just did it. Today, there is a lot of talk about transparency, and seemingly less of it than ever before.

There is a difference between putting your best foot forward and hiding material information that tells a completely different story…and counseling clients today is more about being their Jiminy Cricket than their “Spin Doctor.”

cwinters General Corporate BP, Reputation Management, SmithKline Beecham, Toyota, Transparency

Even after nearly 30 years in the PR and newspaper business, you occasionally see something that makes you stop, shake your head and say, “Pure genius.”

That happened this morning when I was scanning various accounts of Amazon’s acquisition of Woot! and came across this video press release from Woot.com announcing the sale.

So what’s this have to do with reputation? Nearly everything, IMHO. Woot! built a massive following of consumers who are loyal to the brand. They love its simplicity and its attitude. They identify with that reputation. Imagine the erosion of brand loyalty had Woot chosen to make the announcement in mainstream corporate fashion.

Instead, the video, combined with the “internal memo” from CEO Matt Rutledge, signals it will be reputational business-as-usual at Woot, regardless of who’s signing the paychecks.

bsilver General Corporate Amazon, Woot

In an increasingly predictable 5-4 split, the Supreme Court today struck down a portion of the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley Act, though unanimously decided to leave the rest of the legislation intact.

The gist? The Court says the structure of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a not-for-profit corporation with broad regulatory authority over accounting firms that audit publicly traded companies, violates separation of powers principles. Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission will have the power to boot PCAOB board members as it sees fit.

I’ll leave it to legal experts to comment on the case. But what are the reputational questions here for some of our most important institutions?

Though on the broader issue the Court was unambiguous, it was yet another predictable 5-4 ruling along the same ideological fault lines we’ve now come to expect on most major issues. Does this continued pattern diminish the credibility of one of our most revered institutions if it seems to be yet another rendition of the back-and-forth between red and blue in Congress? While I’m hardly a Constitutional scholar, I believe most people – save for the most cynical among us – think of the Court as “above” that. The question … is that changing?

Is the reputation of the federal government such that we trust it to oversee yet another body responsible for protecting the public? (I’m not even going to venture a stab at this one.) What about the reputation of the PCAOB?

Of course, the reasons the board was established – inspecting public accounting firms, enforcing ethical standards for audit reports, and punishing corruption – are right and worthy. But will those in the business community think differently of it now, though its mission of protecting the public from corruption remains?

Today I have more questions than answers. Would love to hear what you think.

cwinters General Corporate PCAOB, SOX, Supreme Court

Our grandparents would have scoffed at the idea that water would become a mega-industry. Why would anyone who survived the depression pay for something they can get for free?
But as questions about the safety of tap water emerged, and the benefits of hydration took root, a new industry was born. Bottled water isn’t a category killer…we still consume lots of soda. It is a category creator.

But what happens when a category comes crashing down and becomes the enemy? And the case is mounting. Tapped, the bottled water version of Food, Inc. highlights the dangers of BPA. Today’s NYT chronicles the crusade of a woman in Concorde Mass to ban bottled water in her town. My colleague Mike Sacks recently blogged about the natural spring equivalent of overfishing, and Nestle’s Northwest fight.

However, this fight isn’t so simple. We are also inundated with information about pharmaceutical remnants in the water supply, and the dangers of tap water, and admonished that 8 glasses a day is the absolute minimum for good health.

What’s a responsible person to do?

The wisdom of the ages came from my ten year old son, Jack. He recently completed a science fair project on recycling and solemnly told me:

• Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every year.
• A plastic bottle sits in a land fill for 450 years if we don’t recycle it.

Yup, a ten year old hit the issue right on the head. Clearly, the water companies need to solve the BPA problem. But the second half of the equation is about recycling….to preserve this business, “Big Water” needs to get active in recycling, and incentivize consumers to do it. If they don’t, legislators and regulators like those in Concord, Mass may do it for them.

cwinters General Corporate, Sustainability

Those of us that help build and defend reputations for a living are often enamored of words, what they mean, what they can inspire. We spend a lot of our time helping executives find the right ones.

So I read with interest the New York Times’ roundup of what was said to the graduates of 2010 in commencement addresses across the country.

I was struck by what this array of leaders – some both revered and reviled – had to say. Though many students in their funny hats were likely bludgeoned by clichés and lazy advice, The Times recapped some good stuff.

In particular, I liked what Rachel Maddow said:

Gunning not just for personal triumph for yourself but for durable achievement to be proud of for life is the difference between winning things and leadership.

This statement certainly has application to corporate reputation as well – the difference between selling a lot of stuff without regard to the true cost and doing it responsibly; the difference between a CEO who manages and one who inspires.

My other favorite piece of advice from the roundup? Pattie Smith: “Take care of your damn teeth.”

msacks General Corporate commencement, Leadership

Tilde Harris at GreenBiz.com points us to the 10 Green NGOs Businesses Should Know About. Most of the list should be familiar to anyone working on corporate responsibility and sustainability/environmental issues, but a couple were new to me.

Her broad argument is right on – businesses must engage with the appropriate NGOs to make real progress. If you aren’t, you aren’t serious. It’s that simple.

It makes sense from a business standpoint – these groups have a lot of expertise – and from a reputational/risk mitigation standpoint – association adds credibility and stems rock-throwing from the sidelines.

As Harris puts it: “Many now view NGO-business partnerships as the rule, rather than the exception.”

msacks CSR, Sustainability

The latest in a series of shocking revelations in the BP incident, the CEO acknowledges that their crisis plan was inadequate. ”We didn’t have the tools in the toolbox.”

For communicators (ok, maybe for everyone), the revelation that there really wasn’t much of a crisis plan is nothing short of astounding. And the rapid succession of crisis issues this past year in energy, mining and banking, just to name a few, suggests that the for some of these industries, the lack of preparedness is nothing short of breathtaking.

Should government mandate crisis planning for certain industries? And if so, how should they monitor it?

Click here to take a 5 minute survey to share your views.

Here is my POV about the 4 things that separate the “men from the boys” in terms of good, effective crisis preparedness.

• An integrated plan that deals with both operations, and communications/stakeholder management. Nothing does more damage than actions that don’t synch with the words…building your plans together ensures a coordinated response.
• A process with clearly defined roles and approaches to decision making….not a plan built on individuals, who may or may not be available. Person-centric plans are reputational Kryptonite…they rarely work, and when they do, they are too slow to be effective in an environment where the proverbial “first hour” has become 60 seconds.
• A mechanism that allows for speed, and use of judgment and application of your principals – because no plan can plan for everything….and if you try, it becomes too big and cumbersome to use effectively. A crisis plan should be able to be carried in your pocket, not your wheelbarrow.
• Total Stakeholder Approach…my recent blog about President Obama saying the BP CEO wouldn’t work for him says it all. And do we really think the families of the 11 men killed care that Mr. CEO wants his life back?

cwinters Crisis Communications BP, Crisis

Pundits and newsmakers around the globe are tweeting and re-hashing President Obama’s interview on the Today Show this a.m., giving lots of attention to the comments about knowing whose ass to kick.

But for careful watchers of reputation issues, another very interesting exchange occurred when Lauer asked the President if he’s spoken to BP’s CEO.

President Obama’s response came without hesitation. No, he said, because he is interested in “action, not words.” Moments later, after reviewing the CEO’s many statements attempting to minimize the issues, Obama said, “He wouldn’t be working for me.”

Some simple rules of crisis management: Engage your third party influencers. Keep them informed. Make them part of your solution. Then back those words up with action.

None of us know the outcome of this situation. But having the President of the United States suggests you should lose your job can’t be a good thing.

Lauer later criticized President Obama for not picking up the phone to reach out to the BP CEO, and the balance of power was clear … they’ve been in touch and told BP what to do. If BP hopes to protect and preserve its reputation, which may be impossible at this stage, the responsibility for initiating that dialogue lies with the company, not with the White House.

cwinters Crisis Communications, General Corporate BP, Obama, Today Show

We’ve written a bit about BP’s response to the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

So, I wanted to point you to Carreen’s commentary in Advertising Age on BP’s communications efforts relative to its new round of print and TV apology ads in a story by Michael Bush.

Let us know what you think.

Also, check out this BP logo redesign contest. Some biting, some funny, some arresting.

msacks Crisis Communications BP

Mark Twain said, “Never pick a fight with a man who buys his ink by the barrel.” But what happens when both sides have ink (print, digital and otherwise) to spare?

You get this: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have been mixing it up ever since Rupert Murdoch bought The Journal.

Now, we’re reaching a bit of a crescendo in this scrap. The Times is taking exception to the tongue-in-cheek, finger-in-the-eye ad campaign that The Journal has been running since introducing its Greater New York section, widely considered to be another strategic move to supplant The Times.

Perhaps not as down and dirty as the Hearst v. Pulitzer fight for audience supremacy of the New York newspaper business in the 1890s, but still fun to watch.

Relative to reputation, something like this – to a degree – gives both media brands a bit of a shot in the arm because it forces both to improve. Every now and again, we like to see two big boys going after each other. Pepsi v. Coke. Bud Light v. Miller Light. Apple v. Mac. And if the end result is excellent journalism, we all benefit.

To paraphrase another great thinker and social observer, Clemenza from The Godfather, let’s go to the mattresses.

This is what I’m talking about. A battle in and for the streets of New York.

msacks General Corporate New York Times, Wall Street Journal

In the world of business media, there are rankings and ratings and lists galore. Carreen just wrote about one.

Marc Gunther at GreennBiz.com now tells us that Underwriters Laboratories, an non-profit organization that helps set standards and provides certifications, in partnership with Greener World Media (publisher of GreenBiz), is taking on the difficult task of creating and launching a sustainability rating system.

I’m excited to see what the ratings and standards look like. Because Gunther is absolutely spot on: “This is a big deal because it could help bring credibility and clarity to the very crowded and confused business of sustainability ratings, rankings and eco-labels.”

For many sustainability or green ratings and rankings, the methodologies are always a little shaky. They seem easily gamed through voluntary reporting, they allow for omission of key elements of sustainability, and the results never seem to really stack up. It never seems “right” when an oil company tops a list of “green” companies. As such, it undermines the business value of sustainability when it seems you can get the credit without doing the hard, long work. A widely accepted, credible and comprehensive point system will begin to force out the posturing and the true leaders on sustainability will rise to the top.

msacks CSR, Sustainability CSR, rankings, Sustainability

So I was looking at the 2010 Fortune Most Admired List today. Google, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and Johnson & Johnson fall in the top 5.

Quick quiz: How many of them have a CEO that you can name, or point out in a crowd?

Some clients tell me that their CEO and/or leadership team doesn’t need to have a profile. I always beg to differ. I remind them that reputation can account for as much as 63 percent of valuation (KRC Research) or I quote the famous Bloomberg BusinessWeek stat that says reputation fills from 30 to 70 percent of the gap between book value and market cap.

This year’s Fortune list is my new case in point.

cwinters General Corporate Fortune Most Admired

TIVO Alert! The Duchess of York’s interview with Oprah Winfrey will air today. An hour with Oprah has long been considered the silver bullet for getting your message out there, and securing “equal time” for your side of the story. Presumably, Sarah Ferguson thinks that this will be a great way to repair her tarnished image and mitigate any damage to the Royal Family.

Not sure this strategy worked for Tom Cruise during his famous couch-jumping episode. And I am not sure the “I was drunk” explanation she reportedly provided will do much to restore confidence in her character or her judgment.

But really, does anyone care about Sarah Ferguson’s judgment or character?

To me, the question is less about whether the original Fergie can restore her reputation, and more about whether Prince Andrew or the royal family will suffer any collateral damage. Luckily, while standing in line at the supermarket last night I learned they have a royal wedding coming up, complete with Princess Diana’s tiara, to change the conversation.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate Oprah, Sarah Ferguson, Tom Cruise

Back in 2004, BP was celebrated by NGOs, experts in corporate social responsibility and academicians for its proactive commitment to issues related to environment and climate. For years it has been a poster-child for corporate social responsibility, even going so far as to rebrand the company in celebration of its environmental commitments. The company has been held up as a role model for its approach to human rights and fair labor standards. In short, BP has been a company to admire.

Similarly, Johnson & Johnson, the parent of McNeil Consumer Products, has a sterling reputation. Cited for its integrity and pristine track record, Johnson & Johnson (and the McNeil division) is the standard-bearer for crisis management from the days of the Tylenol tainting and subsequent recall. Truly, a company to be admired.

And yet, today, we watch these heroes struggle…with mixed emotions. We want to admire them. We want to see them as the white knights they have been at various times in their history. And yet, they let us down and have shaken our confidence, not only in them, but in ourselves. For, if our heroes can make such blunders and have their reputations bruised and bloodied, what will happen to the rest of us should an accident happen or mistake be made?

Perhaps the trick is to not be “perfect.” If you make small mistakes, are open about the small mistakes and the world watches you recover from those small mistakes, perhaps they will be more likely to believe in you when you encounter the bigger issue. Faith in the fact that you can fix your mistake, may be more important than the fact that you made the mistake at all – after all, we all make mistakes.

It requires a certain amount of bravery to be committed to transparency when mistakes are made. We tend to hope that no one notices the small mistake. But, if that small mistake shows your ability to take accountability, fix problems and recover, transparency might be just what will help you weather a future storm.

And maybe, remain a hero.

Ame Wadler can be reached at awadler@mww.com.

awadler General Corporate BP, Johnson & Johnson

Thirty-eight days and counting. There’s no doubt all of the positive brand equity BP built since its $200 million, award-winning rebranding effort nearly a decade ago has been more than spent in the past five weeks. When the company re-branded as BP after its Amoco acquisition, it leveraged the tagline “Beyond Petroleum” to assert itself as a green brand. It was a bold and successful strategy that created clear differentiation between BP and its top competitors.

However, BP faces a tragic and undoubtedly complicated situation today. But when you are a $246 billion company in the oil and gas business, the stakes are always high. As a household brand name with a significant consumer retail footprint, BP has a lot to lose. And as the days continue to tick by in the effort to plug the massive mile-deep oil leak, questions are mounting. Oil sludge has reached Louisiana’s shoreline, is infiltrating fragile marshlands and is negatively affecting wildlife.

Watching CNN’s Anderson Cooper on location in New Orleans last night, he’s doing what he does – “keeping them honest” and asking the tough questions. James Carville has also escalated his involvement , doing what he can to raise awareness of the dire situation. With Carville pressuring the White House and Cooper getting his hands dirty in the marshes with Gov. Bobby Jindal and other local leaders, reputations are getting hammered.

Unfortunately, BP’s CEO was not available for Cooper’s show to address the plans to take control of the situation and assure the American public that his company is doing everything it can do. Yes, BP has been communicating and participating in interviews, but in times like these, companies can’t appear to be sidestepping tough questions. If you are doing the right thing, you need to make sure your side of the story is told. But instead, the story is being told for BP, just like last night when Cooper clamored to know why he was denied an interview. It looked bad.

In situations like this when the stakes are high on all accounts, it’s imperative that brands and their leaders do everything they can to assure all stakeholder groups they are doing the right thing. They must map out everything they are doing to fix the problem and explain how they will make sure it never happens again. It has to be a priority.

Now, let’s hope the “top kill” effort holds and aggressive clean-up activities can commence.

Matt Averitt can be reached at maveritt@mww.com.

maveritt Crisis Communications BP

This guest piece in Forbes about the importance of culture and employee communications at the new United Airlines just hit my inbox. It’s true that the majority of mergers fail due to post merger integration problems. While experts often focus on systems and back office, the issue of culture should not be overlooked.

Airlines are particularly vulnerable to the impact of culture on reputation. In any given customer flight, there are a multitude of opportunities to muck it up – oversold seats, security lines, weather and air traffic delays, lost luggage – and none of these involved direct employee customer interaction yet. Add a surly flight attendant, a prickly gate agent or baggage handler who just doesn’t care that it takes forever for your bag to arrive, it seems miraculous that airlines – who live and die by their DOT statistics – ever have a good reputation. Let’s face it, they pack hundreds of humans into a flying tin can, with not enough personal space (unless you know which seat to pick or choose to buy more leg room!) and nothing to do but tweet from the tarmac.

Employees need to have a common goal, and a shared vision of how to reach that goal. And they need to understand HOW TO DO THEIR SPECIFIC JOB in order to contribute to that goal.

Continental Airlines has a great track record in building a culture to optimize performance. Some of my greatest years were spent working with them on that very project. United, by reputation, not so much.

It should be an interesting case to watch.

Bob Silver can be reached at bsilver@mww.com.

bsilver Employee Engagement, General Corporate Continental, Employee Engagement, integration, mergers, United

Bottled water, once a cash cow product ballooning in consumption from the early 2000s until 2007, is now a difficult business. Ask Nestle.

Along with others, Nestle is facing pressure from activists groups and other opponents to reform its bottled water business. The Wall Street Journal reports:

In Cascade Locks (Oregon), Nestlé is trying to tap 100 million gallons of water annually for its Arrowhead water brand from a new spring—and keep the environmentalists happy, too. A key is proving that water drawn from the spring—which supplies a hatchery that raises Idaho Sockeye, an endangered species—can be replaced with municipal well water, with no harm to the fish.

Nestlé is running a one-year test here to raise 700 rainbow trout in a tank filled with well water. Worried that activists might sabotage the test, Nestlé put the 1,700-gallon tank under lock and added security cameras.

Further:

Its role as leader of the U.S. bottled-water market and the fact that it taps springs in often-pristine rural areas has exposed it to particular criticism from opponents of bottled water.

The article goes on to recount the number of, to my mind, reasonable measures Nestle is taking to ensure they are (at least currently if not historically) tapping water sources responsibly. Engaging the local community, working with government entities, conducting studies. In general, it sounds like they are listening and trying to do this right.

But in the zero-sum game of activist campaigns, that counts for very little.

A couple months back, my colleague Ame wrote about Nestle’s response on the social Web to a Greenpeace campaign on Nestle’s purportedly harmful palm oil sourcing leading to deforestation. Since then, Nestle has, as some media has put it, “caved” to activist demands and reevaluated its sourcing.

But the truth is Nestle has, at least, a respectable track record of trying to do the right thing for the environment. This isn’t some big company mindlessly gobbling all the resources it can sink it’s ravenous teeth into, regardless of how activists paint it.

My advice to Nestle is, keep doing what you’re doing. Rebut critics with facts. Work with all stakeholders to understand their often real concerns. That’s where reputation is made.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR, Crisis Communications activists, Nestle

MSN Money’s best and worst companies for customer service rankings are out, and apparently the big banks are not too big to fail…their customers.

Of the ten companies on the list, half are financial service companies, and the other half are cable or communications providers. Ubiquitous, everybody has ‘em kinds of services, and apparently, everyone hates them. It might make you think that in certain businesses, there is just no pleasing your customers.
And that is all about the economy.

But think again.

Because among the best loved companies for customer service are supermarkets, airlines and consumer shipping and delivery services – where presumably your reputation is only as good as your worst hourly employee. Companies you also can’t live without, but who manage to keep you happy despite that fact.

Consider the following:

Food prices have skyrocketed, yet customers at Trader Joe’s aren’t holding a grudge. FedEx certainly lose packages on occasion, yet its customers still support it. Airline travel is costlier, slower and in general, more of a hassle in the post 9-11 world, yet Southwest still gets high marks. And the Nordstrom Way still seems to be working.

What do these companies know that seems to be eluding the media and banking giants?

It’s all about culture. When your practices and policies walk the “customer first” talk, and when leadership expends energy to educate, motivate and otherwise engage their team, good things happen.

It is a simple equation. It works in all businesses, and all economic cycles. When your employees understand end exemplify a culture of service….your customers will notice. And your reputation will benefit.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters Employee Engagement, General Corporate customer service, Leadership

This Wall Street Journal article is directed towards small entrepreneurial firms, and provides guidance on how to make effective use of interns, and in return, give them a great experience. But its guidance would be worth a read for businesses of all sizes.

To put it simply, today’s interns are tomorrow’s new hires, and the eventual leaders of our industry. Take the time to teach them, and guide them (in between their stints filing, researching and copying), and you will have your pick of top talent when the unemployment pendulum swings the other way. Treat them poorly, and those intern tales will reach Paul Bunyan proportions as your former interns build their careers elsewhere, and tell everyone around them all of the reasons not to work at your company.

Like many in our industry (or any industry for that matter), I started my career with an internship. Or more appropriately, you might say I test drove and ultimately chose my career, based on a great internship back in 1989. Yes, I spent countless hours pasting up envelope after envelope of Burelle’s clips, and faxing news releases (remember when we used to do that?). But I also got my first hit in the New York Times, and I was hooked.

I try to remember that every time I welcome a new intern.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate Interns

It isn’t often a company makes headlines for writing a philanthropic check. But Walmart decided to go big. Two billion dollars big in cash and food to fight hunger.

This isn’t a simple, though extraordinary, act of charity. It’s smart CR. Walmart is taking some ownership of an issue that can be addressed through its core business and is in a substantial position to do something about.

It has an astronomically large consumer base, many of whom (judging from the data in the article) rely on food banks. Such a gesture is about connecting with the communities in which Walmart operates, and Walmart operates just about everywhere. The company also has “donated the services of its staff to help food banks improve lighting and refrigeration, and develop ways to increase the amount of fresh food on their shelves.” So, it’s about coupling the bills with the skills.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR corporate responsibility, CSR, Target, Walmart

Point to the AP for one of the better headlines I’ve seen recently: “Feds investigate baby bottom complaints”

Now, I’m going to do my best to avoid being too cheeky (1) throughout this post, but I can’t guarantee I have that sort of discipline.

Unfortunately for Procter & Gamble, maker of Pampers, not all is smooth (2) in baby butt land. The article is about the Consumer Product Safety Commission and its investigation to get to the bottom (3) of complaints of “babies and toddlers suffering severe and persistent diaper rashes and blisters that resemble chemical burns” due to a new “Dry Max” diaper Pampers introduced.

Evidently, this whole thing, as many brands are finding out the hard way, got going on Facebook, and found its way into the mainstream media. Both upset parents and Pampers seem to be utilizing the tools available to make their respective cases. When I checked while writing this, the Facebook page serving as the hub of activity – Pampers bring back the OLD CRUISERS/SWADDLERS – had 6,424 fans. Also on the page – the damning evidence! Photos! I would not recommend looking at them though.

Pampers has dismissed these rash (4) claims as it “aimed to contain a public relations threat to its biggest diaper innovation in 25 years,” says Reuters. The company claims, and executives have stated online, that these rumors are false, and they have turned over all safety data to the CPSC.

As we’ve explored on this blog before, parents are a group you do not want to mess with. So, P&G cannot simply ignore it. And it isn’t. P&G is engaging its concerned consumers where they are gathering online.

A lot of self-proclaimed experts, as one quoted by Reuters does, might advocate contrition. But P&G is sticking (rightly, I think) to its guns. The company thinks the facts are on its side – that there is no evidence behind the claims, either presented by others or in its own research. Unfortunately, facts don’t always win the day, and Pampers might do well to at least be open to exploring the issue a bit more rather than making a goofy claim about this being nothing more than some kind of diaper conspiracy among a handful of upset parents.

While this movement against Dry Max might not affect sales or otherwise cause longer-term brand damage, all it takes is a few consumers at a time switching to Huggies.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate, Social Media crisis management, Facebook, P&G, Pampers

Love, love, love this story from the Wall Street Journal about Managing Your Career. It profiles three mega-CEO’s – Myron Ullman of JC Penney, Peter Peterson of Blackstone, and Jeffrey Hollander of Seventh Generation and the mistakes they have made that helped them reach their personal pinnacles of success.

Too often, CEOs and other leaders who seek to raise their profiles to enhance corporate reputations think that this means they must put a perfect foot forward at all times, like robotic executives who do everything right all the time.

The real sign of a leader is one who acknowledges her mistakes, and learns from them. And the real sign of character is candor about those mistakes, which enables others to learn, too.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate Leadership, mistakes

BP’s CEO told NBC today that the oil spill that is likely to be worse than the mother of all spills – the Exxon Valdez – “wasn’t their accident, but they would clean it up.”

As more than 200,000 gallons of oil are spewed into the Gulf of Mexico each day – a number that may climb to millions according to some experts – BP is desperately grasping onto any lifeboat it can to preserve its reputation. This began with the assertion that the U.S. Government should have have acted more quickly to mobilize resources, to today’s attempt to draw a distinction between the big brand of BP and the little known operator of the actual machinery, Trans Oceana.

This raises an important issue on the role of partners and reputation. To put it simply, reputational sh#@ doesn’t roll down hill. It stays right at the top, where it belongs. Airlines use code share partners, sometimes very small regional code-share partners. But when that plane goes down, the flagship brand’s reputation takes the hit. Always.

Any time you put millions of gallons of oil anywhere other than a tank, you’ve got a problem. But it is how you respond that defines your future. So far, BP isn’t doing much to help themselves.

The issue of reputation cannot be sub-contracted. Leadership, like management, requires that the leader accept responsibility in bad times, and share credit in good times. And BP’s attempt to throw their vendor under the proverbial bus does little to advance their cause.

They selected this vendor.

They supervise this vendor.

They are responsible for this vendor.

The good Sisters at my Catholic School always used to tell us that when you point a finger, three more are pointed back at you.

In other words, BP… you own it.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters Crisis Communications, General Corporate BP, Exxon, oil spill

Arizona’s recent approval of a draconian new immigration law has unleashed a tsunami of condemnation from President Obama; a long bipartisan list of legislators across the country; Hispanic, civil rights and public interest groups; the Government of Mexico; and late night talk shows among others, along with, as expected, an energized and often entertaining debate in the blogosphere. Arizona has courted such controversy before with its decision for many years not to recognize Martin Luther King Day. That legislative gambit led to a number of boycotts and the cancellation of a host of convention and tourist visits to the state.

While Arizona’s reputation is taking another hit (and there is likely a blog post or several on that topic), the age of social media has created a whole new set of issues for companies based in Arizona or even trading on the Arizona name. Amid the usual and widespread calls for boycotts of Arizona, there is a groundswell of chatter online (being breathlessly covered by the media) concerning the boycotting of Arizona-based companies and their products. U-Haul, Best Western and Cold Stone Creamery are among the Arizona’s corporate citizens being held out for possible retribution, but the antipathy is extending to companies that even have Arizona in their name.

AriZona Beverages, the makers of AriZona Iced Tea has come under attack even though the company was founded and is headquartered in New York. See Helen Kennedy’s piece in the Daily News and Robert Mackey’s Lede Blog in the New York Times.

As both pieces point out, the assault on AriZona Iced Tea appears to have started on the twitter feeds of Travis Nichols, a Chicagoan who posted a tweet suggesting a boycott because “it is the drink of fascists”. Whether comedic or not, Mr. Travis’ tweet has become a media hit and led AriZona Beverages to post a letter on its website assuring consumers that its only ties to Arizona were in its name and touting its bona fides as a family-run American company.

The Company should be applauded for reacting quickly to the online and media onslaught and trying to set the public record straight (its actual messages can be discussed at a later date). In this era of citizen journalism, where blogs and Twitter feeds make and take the place of news, companies are often confused about how and when to react, who to take seriously and how to enter a social media debate. Unfortunately, there are no clear rules of the online road. The efficacy and crafting of the appropriate response must be done on a case by case basis in consultation with a company’s business leaders, communications professionals and outside advisors. AriZona jumped in quickly to try to protect its brand and reputation. We will wait and see how other companies facing these calls for boycotts react.

Richard Tauberman can be reached at rtauberman@mww.com.

rtauberman Crisis Communications, General Corporate, Social Media Arizona, citizen journalism, Social Media

It’s often said of great athletes that they are in part great because they make the players around them better; they force and inspire their teammates to elevate their game. Give Peyton Manning any wideout in the NFL. Give Steve Nash any forward in the NBA. They just play better, perhaps better than they thought they could.

This same principle has business application, particularly when we debate what it means to be a Responsible Company. Those companies with an integrated, strategic understanding of CSR know how the supply chain fits in, and know how to get their suppliers to play better.

Shaun Rein at Forbes hits on this notion, arguing that Apple hasn’t paid enough attention to the putative conditions at the manufacturers throughout its supply chain, primarily in some Asian countries where there are, at best, questionable workplace conditions. In particular, at a Taiwanese manufacturer called Foxconn, which reportedly has an egregious, inexcusable record on human and worker rights.

Rein asserts that Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, has the “moral imperative to address concerns”. The moral imperative. The relentless pursuit of fat margins has moral consequences.

Sure, it ain’t easy to address this sort of thing. It’s very, very difficult. In the last two weeks, I’ve had just this kind of conversation with a client about its sourcing in other countries. Not every company has the same clout, the same leverage to force change on the same scale.

But what if more of the truly big boys committed to making just this sort of difference?

Rein uses the same illustrative example I would have in Wal-Mart’s drive to force its suppliers, globally, to be more environmentally friendly. You ever want to sell anything in our stores again? Here’s a list of environmental standards to meet.

Back to my “great athlete” analogy. The other side of that reputational coin is being in a position to affect a positive, socially valuable outcome, but choosing not to. The company you keep is important. Do you want to endure guilt by association, or make your team play better?

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR, General Corporate Apple, supply chain

In what seems to be a never-ending approach to nickel and diming air travelers, airlines are now attempting to charge for any carry on bag that doesn’t fit under the seat, which means your roll-on Tumi with your suit for tomorrow’s meeting will now cost you $45 on many carriers.

Senator Schumer is asking the airlines to pledge not to charge for carry ons, and five airlines are on board – American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines and US Airways. The question is why haven’t all of the others joined this pledge? Is the reputation of your airline really less important than a $45 fee?

While I don’t agree with luggage charges at all – they are a great way to encourage people to travel by car instead of air – I can at least understand that checked baggage does carry the expense of the people and equipment necessary to load and deliver that baggage. A carry on bag is just that…carried on….yourself. What’s next, swiping credit cards for oxygen masks and life preservers during the next Miracle on the Hudson?

In a recessionary economy with a business where every penny of increase in jet fuel prices translates into millions in expenses for airlines, it is easy to understand the impulse to charge for services….and we’ve seen the elimination of free meals, unlimited luggage and even pillows and blankets. But at some point, these decisions move beyond the realm of asking customers to pay for what is important to them – extra leg room or a meal – and into the business of taking advantage.

In any business, certain things are expected for a base price, and that definition can change. In most businesses, the expected features or services increase over time. It wasn’t that long ago that air conditioning or a cd player was considered an upgrade in a new car. Remember when internet access was only available in a hotel business center? A recent trip to the Westin Diplomat included free wi fi in my pool cabana as well as my room.

Beyond safety – which is a dealbreaker when you put hundreds of people up in the air for a living – service and value are key elements of reputation in the airline business. It’s how scrappy start ups like Southwest and JetBlue (full disclosure – an MWW Group client) became leaders. And it’s how some others will become as hated as the IRS on April 15 if they don’t think long and hard before they start assessing fees.

My take — your reputation should be worth more than $45.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate airlines

Interesting news, companies like Goldman Sachs are citing negative publicity as a risk factor for the business in their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Even more interesting, that several big banks think the solution to the public’s negative perception of the financial industry is to join forces to support a public relations campaign to change perceptions.  We are all for companies taking  charge of their reputations, talking about the things they do well and owning where they need to improve.  We believe that this type of communications is critical to helping good companies stay strong, deliver shareholder value, and continue to be sustainable businesses for their employees and their communities.  But, sometimes, the actions need to be apparent before the words.  The public’s perception of the banking industry is that the big banks have made big money on the backs of the public and are doing little to nothing to help Main Street get back on its feet.  True or not almost doesn’t matter, that’s perception.  Many community banks have weathered this storm by making themselves even more part of Main Street than they were before.  However, public opinion is that the big banks are just collecting bonuses and arguing their position in Washington D.C. Perhaps as these banks come together, they should think of how their actions can overcome the perceptions.  Do something critical for Main Street.  Make your commitment to growth clear and transparent.  Act, and then, by all means, tell.

cwinters Uncategorized

Corporate Social Responsibility – or any derivation of the term – can be confusing. Experts debate its value, its inherent meaning, its application to real life. There isn’t a well-established consensus on what it means for a company to be a “responsible” one. Unfortunately, it being the right thing to do doesn’t suffice. It must be more strategic than altruistic; must contribute in some way to the bottom line. And too often flashy cause marketing campaigns or big check writing masquerade as CSR.

But the April cover story in the Harvard Business Review tries to get us closer to common interpretation.

The quick rundown on an extensive (and full read-worthy) article: Its thesis is that the best measure of corporate responsibility is based on “internalizing” what the authors refer to as “externalities.” Externalities in this case are defined as impacts a corporation has on the world that they have until recently not been held to account for. These can be things like pollution, or obesity issues for snack makers, as examples.

The reasons to do so are threefold:

• The growing scale of companies and the commensurate impact
• Improved measures and sensors for gauging that impact (can’t claim ignorance)
• Heightened sensitivity of stakeholders (increasing transparency of information)

When stakeholders – consumers, NGOs, government, etc – find an externality they feel the corporation could take greater internal responsibility for, there are mechanisms to force that responsibility. Government regulation, consumer boycotts and protests, labor strikes etc.

Basically, for CSR and its subsequent affect on corporate reputation, it is far better to take responsibility than be made responsible.

And it is this key distinction where reputations are made.

We at MWW counsel our clients in a similar vein – that a hodgepodge of philanthropy, volunteering, and other good works do not create CSR. If they don’t connect to business or truly matter to stakeholders, then they might be nice things to do, but not necessarily responsible things. But if done through a consistent framework with all the consideration given other elements of business strategy, CSR helps identify efficiencies, creates competitive advantage, engages consumers and customers, and oh yeah, helps solve big problems.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR CSR

Some more great takeaways from the Conference Board event on Customer Service….5 Simple Steps for Creating a Culture Where Customer Service and Experience Is King:

1. Define success in an actionable way – Every company has something in their vision, mission or values that talks about creating a great customer experience. The organizations that are successful at achieving this break it down into meaningful actions, that are relevant to the day to day job activities…..providing not just a “what” but also a “how to.”

2. Track success through regular measurement – by the time your customer satisfaction scores are low, the damage is done. Identify the early warning indicators of success (or failure) and measure and track them so you can course correct along the way. Social media can be a great early warning system of what is going right, or not, long before you see it in your data.

3. Leaders must walk the talk – Ed Reilly of the AMA said it best “There is no substitute for unfiltered information.” CEO’s and leaders that work on the front line – for real, not for a reality TV show – who take customer service calls and are active and involved on an operational level on a regular basis have a real understanding of the issues. And because they are demonstrating the desired behaviors – not just talking about them – their team understands that this is a serious mandate and not a values statement to hang on the wall.

4. Make sure that all employees understand their role in customer service – not just customer contact employees. Customer delight begins with a great product (design and development and production), that is available where and when they want it (production, sales and inventory management).

5. Align performance measurement with these goals – You need to reward employees for the things that are important to your organization…and really, what could be more important than exceeding your customer’s expectations.

Simple to say. Harder to do.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters General Corporate Conference Board, culture

Last week I had the privilege of moderating a panel at a seminar by The Conference Board on the customer experience. It was a great conference with leaders from iconic service and experience organizations like Disney, Starbucks and the Girl Scouts.

Our session was about creating a culture for service, and our panelists provided some great insights into this critical subject matter.

Stan Hart of Ritter & Associates talked about the importance of measurement in order to translate the language of the importance of service into action at all levels of the organization.

Ed Reilly of the American Management Association provided some great context around the reason that service and customer service has been elevated to a C-level imperative, and provided great guidance on how to provide the leadership and training that “walks the talk.”

For me the proverbial “a-ha” moment came during a session led by Michael Chen, CEO of GE Commercial Finance. He talked about the 4 I’s of creating a culture for success, and reminded us of the window of Batman’s girlfriend who told us (in Batman Returns) that actions are more important than intentions. He also said “Customers don’t come first – your employees do. Treat your employees like customers, and they will treat your customers like royalty.”

It’s great to hear that coming from a CEO, because this simple truth is so often forgotten as companies become entangled in creating measurement protocols, rolling out CRM programs and otherwise focusing their customer service resources externally. Your employees are the single greatest asset you have in achieving customer satisfaction – they impact every step in the process. And the power of social media means that you are only as good as the worst decisions of a single employee. Just ask Domino’s – who found itself battling a massive reputational threat after a couple of part time employees posted some distasteful video on YouTube.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters General Corporate Domino's, GE, reputation, The Conference Board

The cheering this week at President Obama’s healthcare reform signing ceremony was loud, lusty and long, but the marketing of this momentous decision will be much longer and probably a lot louder.

I worked for fifteen years on healthcare reform, culminating in the struggle over the Clinton initiative in the mid-90’s, so I have some experience in mounting the PR campaigns that are necessary to sell healthcare reform and its hard-to-explain, my-eyes-glaze-over complexity to the American public. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the Obama administration has decided to mount a 7-month PR campaign to explain and promote this new reform package, all leading up to the midterm November election. Here are a few humble tips for the upcoming campaign from a veteran of the healthcare wars:

- Don’t oversell. The package that the Senate and then the House of Representatives cobbled together isn’t optimal, since it phases in over four years, doesn’t cover everyone, contains an individual mandate and has no public option. Building up unreasonable expectations and then slowly deflating them is the worst possible scenario, leading inevitably to disappointment, cynicism and more anti-government rhetoric.

- Call the insurance companies out on their premiums. America has an employer-based, private insurance system, and this reform doesn’t change that. Polls show consistently that Americans like their doctors and their hospitals, but don’t like their insurance companies – a fact the administration discovered late in the game when they changed the name of the campaign from health care reform to health insurance reform. What the resulting reform does do is place a few more restrictions on the insurance industry — but it does not incorporate any mechanism for constraining premiums. Now is the time for the administration to put the onus of responsibility for healthcare cost inflation on the health insurance industry, asking them very publicly to fully disclose their executive salaries and bonuses and their profit margins, and justify any big price increases to the already-covered.

- Stick to the facts. The President went over the benefits of the legislation this morning in his speech before signing the bill – but understandably, in that moment of triumph, didn’t list the drawbacks of the bill. His talking points over the next seven months, which Congressional leaders would do well to follow, should also point out the things the bill doesn’t do – constrain costs and premiums, cover everyone, or prevent insurance costs from rising steeply for the under-30 age group.

- And finally, don’t forget that just about every poll ever taken, including the many decades the Gallup Organization has asked the question, have shown that more than ninety percent of Americans consistently believe that healthcare is a right and not a privilege. We don’t agree on anything like we agree on that. In the whole “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” equation, life always comes first. If the administration bases its campaign on that one incontrovertible unifying factor, it will have a good shot at convincing the skeptics that this reform is in their interest.

David Langness can be reached at dlangness@mww.com.

dlangness General Corporate healthcare

Companies often find themselves in a dilemma that goes something like this: “I want to connect with people through social media but I’m worried about what I can’t control. People may say bad things about us.” So?

Companies that do the right thing have an understanding of their issues and risks and know in their hearts that they are taking appropriate steps to be good corporate citizens have nothing to fear. And, in fact, have an opportunity to tell their story through social media.

Take the recent palm oil debacle Nestle faced. It’s not as if Nestle didn’t know about Greenpeace’s concerns. Nestle and others in its space have been dealing with activist concerns for decades. And Nestle, like others in its space, have taken numerous steps and made active commitments to protect the environment in communities in which they do business. But, activist groups exist to push companies harder and Nestle knows that. So rather than get defensive — even belligerent — over Greenpeace’s use of social media to push Nestle, why didn’t Nestle use it as an opportunity to tell the story of their efforts to do good.

True, the dialogue would have continued and the activists would have critiqued but both sides of the story would have been aired and the story would have lived out its “news cycle”. Instead, by taking on the activists in a defensive manner, Nestle missed an opportunity. Nestle wouldn’t have handled a live encounter without arming themselves with their positive actions and positive messages, nor would they have dealt with a reporter without having the balanced story at hand. Social media is no different.

Establishing a social media policy — just like the media policy most companies use — is one way to avoid such situations while also taking advantage of the opportunity for transparent dialogue that is the primary value of social engagement.

Ame Wadler can be reached at awadler@mww.com.

awadler Crisis Communications, General Corporate, Social Media Greenpeace, Nestle, Social Media

Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list is undoubtedly sparking renewed conversations by reputation managers about their place on the list. This list is often used as the single greatest test of efficacy of reputation programs. While the editorial team at Fortune certainly holds influence, they are quite transparent about the process, which emphasis the opinion of executives/peers, directors and analyst. Geoff Colvin’s column in the latest issue provides great support for my point of view that reputation begins and ends with employee engagement.

Employees at all levels are the universal touch-point for all of your constituencies – and often, your reputation is only as good (or not) as the experience your customers, shareholders, business partners, communities and influencers have with those employees. Reputation begins at home. Colvin’s column states it eloquently:

“It turns out that this year’s leaders — the industry champs that really did come through the recession on top, such as UPS, Disney, McDonald’s, and Marriott International — differ from the stragglers in at least one way: They actually believe what every company proclaims about people being their most valuable asset.”

The Hay Group’s survey methodology debunks a lot of myths for reputation management practitioners, and indicates that the ability to attract and retain talent is their number 1 indicator – above all of the other Building Blocks of Reputation such as quality of management, innovation, long term investment value and even quality of product services.

As we look at the list of influencers on the Fortune survey – directors, peer executives, analysts – it makes a great case for the importance of executive visibility programs, such as our CEO EquityBuilder™ programs, which help create, reinforce and preserve the admiration of these influencers for leaders, and by association, their companies.

Clearly this list isn’t perfect….Toyota still ranks well, although the data would clearly be different if the survey were re-done today. But if you didn’t make the list, or want to improve your ranking, begin by looking within. Reputation begins at home.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate FOrtune, Most Admired, reputation

Would you spend $250 for a bottle of water? How about $750? How about … well, pick a multiple.

Wondering what a simple bottle of water has to do with reputation? Sometimes, it’s everything. Let me explain.

A friend of mine recently traveled to wine country with his wife and 1-year old son. After a long drive, they checked into a lovely boutique hotel that prides itself on customer service. In fact, this particular hotel pledges to deliver “an exceptional customer experience every time.” They infuse this goal in most of their customer-facing marketing efforts, particularly on their Facebook fan page and their Twitter feed.

As they unpacked in their room, their son had one of those meltdowns that all of us parents can relate to. My friend called the desk and asked if a bottle of water could be sent up so they could prepare some baby formula. Sorry, the desk clerk told them. Room service was closed for the evening and there was no way to accommodate the request.

My friend quickly sent out a tweet about his experience to the several hundred people on his Twitter account. After he returned home, he posted a customer review on the popular social media site, Yelp!

So the hotel had a seemingly small misstep over a $1 bottle of water and the incident was chronicled on several social media channels. No big deal, right? After all, this hotel spends thousands of dollars annually on advertising, which will be much more powerful than a post on Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, the opposite is true; multiple consumer surveys show that nearly 80 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations, and less than 15 percent trust advertising.

So how much did that bottle of water cost? My friend won’t be returning, which means they lose several future nights of room and restaurant revenue. And an unflattering review on a travel referral site like Yelp! likely will drive others away, meaning more lost revenue. So it’s not hard to imagine that a $1 bottle of water actually cost this hotel $1,000 or more.

In this era of social media and citizen journalists, your reputation balances on a razor’s edge. Simple decisions and rote responses can have a lasting impact on your business. Now more than ever, the devil is in the details and businesses, from the CEO down to the night desk clerk, have to sweat the small stuff.

Bob Silver can be reached at bsilver@mww.com. Follow him on Twitter @Bob_Silver.

bsilver General Corporate citizen journalists, reputation, Social Media, trust, Yelp!

As agency people, we spend hours each day thinking about clients and acting on their behalf. And for the corporate communications team at MWW Group, that means the ongoing Reputation Management activities for our clients.

Last night, at the PRWeek Awards, MWW Group’s own reputation got some care and feeding of its own. We were finalists for three client programs:

• Our labor and employee engagement work for Harrah’s Entertainment.
• Our deal work for Emerisque in their acquisition of Hartmarx
• Special event work for IKEA

We took home the prize in two out of three – Emerisque and Ikea.

Congrats to the agency for a great showing last night, and our colleagues in consumer marketing for the Ikea win. And a very special shout out to my colleagues on the corporate team who worked on these two very high profile, intense programs where the stakes were high, the nights were long and the challenges were plentiful.

I’d also like to thank Emerisque for being the ideal client – they are strategic about the use of communications and gave us a seat at the table. They are willing to take a risk when the payoff potential is great. And they appreciate great work, and make it fun along the way. It doesn’t get better than that.

For most of us, the most important metric of success is client satisfaction. But it is always great to be recognized by your peers. Thanks PRWeek!

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters MWW Group awards, Emerisque, Harrah's, Ikea, PRWeek

Someone was in a Walmart in Louisiana, and took a picture of a black and white Barbie, the exact same Barbie save for skin tone, sitting side by side on the shelf. The black Barbie was cheaper than the white Barbie.

The photo found its way to a humor website, then to a Latino website, and ultimately, into an ABC News report among others, then cycled back into the blogosphere.

I don’t believe for a second there was a sinister motivation on Walmart’s part. ABC had comment from experts that feel the same. I, like them, think it was just a stupid mistake. Perhaps “smart business,” based on very business-y calculations – inventory, demand, pricing. But not smart business – boneheaded, really – in that it ignored what a customer might think, how it might be perceived, and the challenges facing Walmart’s reputation in general.

Two things are salient here.

One is that social media and mainstream news are increasingly not separate things. It isn’t breaking news, but a customer with a cell phone camera can imperil your reputation. Have you ever watched the news – be it CNN or MSNBC or Fox – in the middle of the day? It’s dotted with reporting , a term I use loosely here, on what a celebrity said on Twitter or what video is ripping hot on YouTube. We have to consider this and think more critically.

The other is the sometimes yawning gap between intention and perception. That’s where reputation much of the time lives. The spokesperson for Walmart said “Pricing like items differently is a part of inventory management in retailing.” No question, makes sense, perfectly reasonable. But I’m sure they understand why in this particular case that’s not the whole story.

Reputation managers must advocate to their company or their client that we are all communicators now, like it or not, and we need to take our thinking one or two steps beyond our job description. Of course, with 20/20 hindsight, an inventory or pricing manager should have recognized the problem here.

We should try for the foresight.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate Barbie, Crisis, Social Media, Walmart

I just finished reading Fortune Magazine’s cover story on the rising popularity of recruiting military officers for leadership. It is easy to understand how a twenty-something whose leadership skills were honed in combat would be more qualified for leadership than the candidate whose only leadership test has been winning the Greek Week tug of war.

Studies show that companies with military leaders outperform their peers. And the correlation between military service and leadership ability is well documented. But the Fortune article misses the boat with a noticeably absent area of discussion – ethics and integrity.

The percentage of Military CEO’s has declined from more than half just a generation or two ago, to as low as 5% today, depending on the study. Over the same period we’ve also seen a steady rise in ethics-based scandals that have wiped out shareholders, required taxpayer bailouts, and created casualties like high unemployment, injury, sickness and even death.

Those who serve in our armed forces are guided by a code of honor. They live, and often die, by this code that requires service to their unit and their country before personal gain. Semper Fi. Be All You Can Be. They carry the wounded, and bury the dead. The slogans are voluminous, yet singular in their emphasis on the values that have been too often lost in corner offices and boardrooms around the world.

Yes, these men and women who launched their careers have battle proven leadership ability. But even more importantly they have honor. And the courage to do what is right, even if there is risk of casualties. They are worthy of respect and worthy of trust. They are ready to lead, with integrity. And they are looking to capture the corner office instead of the hill.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate

We wanted to share this commentary from our CEO, Michael Kempner, which was also published at New Jersey Newsroom

The old rules no longer apply. In fact, they have not applied for quite some time.

As recent headlines made clear, crisis communications is now driven by digital media. Television. Radio. Newspapers. Rather than leading the public discussion of Tiger Woods or Toyota, these traditional – some would say increasingly archaic – mediums seem more like they are trying to catch up with the drama being played out minute-by-minute on Twitter, on Facebook, and on blogs.

To say that the news cycle moves at a frenetic pace may be an understatement. This is the new normal … and it has been for several years. In fact, shrewd companies implemented corporate social media policies years ago and have incorporated them into their daily marketing and communications activities.

This is particularly true for brands in crisis.

Gone is the focus on the evening news or the morning newspaper. Gone is the ability to craft a single, official-sounding press release. Gone is the ability to control the flow of bad information.

When the 1982 Tylenol scare was unfolding, company executives had to deal with a relatively new, relatively challenging phenomenon: a 24-hour news cycle. Information had to flow faster. Stories were harder to control. And crisis communications took on a whole new meaning. In other words, CNN made life a whole lot more challenging for companies trying to do damage control.

Yet, the medium and the message were essentially unchanged. Johnson & Johnson still relied on traditional media and were still able to use the same statements – substantively – for each venue.

Fast forward to 2010 when Toyota and Southwest Airlines were confronted with their own crises, and you have a vastly different, vastly more challenging picture. New venues. New expectations. New opportunities. New challenges.

Without question, Toyota’s response to its growing recall has failed in almost every respect. It has been slow. It has been confused. And it has been premised on the company’s misguided belief that it could control the flow of bad information. These missteps, in turn, have been compounded by Toyota’s failure to effectively use social media – something that is further undermining the company’s ability to tell its story, connect with its customers and maintain its credibility.

Southwest, on the other hand, immediately turned to digital outlets when actor Kevin Smith began tweeting to his 1.6 million followers about his “embarrassing” experience aboard a recent flight. Granted, the airline got beaten to the punch in this case of “he said, she said”, but it moved swiftly across a range of digital mediums — with a host of individually tailored messages — to issue its apology and clarify the situation.

Yet, it is instructive to recognize that this relatively minor story – which started from less than 140 characters on Twitter – almost immediately resulted in over 500,000 Google web results, over 50,000 blog entries, and nearly 2,000 news stories on the matter.

Back in the day, Tiger Wood’s carefully choreographed press event would have largely controlled the story. The evening news would have covered it. The morning newspapers would have covered it. And that would be the end of the conversation until later that evening. No blog postings. No Facebook comments. No tweets. No nothing. Just some water cooler talk among colleagues.

That was then.

Today, regardless of the company or the crisis, the fact remains: Information – real and rumor – travels at lightning speed…literally. The pace and form of information flow is now near impossible to control. The best a company can hope to do is try to manage it. And the best way to manage it is to embrace the new normal with respect to crisis communications.

In other words, go digital … yesterday.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate Crisis, Tiger Woods, Toyota

Remember the nursing home scandals of the late ’70s and early ’80s? Allegations of neglect, misappropriation of resources and even abuse of older adults led to nursing home closings and even prison terms. So, how is it that some 30 years later, the so-called long-term care industry (nursing homes) still haven’t fixed their issues?

With the Senate Finance Committee opening investigations into patient deaths and alleged maltreatment and neglect at long-term care facilities, it’s a bit of “back to the future” for an industry that despite decades of scrutiny, have not done what is necessary to protect their clients…or their reputation.

The for-profit end of the business is most at risk to the perception that they skimp on patient care in pursuit of profits. Yet, this is not a new allegation.

The long-term care industry would be well-served to take a hard look at itself — and at the nursing home business that preceded it — and set a standard of care, and new protocols for self-scrutiny and self-correction, in the interests of our elderly and their own credibility as caregivers.

In the meanwhile, some basic crisis communications training would benefit its spokespeople who responded to an NYT article by saying the reporting was “misleading and inaccurate and it looked forward to providing the (Senate Finance) committee with accurate facts…” I suspect the families of their clients would appreciate those facts as would any family member of a potential client.

Ame Wadler can be reached at awadler@mww.com.

awadler Crisis Communications crisis communications training, nursing home

I know we’ve all had our fill of the Tiger Woods soap opera over the past few months, but in the wake of his video apology this commentary from iconic golf writer Dan Jenkins just begs to be shared.

Jenkins’ conclusion, in a nutshell: Woods’ reputation is “graveyard dead, as the Southern expression goes.” Jenkins compares the Tiger brand to those of Nicklaus, Palmer and Hogan, who were in his opinion “accessible, likable, knowable, conversant, as gracious in loss as they were in victory… All the things Tiger never was.”

So what’s the takeaway for corporate brands? Accessibility, engagement with your core audiences and grace under pressure are excellent building blocks for a strong reputational foundation. So is honesty. By failing to incorporate these key blocks into Tiger Inc., Mr. Woods and his handlers have watched their foundation erode more quickly than sand against a strong tide.

Bob Silver can be reached at bsilver@mww.com.

bsilver General Corporate Tiger Woods

“Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”

Mark Twain

Antagonizing the press is often times not a good idea. You pick on them, they pick on you back, no matter how “right” you think you are. This doesn’t mean reputation managers should never get tough, it just means to expect a strong reaction rather than capitulation.

This, I suspect, Lucas Van Praag already knows, but doesn’t seem to be much bothered by. Goldman Sachs’s top communications guy is receiving what can only be described as a revenge-fueled beating in the (mostly New York) press, which has found their dealings with the sharp-tongued Van Praag to be less than pleasant. See the Dealbook’s roundup of the criticisms.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Van Praag is vigorously defending the company he gets paid to defend and trying to correct the record where he feels it’s been inaccurately reported, whether that’s true or not. It’s not realistic for the media to expect him (or anyone) to simply hang their head in shame, though it would be in some ways gratifying to see, and accept what the media reports. That’s not his job.

But in doing his job, he sounds like a complete…well, insert expletive here. And it sort of seems he’s having fun with it.

There is a way to do it and way to do it. He should recognize by now, as he should have at the outset, that such a truculent approach isn’t going to accomplish any real objective. He seems smart enough to know that after the bonuses, “God’s work”, the boiling public resentment, the Congressional inquiries, and so on, that bookending this with hostile explanations and journalism lectures isn’t doing much for the GS image he purports to protect. He’s seen evidence that what he’s doing isn’t really working.

With all the external forces congealing into a thick sludge that is difficult to penetrate with the GS message, whatever it is, Van Praag is doing the PR equivalent of lighting cigars with $100 bills while his neighbor’s house is on fire.

Seems to me a change in tone, and strategy, is needed.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility, General Corporate, Sustainability

Despite my desire to avoid jumping on the Tiger Woods and Toyota bandwagons, the events of the past week make it nearly impossible for me to avoid the topics.

First, Tiger Woods sets the example for what not to do with apologies. My colleague Mike has already written about the need for authenticity for apologies to be impactful. Apparently Tiger doesn’t read our blog. So Tiger delivered the canned apology we all expected, with about as much personality and sincerity as a doorknob. The winning personality that matched his golf game, and made him a sponsorship darling, was nowhere to be seen. But at least he re-assured his sponsors that he intended to compete.

But even more striking to me was the artificial, overly managed nature of the event. Press credentials were carefully guarded, and only issued on the condition that the news outlet not ask any questions. Some, like the golf writers, boycotted the event in protest and refused to cover it. But Tiger’s hand selected group of friends was there, creating the appearance of a press event and public appearance, but in reality Tiger’s people could have hired extras from SAG with the same result. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that Tiger used that opportunity to chastise the media for harassing his innocent wife and children – when the media feeding frenzy was exacerbated by the fact that he was nowhere to be found. Does he really think this orchestrated “press conference” will be enough to feed the media beast?

Tiger is presumably a smart guy. (And his extra-curricular love life is certainly the best thing that ever happened to Kate Gosselin since her new hairdo – but I digress.) He certainly had the resources to hire enough advisors and handlers to orchestrate this inauthentic apology. It’s hard to imagine that this approach was originated by these strategists and approved by handlers whose livelihood depends on Tiger’s image rebound. And while the American public is forgiving, and will readily move on as soon as Tiger returns to the PGA tour, it is hard to imagine that the objectionable stalking of his family will stop any time soon.

My grandmother used to tell me, “The only way through something difficult is through it.” And I think that requires legitimately going through it – not creating a sanitized version of through it.

No one knows this better than Toyota as they prepare their leaders for Congressional appearances and some pretty tough questions, particularly in light of documents revealing the cost savings of a phased recall, and the potential perception that the automaker chose profits ahead of the safety of the people driving those vehicles.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters Crisis Communications, General Corporate Tiger Woods, Toyota

What can you do with an old brand?

Even new media companies face that dilemma in Twenty Ten – AOL and MySpace, for example. Struggling to stay relevant, both companies are searching for a leg up in the brand wars.

AOL and MySpace both have a similar challenge – recovering from being the eclipsed top dog in their sectors. It’s too easy for many critics to say their time has passed, but with some smart acquisitions, sharpened brand management and a serious socially-responsible corporate outreach program, they could each recapture market share and relevancy.

Generally this involves buying or merging with an up-and-coming company first, and then setting out to freshen the brand with a high-visibility communications/PR project, preferably of the CSR persuasion. Both of those companies could take acquisition lessons from Xerox, which just merged on February 5th with the IT giant ACS. ACS is a terrific growth story, a global company with a 21st-Century business model and reputation for being well-managed and fast-moving. With one fell swoop Xerox made itself newly relevant and cutting-edge, and I’m sure their branding and CSR programs will follow.

Xerox is a known and trusted brand that defines the duplication and printing business – but their name and their image needed a new infusion of immediacy and impact, and ACS gave that to them. AOL and MySpace could do the same with one smart acquisition — and they’re probably looking as we speak.

David Langness can be reached at dlangness@mww.com.

dlangness CSR, General Corporate, Sustainability, Uncategorized AOL, CSR, MySpace, reputation

Tiger Woods’ Thanksgiving weekend car crash spawned a cottage industry for the media. The tabloids have reported breathlessly 24/7 about his alleged extra-marital exploits, the participants (both outed and self promoted) and a possible stay at a rehab facility. Cable and national TV news programs have to various extents joined the tabloid fray or just reported on the tabloid reports. The business/financial media have covered Tiger’s myriad sponsors and their varying reactions to his debacle as well as the financial impact on him, his sponsors and the golf industry.

Now comes Tiger’s first public pronouncement on the dalliances that have gripped the nation (ABC News ran the news as their lead story last night in front on the release of Americans held in Haiti, the one-year anniversary of the stimulus and the US gold medal haul in Vancouver). Tiger and his people, who already have a nice record of pr/crisis communications missteps since late November, have dictated that his appearance in front of a group of hand-picked friends, colleagues and close associates will include only a short statement in front of one camera with no reporters or Q&A.

The logistics and choreography of this event should be a primer for celebrities/sports stars as well as corporations/executives on how not to respond to a reputational crisis. Corporations and sports stars who deal with crises successfully have learned that the best way to move forward and begin reputational repairs is to address the situation quickly and factually, to be transparent and to engage the questions of the media and the public. To do otherwise only perpetuates the crisis, allowing others to fill the void with their own answers, competitors to seize on the opportunities that are afforded and reputations to remain denigrated.

The executives at Toyota (who made numerous communications missteps but are slowly figuring things out) and former baseball star and now avowed steroid user Mark McGwire (who after years in the wilderness is making his way back) are just two recent examples of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to crisis communications and reputation. Tiger is arguably the greatest golfer of all-time but is terms of crisis communication and repairing the reputation he worked so hard to build he is nothing more than a weekend duffer.

Richard Tauberman can be reached at rtauberman@mww.com.

rtauberman Crisis Communications Crisis, reputation, Tiger Woods

My favorite corporate message these days comes out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Domino’s Pizza calls home. Don’t get me wrong – I rarely eat the stuff, although back in the day I could go toe-to-toe with a large pie (Canadian bacon, green pepper, extra cheese) at the drop of a hat.

I’m intrigued by Domino’s determined attempt to re-establish its image as a quality quick-serve restaurant that lives up to its corporate promise – delivering a quality product in 30 minutes or less. They seem to be doing okay on the 30-minute promise, barring a couple of expensive lawsuits back in the 1990s. But the quality product part… well, not so much.

In 2009, consumers participating in a series of focus groups totally trashed Domino’s pies. Common complaints – the crust tastes like “cardboard,” the sauce is just “ketchup,” and so on. In response to this harsh criticism, the company launched an aggressive campaign called The Pizza Turnaround designed to re-claim the consumer’s hearts, minds, taste buds and wallets.

The logistics and complexity of The Pizza Turnaround resemble the invasion of Normandy, except in the pizza industry. There are multiple points of engagement: TV and print advertising, in-store signage, a huge web presence, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, Facebook pages and even Domino’s Championship Gear celebrating the company’s epic win over Papa John’s in a recent taste-off.

So is Domino’s delivering (pun intended) on the Pizza Turnaround? It sure seems that way. The folks at Pizza Throwdown liked the new recipes. So did the gang at Slice (“America’s Favorite Pizza Weblog!”). Even Stephen Colbert jumped on the bandwagon.

But to me, the most fascinating piece of this has to do with Domino’s corporate reputation. By building its loud, but engaging advertising campaign and the other elements of The Pizza Turnaround on the idea that, “you told us we suck and we’re doing something about it,” the company is sending some powerful messages to consumers. We listen. We heard you. We acted based on your feedback. Your opinions are as important as your dollars. We care. One Web pundit called it “reverse engineering reputation management.”

So was the pizza really so bad that the company had to start over? Not likely, since their annual revenues clock in north of $3 billion. But that’s not the point, is it? This is all about image, perception and reputation, and Domino’s has baked together a potent recipe that resonates well with the public.

In many respects, corporate reputation is a function of public perception and I’d wager that the public perception today about Domino’s is very positive. It’s the kind of enviable position that any corporation would love to be in these days.

Bob Silver can be reached at bsilver@mww.com.

bsilver General Corporate advertising, Domino's, reputation

This quote from a young Haitian man featured in an Associated Press article headline describes his and his country’s dependence on tourists to meet their basic survival needs. Those needs have existed for years, but were profoundly exacerbated when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake befell his country last month.

Certainly, life is fragile. As Abraham Maslow introduced with his Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic level of human existence is based on meeting needs necessary for survival. This includes the need for water, air, food and sleep. Many Haitians never took those needs for granted and since the earthquake hit, those needs have been severely magnified.

Three days after the earthquake, one of the largest foreign investors in Haiti, Royal Caribbean Cruises, detailed its plans to help. With a solid corporate social responsibility framework already in place, the global cruise line launched its relief program and announced a minimum of $1 million in humanitarian aid. The company coordinated with its existing charitable partners Food for the Poor, Pan American Development Foundation, in addition to its own Haitian foundation, the Solano Foundation.

Royal Caribbean laid out its plans to continue cruise ship calls to its private beach in Labadee, Haiti, complete with deliveries of food, water and other necessary provisions on each stop. The brand outlined how it would support its Haitian employees and their families, and how its cruise guests could contribute to the cause. On top of all that, a Haitian United Nations representative endorsed Royal Caribbean’s plans and fully supported the continuation of cruise ship calls, highlighting their positive economic benefits for the country.

Royal Caribbean covered its bases, activated existing crisis protocols, engaged with its charity partners and committed significant financial support to the cause. The brand put its commitment to Haiti into action.

But more proactive stakeholder engagement and education was needed. Even with all the efforts to do the right thing, the cruise line’s reputation came under fire when people learned calls to Labadee would continue. As in any highly-emotional situation, critics jumped to conclusions because they simply didn’t have the proper context, they didn’t know the whole story.

Mainstream news organizations reported the information, which elicited a very negative response with many comments on mainstream online news outlets. Bloggers and advocacy groups criticized the company. Pictures were painted of tourists lounging on the private beach sipping pina coladas and jet skiing while just 60 miles away people suffered in Port-au-Prince.

This tragic situation reinforces the important role a sensitive, responsible and quick 360-degree stakeholder engagement strategy is to sustaining corporate reputation, especially in highly-emotional scenarios. It’s a reminder that even when great measures are taken to do the right thing, unfortunately doing the right thing often isn’t enough to protect reputation.

Not only do crisis protocols need to be in place, polished and ready to activate at any minute, an organization’s plan must include immediate steps to inform all of its important stakeholder groups of what it’s doing and why it’s doing it to mitigate any misinformation or ill-informed opinions that may be formed simply due to lack of awareness.

There are those who saw the bigger picture and defended the brand. They pointed to the very important role Royal Caribbean and its competitors actually play in facilitating the kind of sustainable tourism that will help a developing nation like Haiti not only recover from this tragedy, but actually grow stronger for the future.

Arthur Applbaum, a Harvard professor of ethics, told the Associated Press that while it shows … “moral sensitivity to be disturbed by the thought that one is vacationing on the beach when others are suffering nearby … it also shows insufficient moral reflection to think that proximity makes a moral difference. The people of Haiti are suffering whether you take your beach vacation in the Dominican Republic or in Hawaii,” he said, “and it is a failure of the moral imagination not to be equally troubled in Waikiki.”

In emotionally-charged situations, brands must take into account the big picture, while remaining exceptionally sensitive to extreme tragedy. The young Haitian man’s quote, “Without this, we don’t eat,” puts everything into perspective. This is the point around which Royal Caribbean’s decision to continue responsible Labadee port calls with a heavy emphasis on aid to Haiti must be based upon. It is the most basic level of human need and is a huge opportunity for the brand not only to deliver aid in this time of tragedy, but also to take the lead role in building a stronger future for Haiti and its people.

Matt Averitt can be reached at maveritt@mww.com

maveritt CSR, Crisis Communications Crisis Communication, CSR, Haiti

One of the trends of 2009 that is sure to continue in 2010 is the emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility as a critical element of success for organizations of all sizes. And while history has shown the tendency to seek a silver bullet – CSR = philanthropy, or more recently, CSR = “GREEN” (a topic for an entirely different post, I think) I am pleased to see more companies and more clients taking a substantive approach to CSR that is comprehensive, authentic and pardon the already over-used word, SUSTAINABLE.

People are taking notice of citizenship, on Main Street and in the media — Target’s commitment to education and its communities (full disclosure – an MWW Group client), Starbuck’s Shared Planet and Best Buy’s eco-responsibility platform come to mind. Recently, Chipotle’s support of the “real food” and “slow food” movements was enough to score them the holy grail of PR – an Oprah endorsement.

All great issues. All authentic to the brand and the business. Makes you feel good about spending your hard earned dollars there, doesn’t it? That’s the idea.

That’s why I am so disappointed that so few of the leaders in CSR talk about CSR as it related to workplace, culture and employees. Clearly, some of them are thinking about it, and even building their programs with employee input. A Fortune magazine article about Best Buy tells me that their entire platform was created because it was meaningful to employees – long before it was meaningful to customers. But it is more than that…

Citizenship and responsibility begin at home. You can’t be a good corporate citizen – no matter how well you treat the planet or support the arts – if you haven’t created a culture of citizenship within your organization….responsibility to and for your employees is key to the sustainability and authenticity of your “Citizenship Story” – and the ability to sustain communities is rooted first and foremost in the creation of good jobs for its residents. And in this era of high unemployment and mistrust, I thought I had found someone who “GETS IT” when I started reading about the Coca Cola Live Positively platform….defined as living positively for their people, their products and their planet. BINGO.

Except that PEOPLE is defined as the customers who buy and drink Coca Cola products…not the people who make them, sell them, deliver them or discover them. What a missed opportunity – to make this platform meaningful to the employees, who go to work every day in the face of public outcries against soda in schools and the big bad soda companies. And what a missed opportunity to engage and activate those employees to demonstrate and communicate the values of Coca Cola in their interactions with their colleagues, business relationships and in their communities.

If you want to be a “good citizen” what could be more important that your interaction with employees, and your inclusion of them in your external CSR story.

Citizenship isn’t just about the big external programs – it is about the careers you create, and the opportunity for people to sustain their own lives. It is about a reputation earned through the word of mouth in the community – which often begins with the words of your employees. Citizenship begins at home. Or it can’t be sustained for long.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters CSR, Employee Engagement citizenship, CSR, Employee Engagement

We need a robust scientific community exploring and determining and discovering. But science costs money. And corporations, which often rely on science for validation of things like product safety, environmental impact, or efficacy, have it.

For corporations involved in things that require scientific testing, don’t we expect them to do that testing, to engage outside experts to reach conclusions? I think we, society, do. Their reputation is tied up in it. But still we roll our eyes when we see some science that confirms facts in favor of the company that funded it. When it seems self-serving, we are incredulous.

Writes John Tierney in the New York Times: “Too often, corporate conflict-of-interest accusations have been used as smear tactics to silence scientists who ended up being correct.”

Science is at once a most revered and most reviled field, and corporate reliance on it cuts both ways.

There is in fact little proof, though there are some extreme, isolated examples, that the scientific community has been compromised by virulent corporate funding. Many might even argue science has flourished because it is so well-funded by corporations and other organizations, including government.

But it remains a communications and reputation challenge for corporations to convince its audience that the science it sponsors is honest.

From a message standpoint, “corporate” science is generally referred to in one of two ways. If you are against what the corporate-funded science purports to prove, you call it “junk science.” If you are for what the science shows, you say “Look, don’t take my word for it, this is independently conducted science.”

Actually, the same framework applies, if say, an advocacy group puts out science that delegitimizes a corporation’s particular claim.

It’s an easy narrative trap to fall into. But perhaps, for corporations, the best way to win the battle – and make no mistake, the media loves a science dust-up – is to demonstrate how they maintained a proper distance from the process and allowed for scientific integrity. In this age of transparency, the burden of proof rests with them.

We should care if corporate money funds science and I’m not saying there is never a conflict that the public should be made aware of. The trick is for corporations to show that the conflict is only perceived, not actual.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks General Corporate reputation, science, scientific testing

This weekend JetBlue successfully migrated over to the SABRE system in what can only be described as a magnificent feat of great planning and operations. For those of you who are industry buffs, you will recall that WestJet recently experienced difficulties in this migration, causing all kinds of airport delays and hassles for customers.

In the interest of full disclosure, MWW Group is JetBlue’s crisis communications agency…and in my opinion, this is an airline that continues to be unfairly burdened with the events of a certain winter snowstorm, despite pulling off major operational feats – like the opening of T5 at JFK and the migration to SABRE – without a hitch.

After some time working with them and observing them, it is clear that JetBlue practices some important things that so many other organizations seem to miss:

They operate under a common sense philosophy that empowers their “crew” (that’s employees to you and me) to use their own judgment to DO WHAT THEY THINK IS RIGHT FOR THE CUSTOMER. Not just in special situations, but every day.

They plan for the worst case scenario, pretty much all the time, and they are willing to sacrifice short term dollars for long term success. For the Sabre switch, that meant sacrificing ticket revenue to ensure a good customer experience – by reducing the schedule and the load factors on all of their flights this weekend.

JetBlue gives their people permission to make mistakes, and learn from them.

At JetBlue, knowledge is power –and not in the “keep it a secret so you have an edge over your colleague” kind of way. They talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. They acknowledge challenges, and provide guidance on how to manage through those challenges.

JetBlue entrusts their people with meaningful substantive information – not just what to expect, but what is expected of them. They don’t expect those solutions to be perfect, so when someone comes up with a better one, they share the knowledge.

So when they got through the airline version of an SAP conversion – something that sends shivers down the spines of corporate types everywhere – they got through it without a hitch.

For anyone that knows JetBlue or flies them regularly, this is no surprise.

Congratulations JetBlue! Looking forward to the next time you don’t need my services!

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters Employee Engagement employee communication, JetBlue

Saturday’s Business Day section of the New York Times offered an interesting juxtaposition of perspective for anyone who was paying attention. Page B4 featured a continuation of a story on Toyota’s belated apology to customers for the recall of vehicles announced January 21st due to some brake issues and on page B5, a column entitled “An Attempt to Revive the Lost Art of Apology, “ by Alina Tugend. I noticed the latter item when I turned the page of the newspaper while wondering why the CEO of Toyota waited nine days from the day of announcing the recall to apologize and why he did it from Davos as opposed to returning to his company to sort out an issue which is clearly devastating to sales.

It’s understandable that companies do not like to communicate with customers when things go wrong until they feel that have the complete story and can answer the question “what will you do to fix the problem.” It may even be legal counsel that is discouraging a public apology or communications.

But, the equity gained by saying “I’m sorry this happened” first, and then communicating as information and solutions are found, is profound. The need for an apology has even been noted in reviews of malpractice litigation where plaintiffs frequently report that all they wanted was for the doctor to say “I’m sorry.”

The power and value of an apology is clearly pointed out by Professor Jonathan R. Cohen, a law professor at the University of Florida, in Ms. Tugend’s piece. “Saying I’m sorry, or asking forgiveness permits you to have a future relationship,” he said.

While the apology finally came from Toyota’s Akio Toyoda, one has to wonder if it came too late to allow a future relationship with affected customers as they look to take advantage of the trade-in incentives being offered to owners of the recalled Toyota vehicles by competitors such as Chrysler, GM and Hyundai.

Ame Wadler can be reached at awadler@mww.com.

awadler Crisis Communications apologies, reputation, Toyota

Last week’s stunning Supreme Court decision that will now allow corporations and labor unions to spend an unlimited amount on election campaigns has sent shock waves across the political landscape with some lauding the sanctity of the First Amendment and others predicting the downfall of democracy as we know it. The case brought together an unusual coalition of the right (Chamber of Commerce) and left (ACLU) in support of scuttling McCain-Feingold. Opinions on what this will mean for the 2010 elections and beyond span a broad spectrum as Members of Congress and the Obama Administration are already debating legislative initiatives to take on the ruling.

As politicians and the pundit corps look ahead breathlessly to a new electoral dynamic, corporations need to closely review the decision and do a thorough analysis of how best to proceed. The American public is very upset and while Washington is getting the brunt of the blame, corporations are not far beyond in terms of negative sentiment. Banks, health insurers, big energy and others who are seen as the likely beneficiaries of the new spending freedom have seen their reputations battered in America’s widespread pushback against large institutions. From the Tea Party movement to the Move Your Money campaign to increased shareholder lawsuits and proxy challenges, the public is in a fighting mood.

Thus corporate boards and executives will need to proceed cautiously and judge how increased political contributions and activism will impact all of their stakeholders. Though the shackles are now off, the spotlight on corporate involvement in campaigns will be brighter. Profligate spending on election campaigns will be a focus for the media and online communities. Protecting corporate reputation, promoting the interests of shareholders and addressing consumer/public sentiment will all need to be weighed when companies make the decision to exercise the new rights bestowed on them by the Supreme Court.

Richard Tauberman can be reached at rtauberman@mww.com.

rtauberman General Corporate campaign finance, corporate boards, reputation, Supreme Court

I just finished reading an article about the Taliban’s PR campaign to improve its image. Now if you guessed that I was reading it in The Onion – one of my favorite places for ironic, sarcastic humor – that would make total sense. But this story actually appeared in the NYT.

My colleague Mike Sacks recently wrote about his beef with corporate apologies. And if you follow this blog, you already know mine: people who talk about public relations or communications as a solution for bad policy. The idea that the Taliban needs a PR campaign to “improve its image” is a perfect, albeit extreme, case in point. The Taliban doesn’t have a PR problem. They are the problem.

The article goes on to point out that the Taliban has issued a new code of conduct that prohibits, among other things:

• Beheadings without an investigation
• Burning down schools
• Suicide bombing of civilians

Now, I am a real believer that journalism should be balanced, and that everyone deserves a voice. But are we really having a serious discussion about the Taliban’s image and the resulting PR campaign? In the NYT?

What’s next? A positioning session to differentiate the Taliban from terrorism?

A Code of Conduct is just a piece of paper if it doesn’t live and breathe with its members, and if it isn’t reflected in the actions and decisions of the individuals. And PR isn’t a solution for bad policy, decisions or actions.

In the words of Forrest Gump, “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate code of conduct, policy, reputation

Ah, the 1982 Johnson & Johnson Tylenol recall.

The model for successful crisis communications to which we all aspire; to which a generation of crisis managers and business school professors give oblation.

The New York Times thinks so, too, comparing J&J’s recent recall woes to its standard-setting recall in the year I was born. Note: Those two events are not connected. As far as I know.

Many “analysts” the NYT spoke with seem to think J&J fumbled the ball here and didn’t live up to its brand promise. One of the world’s most trusted brands failed to repeat its proven model, they say. Perhaps this is true, as evidence surfaces showing that J&J knew of complaints about some of its over-the-counter medicines many months before the FDA issued its warning and the company initiated the recall.

But such a comparison is unfair, and propped up by a faulty foundation. What this article fails to mention is that the 1982 recall came as a result of madmen lacing Tylenol with cyanide, not J&J’s negligence. It’s much easier to “do the right thing” when reasonable people can see extenuating external forces cause the crisis in question, not poor management or specious science. In the current case, it doesn’t seem the recall was caused by any such forces.

I wonder at what point, if ever, the 1982 recall will cease to be a relevant and contemporary model of crisis communication. Will advancing technology, speed of communication, social media, and fragmented news render it an obsolete case study? Or will it continue to be mythologized and live on in perpetuity?

This is the blessing for J&J: Decades after the 1982 recall, it still reaps brand benefit for a job well done. And this is the curse: It will likely never live up to the legend again.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate Crisis Communications, Johnson & Johnson, recall

The New York Post is reporting that Goldman Sachs is delaying its bonus announcement until after it reports earnings – and after the other big banks report theirs. The official party line is this:

“It’s important to have context of earnings before we start communicating compensation.”

Ahhhhh, the elusive but all important context.

In the area of reputation management, we talk about context, and things like benchmarking, a lot. In fact, we often counsel clients that when handling an important issue, context is king. Stakeholders need to understand what to think about your news, and how it stacks up to others, and where it fits into the bigger story of your reputation. The notion of context is pervasive and accepted — we see performance relative to peers reflected in share price valuation, teachers who grade on a curve, and even employee performance evaluations.

But in this case, the idea of waiting for context feels like a parlor trick designed to allow Goldman’s peers to take the lion’s share of public reaction to the fact that the banks are giving bonuses at all. This storm started brewing 2009 when the banks accepted TARP funds, and as coincidentally began repaying them as discussion of Wall Street bonuses in Washington heated up, in what some would describe as another parlor trick – repay the money to avoid government intervention and public backlash.

In a time when 10% of Americans are out of work, home foreclosures are at a record high and consumer fear about their economic futures is palpable, the banking industry takes great reputation risk in doling out checks to their executives.

No doubt the decision makers at Goldman are thinking that reporting good results will give them the permission – I mean context – to award those bonuses. But what they fail to recognize is that the perception by everyone except perhaps their shareholders (and presumably their bonus eligible employees) will be that those profits, in this environment, are hardly a badge of honor. Big healthcare companies will face the same dilemma and the correlating reputational risks.

Herein lies the dilemma. While our capitalistic society rewards initiative, success and profits are good (in theory) – there are certain industries that can be dinged for being too successful, and too profitable – particularly when it can be perceived as coming on the backs of the average working person on Main Street USA. So when those profits coincide with people losing their homes, foregoing their prescriptions or medical care, and an increasing number of unemployed and uninsured, the very things that can build reputation can also diminish it.

Just a generation ago, achieving home ownership was the American Dream….it is now an expectation. In America, healthcare is viewed as a right, not a privilege. When Americans find these things out of reach, it is easy to demonize the big corporate machines for “putting profits ahead of people” – regardless of the fact that the fundamental principles of our system that fuel that American Dream require it.

Noticeably absent from all of this discussion is the role that companies like Goldman Sachs and other large corporations play in creating good jobs, support community and philanthropic initiatives that would otherwise go unfunded, and improving lives. These things are true, and they are important. Just not in this context. After all, context is king.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate bonuses, context, Goldman Sachs, Reputation Management

Corporate apologies after big screw-ups are a real raw nerve for me. This is because, though they rarely succeed in accomplishing what people think they should, namely engendering forgiveness and understanding and thus restoring credibility and trust, we somehow insist on them.

We insist on them, knowing we will get a heavily sanitized pseudo-apology, then declare them not good enough or too little too late. It’s a predictable pattern.

The New York Times takes on the subject in the context of today’s hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, with the chieftains of Wall Street appearing before it to endure another (richly deserved) public flogging and offer, as the article puts it, “the art of nuanced regret – admitting mistakes without accepting blame.”

Don’t get me wrong – these guys owe a lot of people genuine apologies to start, and some have tried, albeit they were the typically hollow, non-specific kind. It would be just one of the many right things they could do to show respect for the public that bailed them out.

But here is the key line, and communications challenge to weigh, in the story:

“Of course, corporate chieftains worry that apologies may be red meat for shareholder lawsuits.”

And they are right to worry. Winning in actual court is better than winning in public-opinion court.

In precarious times, being liked and winning favor shouldn’t be the communications short-term goal. Wall Street is never liked, even in the best of times, only tolerated. And it will return to tolerable after time and with the right moves. But facing such an overwhelming storm, the best they can hope for right now is to simply find shelter.

So the bottom line on corporate apologies? It, like most things, depends. I certainly wouldn’t say an apology is never appropriate. And I disagree with some experts who say that when people are unhappy, you should always apologize. But if you are going to apologize, do it with meaning.

In this instance, I wouldn’t recommend it as a communications counselor. But when circumstance preclude a proper apology – genuine, and light on corporate speak – you can substitute action. Do something to demonstrate your remorse, that you’ve learned and are trying to make it right, even if you can’t say so explicitly. What’s the phrase? Something about actions and words, and their respective volume. And corporate apologies are too often just words.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility corporate apology, Reputation Management

When you have Paula Deen – sweet, lovable, would never steer you wrong though she might steer you towards high cholesterol- on your side, it’s easy to seem like the good guy.

So I can understand why Scripps Networks, owner of Food Network and HGTV, employed the very public hang ‘em high communications strategy it has thus far in its tussle with Cablevision over the revenue it receives from the cable provider. Full-page newspaper ads, microsites (featuring a stunned Guy Fieri’s video lament), CNBC appearances – all tactics articulating a visceral message: Scripps loves you, dear viewer, and that greedy Cablevision doesn’t want to pay the pennies it would take for us to be together.

The approach and message seems even more obvious and enticing when your opponent, a cable provider – loathed, cursed, never shows up between 10 and 7 – is already fitted for a black hat.

So far, Scripps seems to be getting a good amount of support, superficial as it is. “A mile wide and an inch deep” comes to mind. While Food Network and HGTV might have gained thousands of new fans on Facebook, that’s hardly what it will take to resolve the situation. It’s another matter to “vote with your wallet” and drop your cable provider in protest. That’s deep loyalty to Bobby, Giada, and Rachel (and whoever is on HGTV – you can tell which of these networks I watch). Because then, we’d have to switch to an equally unpalatable cable provider and waste a day waiting for the hook up. And most of us won’t do that.

But there is some danger here for Scripps, too, if they don’t consistently match the message to action.

Scripps did announce this morning it would re-air the White House Iron Chef special (complete with Michelle Obama) – that drew 7.6 million viewers last Sunday when it originally aired – on local NY and CT stations. Nice start. Unfortunately, Scripps seems to plan on accompanying this savvy gesture with on-air battle cries. Maybe just let the broadcast speak for itself.

So how can Scripps make sure this is not just a nice, though one-off, gesture to viewers? Though it might eliminate some of its perceived bargaining leverage, they could put their shows online for affected viewers to watch until this gets (hopefully) sorted out. Ads thanking network fans for their support are nice, but they don’t show you how to properly grill a duck breast or landscape your new yard.

We all know what this is – a fight between two corporate entities over money. Scripps wants the money it thinks it deserves and to preserve its value, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The reputational risk comes when Scripps positions it as a noble crusade against a greedy provider to benefit the viewer, and no benefit comes. Scripps knows that if Cablevision buckles and agrees to pay the increased fee, that cost will be passed on to Cablevision subscribers.

As always, we’ll have to see how this plays out, but if I had to guess right now, while Scripps might get some deal with Cablevision, reputationally and in the long-term, it won’t come out ahead. Even worse….what if we learn that we can live without Food Network and HGTV?

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate

Today is the first business day of the New Year, and while many of the personal resolutions to eat right, exercise more or otherwise improve yourself may have already gone by the wayside, today is the day for companies and executives to begin with their proverbial clean slate.

While 2009 was by all accounts and all measures a difficult year, at least for today, 2010 is full of promise. My New Year’s wish is that we learn from the mistakes of the past, and resolve to make 2010 the year of Reputation.

Today, a colleague sent me a great article from the FT that provides some excellent food for thought about how those tasked with managing and protecting reputation can do just that. It also provides me with a new favorite quote about reputation, from none other than Abraham Lincoln:

“Character is the tree…reputation is the shadow.”

In the interest of nurturing the tree, so that it may cast a bigger, better, shadow in 2010, here are the Five Reputation Resolutions I think every company should make.

1. Get serious about digital/social media. Note that I am not calling it new media – because it just isn’t new anymore. And companies that are still waiting on the sidelines to “see how this develops” are missing one of the greatest opportunities to connect with their stakeholders and enhance their reputations. It’s cheap. It’s (relatively) easy. And it is powerful. Use of social media means changing attitudes about “controlling the message” – it is about conversation, interaction and even disagreement. If you want to “deliver a message” take out a billboard. If you want to enhance your reputation, join the conversation. Because it’s happening – with or without you.

2. Review your crisis plans, and update them to include use of social media. (See point 1). Sixty seconds is the new first hour – and the reputation you spent decades cultivating can be destroyed in a mere minute. Imagine the alternative reality if the Miracle on the Hudson had been a less than miraculous ending. The airline’s early statements (or non-statements) of awaiting confirmation were simulcast alongside photos of the aircraft floating in the water. This story took on a life of its own long before the airline got involved. All’s well that ends well, but it could have easily been a reputational disaster.

3. Engage your employees. No doubt many are reading this and thinking “check” – December and January are months loaded with employee communications largely driven by benefits elections and other year end housekeeping. But housekeeping isn’t employee engagement. The companies that make meaningful employee dialogue (at MWW Group we call that Employee Exchange™ vs. employee engagement in 2010 will be the ones who win the talent wars and own the upturn. Your employees are afraid. And that fear can create a near-paralysis of innovation. If that isn’t reason enough, consider the following: your employees are the embodiment of your reputation with every single stakeholder you have. They touch your customers, your shareholders, your partners and your communities every day. Entrust them with real information, and tell them what you need them to do, (beyond signing up for health care during open enrollment). Because if you won’t, someone else will…and that someone just might be offering them the chance to sign on for a new union, or a new job. Unemployment won’t be in the double digits forever, and the relationships you cultivate with your employees today will last far beyond 2010.

4. Appoint a CSR officer. Today. Corporate Social Responsibility is here to stay. It is a “must do” in this environment. And by CSR, I don’t mean “Going Green.” If 2009 was the year of “Green” (and greenwashing), I hope that 2010 will be the year of citizenship. Are you serious about a comprehensive approach to citizenship that includes your business practices, your community interaction, your workplace culture and policies as well as your commitment to the environment? Appointment of a CSR officer – and a reporting structure that demonstrates the importance of the function – is a clear signal of your organization’s seriousness about citizenship. And once you are doing the right things, then you can talk about them. Reputations are built, over time, by actions and demonstrations, not simply words.

5. Make the right decisions. I’ve blogged before about the importance of actually doing what is right – and then communicating about it, not the other way around. Communications is not a magic elixir to course-correct flawed strategy, perfume the bad-policy pig or otherwise compensate for errors in judgment, planning or best laid plans that have gone awry. When companies make bad choices, you can’t “spin it.” Remember, it is about the tree first…then the shadow.

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

admin Employee Engagement, General Corporate

Perhaps no company, even including the harangued money center banks, will be happier to see 2009 end than AT&T. In December, Consumer Reports ranked the company last in cellular customer satisfaction, capping a year where dropped call issues for the iPhone achieved folklore status among the online community and even generated an SNL skit. To further exacerbate things, AT&T’s executives and media representatives have repeatedly pointed to excessive data use by iPhone owners as a key to the problem. Yet this was just one of a host of AT&T miscues that showed a tin ear for public opinion with audiences from consumers to investors.

Early in December, AT&T dropped a lawsuit it had filed against Verizon over ads touting the coverage areas of the providers’ respective networks. AT&T took offense with Verizon’s snarky ‘There’s a Map for That’ commercials which purported to show that AT&T’s nationwide coverage paled in comparison to Verizon. AT&T’s response was to run to the courthouse and cry foul, beseeching a judge to have the Verizon ads pulled. The judge refused and AT&T retreated, dropping its lawsuit and engendering another round of scathing commentary from the online community and many traditional media. See the take of the Atlantic’s Dan Indivigilio: http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/12/att_drops_verizon_map_ad_lawsuit.php

The stunning cap to the ignoble year for AT&T came this past weekend when a number of blogs announced that the iPhone was unavailable for purchase by New Yorkers through the company’s website. According to the reports, users with a NYC zip code were told to choose another phone.

Customer service reps acknowledged the situation with scant explanation and AT&T issued a brief statement after the weekend saying that “we periodically modify our promotion and distribution channels” without further explanation of the NYC incident.

This flurry of negative stories about AT&T, many self-inflicted and others with the flames fanned by tepid, terse and generally off-note responses, has many from the tech community to Wall Street asking what AT&T is doing, what it was thinking and how it can repair the damage in 2010. The questions include the future of its relationship with Apple and, just as concerning, its long-term relationship with the consumers who use its wireless services. The New Year provides a fitting time for AT&T to start anew, to effectively address the missteps of 2009 and to put in place an effective program that helps it think and act more strategically as a company and a communicator. The company’s business and reputation may depend on it.

Richard Tauberman can be reached at rtauberman@mww.com.

admin General Corporate Corporate Reputation, Reputation Management

It is the time of year again to celebrate with friends and family. It is also the time of year where innumerable communications experts posit bold predictions for 2010 that will likely be wrong but hey, no one will remember by this time next year.

It is in this spirit – often wrong, never in doubt – that I give some of my predictions for the reputation management world, in no particular order:

• A company will experience an explosive social media crisis it was totally ill-equipped to respond to, which will then make mainstream news headlines. Social media experts will deride said company for its incompetence and “not getting it” in a characteristically haughty tone.

• Corporate responsibility will play a bigger role in the way stakeholders think about corporate reputation. We are going to see less and less “green” and more and more focus on holistic sustainability. In fact, the smartest companies won’t use the word “green” at all.

• CEOs will communicate more openly, and more often, with employees, understanding that their support and belief in the mission is critical in what will still be a difficult year. It’s the right thing to do, of course, and will also translate into reputational benefits. Happy (relatively) and appreciated troops bolster strong reputation.

• We are going to see a lot of CEO burn out – lots of CEOs stepping down, no doubt exhausted and frustrated. Some of the transitions to successors will be, communications-wise, well-executed. Most will be bumpy, likely because the outgoing honcho is, well, exhausted and frustrated and might not be as willing to put the best face on things. A big name brand or two will get dinged for a poorly handled transition.

• Real, true measurement will be a differentiator for reputation managers. Those that know how to prove value and ROI beyond “impressions” will be sought after. Marketing budgets will still be tight – those that produce reputational evidence get a bigger slice of the pie.

• People will still hate Goldman Sachs. That’s not a solvable problem in 2010 for GS – that reputational rehab is more like a 2011 or 2012 possibility.

• A major national media outlet will find a successful formula for making money off its online content.

Maybe I’ll circle back to this at the end of next year and see how I did. I think I left them vague enough I can claim prescience somehow.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading Return on Reputation.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

admin General Corporate CEO transitions, Reputation Management, Social Media

The Cleveland Clinic is typically ranked number one on the US News and World Report’s rankings of hospitals for heart surgery. Its physicians are world renowned and, when its reputation was slightly tarnished in 2005-2006 for potential conflict of interest related to physicians on its roster accepting honoraria from industry, they were the first to disclose such relationships and argue for greater transparency. Its experts are consulted by Washington policymakers and its researchers are at the front lines of cutting edge science.

The Cleveland Clinic is, without a doubt, a sterling example of an organization that has taken great pains with its reputation and, as such, stands out from its peers as a model for excellence in reputation management – never mind, excellence in healthcare.

That’s why it was especially disappointing to see the incredibly “of the pack” and mundane reputation advertising the Cleveland Clinic chose to run in the “Lives They Lived” issue of the New York Times Magazine. Pastel backgrounds reveal simple statements that position the Cleveland Clinic as offering electronic health records ahead of their time, laparoscopic surgery with teeny incisions and statements about the fact that lots of other physicians refer patients to them.

So? The same could be said for many hospitals. In fact, I thought the Cleveland Clinic was above all that…the advertising felt more like what I would expect from my community hospital than from a world class research and teaching institution at the front lines of setting policy.

The advertising doesn’t do the institution justice. In fact, it diminishes what I know about the institution and its reputation. It almost feels as if the hospital doesn’t trust its own place in the world and as such, it tells us the same things we expect to hear from everyone else in their space.

It’s a tough time for hospitals – no question. But, if you have the academic excellence, experience, physician roster and yes…reputation of a Cleveland Clinic, you might be best off leaving well enough alone.

Ame Wadler can be reached at awadler@mww.com.

admin General Corporate advertisisng, Reputation Management

When dealing with a crisis, the best-case scenario is that no one ever hears about. That takes some real savvy and some seriously mercy from the crisis gods. But equally impressive, the company with the hottest, most buzzed-about toy for the holidays was able to put an end to a crisis assailing the toy’s safety just a few weeks before Christmas with little notice and no discernable damage.

A BusinessWeek story last week recounted the behind-the-scenes action of how Cepia, maker of the Zhu Zhu Hamster (what happened to Legos?), mitigated an issue that if handled less swiftly could have exploded into something much more devastating if not terminal for the company.

I won’t detail the play-by-play in the article, but a quick synopsis: A consumer product safety group claimed that the hamsters were unsafe. As it turned out, the safety group did not apply the same and arguably more rigorous methodologies that the federal government does for product testing. Cepia fired back with its own safety analysis conducted by independent testing organizations, proving the product safety. The government, after review, came down on the side of Cepia. The safety group retracted its claim and vowed to reform its testing. The issue that started on Friday was over by Monday.

Some of the key elements for this successful outcome, besides of course having the government on Cepia’s side, were decisiveness and swiftness. Sometimes, you have to make a quick call on what to do and what message to articulate. Then, you go do it. That’s what Cepia did. Prolonged meetings in stuffy board rooms trying to play out every scenario quickly reach a point of diminishing returns. It makes a lot of executives uncomfortable, but in some crises, you exist in a miasma of uncertainty. The best leaders (and crisis managers) can cope with that uncertainty, like it or not, and do the best they can with the information available.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications Crisis Communication

I have resisted and will continue resisting joining the Greek chorus of PR pros who have seized this moment to condemn Tiger Woods not just for his current, uh, troubles, but for the way in which he has dealt with the media and public. Lots of bromides about “controlling the story” and other such pieces of doctrinaire advice that, while certainly applicable in some situations, have little bearing on this specific situation.

I have my thoughts on how Woods should handle this going forward and try to repair his reputation, but I’m more interested in the corporate angle – his sponsors. Fortune, also interested, asks the question: “Will his sponsors stick around?” In the days following his, uh, accident, there has been a real dearth of Tiger Woods as pitchman. His commercials have been yanked from the airwaves.

And though some sponsors, like Nike and Accenture, have offered public support and seem willing to stick with him, Fortune suggests that “observers on deathwatch” are just waiting to see how much the sponsors can endure – with revelation after revelation – before cutting ties.

What does a brand have to gain reputation-wise from sticking by a now, if not reviled, then at least tarnished, athlete? Particularly one that attracted such sponsorships in part because of his good guy image? Well, part of it has to be a bet – a bet that after some time, Woods can begin to repair his image and return to some shade of former glory (and marketability). It might be cynical, but being awesome at sports helps overcome a lot.

The article points out two other considerations for sponsors: If they let Woods go now, competitors might want him, and; they might try to renegotiate his contracts, getting him for cheaper now in light of his, uh, situation.

All are reasonably sound rationale for not dumping him overboard just yet. But like most things reputation, there is a risk. Stick by him too long, and offer too much support if things continue to unravel, and it begins to look like you just haven’t noticed. Or worse, it begins to look to your stakeholders like you care little about their values.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Executive Visibility, Social Media, Uncategorized Crisis Communications, Reputation Management

Yesterday marked the opening of one of the most historic conferences in modern history – COP-15, the Copenhagen Climate Change Convention.  One hundred and ninety-two nations are in attendance – the largest total of nations ever attending any meeting in the world.  And it looks increasingly likely – what with President Obama’s schedule change to allow him to attend during the final negotiations, and top leadership from China and India promising to be there – that a global agreement on limiting carbon will emerge.

Norway’s Environment Minister had a particularly trenchant quote this morning:  The negotiations at COP-15, he said, “are the most difficult talks ever embarked upon by humanity.”   Whoa.

If the talks fail and no agreement emerges, the problem won’t go away, however – it will just make the delay in dealing with worldwide CO2 emissions and the actions needed to reduce them more painful in the long term.  The inevitable conclusion?  Climate change is real – the science is pretty unanimous at this point — and global efforts to mitigate the problem will eventually be implemented.

So this juncture in the world’s history, like most big watershed moments, will undoubtedly have a particularly powerful impact on the reputations of organizations all over the planet.

That’s why we are urging our clients, green and light green and any other color, to put their reputational stake in the ground around climate.  It is the one overarching litmus test of environmental responsibility, because it encompasses every green topic and subject.  Climate change is the first truly global environmental crisis humanity has had to deal with collectively, which means that companies and NGOs who are first to the conversation will reap the reputational rewards in the minds of their publics.  And since young people the world over increasingly self-identify as environmentally-minded, CSR and green programs have become mandatory for future-minded organizations,

Just a few examples:  The centerpiece of COP-15, in the middle of the lake in front of the Tycho Brahe Observatory in the center of Copenhagen, is a remarkable debut art installation called Carbon Cubes.  Designed to show us all, for the first time, what the volume of a metric ton of invisible carbon looks like, the Cube is 27 feet on each side, about the size of a three-story house.  The Cube represents what each person in the Western world emits: a ton of carbon every 2-3 weeks.  Google and YouTube, along with Millennium Arts and a host of other organizations including the United Nations and MWW, have supported the building of the Cube, with the goal of touring it around the world to illustrate the magnitude of the problem – and to represent, in real-time video projected on the Cube – some of the solutions.  This massive symbol of all of our human contributions to climate change makes such a tremendous impact because it’s a stark representation of the task in front of all of us.

Another remarkable exhibit is blooming in Copenhagen, too — Ghost Forest is a huge, haunting installation by artist Angela Palmer that raises public awareness of the connections between deforestation and climate change.  Originally exhibited in Trafalgar Square in London and underwritten by Deutsche Bank, the installation features ten massive rainforest tree stumps taken from a regulated, commercially logged tropical rainforest in Ghana.  These huge stumps, arranged in a circle and looking like the felled giants they truly are, have a potent presence.  Once alive and creating oxygen for the entire world to breathe, they now lie mutely and even accusingly on their sides, the true expression of the term deadwood.

When you see the Carbon Cube or the Ghost Forest at COP-15 or in another venue eventually, you will not forget them – they are both remarkably potent symbols of climate change and what our world is doing, or not doing, about it.  And of course you and everyone else who sees them will indelibly remember the forward-looking, smart sponsors of these exhibits, too.

David Langness can be reached at dlangness@mww.com.

dlangness CSR, Sustainability CSR, Sustainability

Risk-taking is an undervalued asset in today’s business environment. Even as shattered investor confidence, reduced consumer spending and ever-declining employee morale have all forced executives to take pause and reassess their approach to business, innovation remains a hallmark of a strong reputation.

But, has the fragile environment created “helicopter” managers, in the vein of helicopter parents? Leaders who will swoop in to protect a team from its own potential failure before letting risk turn to innovation? It’s true. Innovation often does come with some risk but the greater risk to an organization is having its staff bubble-wrapped to the point where creativity is stifled. A significant part of fostering a culture of innovation is to develop a method for enabling calculated risk. Just as you wouldn’t allow a child to cross a street for the first time on their own, you can partner employees on projects with those who have taken risks before and know how to look both ways before crossing.

Similarly, an employee who embarks on a project without knowing the potential scenarios that could lead to failure, are as ill-prepared as a teenager who drives without ever having a driving lesson. A helicopter parent will save the child from harm by never letting them behind the wheel of the car – but the child will never learn to drive. A helicopter manager will protect the company from harm, but by never letting a risky project get off the ground may impede the company’s growth.
Following are a few tips to foster an environment that grows through calculated risk:

• Reward smart failure. So maybe a project failed but, it failed because it was stopped before it could do irreparable harm OR it did no harm but it was the right project at the wrong time. Celebrate the inspiration and hard work while using the failure as a teaching moment for the organization, all the while praising the project leader for taking the risk for what they hoped would be the benefit of the company.

• Communicate success. When a risk was taken and success achieved, celebrate. But don’t just pop the champagne cork, talk about why it succeeded, the research that led to its success and the efforts taken to ensure success…again, a teachable moment.

• Create an innovation lab…an environment in which Ideas can be floated and nurtured. Sometimes ideas can’t take root because the owner of the idea doesn’t know how to bring it to fruition. Creating a place where seeds can be planted and sown will help to bring ideas to life. This can be an actual innovation lab OR a place to idea jam on a corporate intranet site.

• Avoid the inclination to helicopter in to protect. Instead, be a parachute, a means to a soft-landing through guidance, reality checking and resource sharing.

Ame Wadler can be reached at awadler@mww.com

awadler Employee Engagement employee communication

It’s a common refrain now for reputation managers to say that good corporate responsibility programs need to be authentic, not an egregiously overt marketing play, and make Good Business Sense. This is the stuff – when smartly communicated – of strong and enduring reputations.

Further than that, good CR demands a holistic view of the community – local, national, or global – in which a company operates.

So it’s nice when a company proves that notion. A story in Fortune about Best Buy, written by respected corporate citizenship and sustainability reporter Marc Gunther, explores how the retailer is turning itself into a leader in corporate responsibility. Not just because it’s a feel-good activity, but because it makes strategic sense.

Two salient passages from the story simply explain Best Buy’s push into sustainability and CR:

• “Employees wanted to know what Best Buy was doing to become more environmentally sustainable. Some customers — not most, but enough to matter — said they preferred to do business with retailers that cared about their community.”

• “Best Buy, as a result, has decided that being a good corporate citizen makes business sense.”

The article goes on to detail all that Best Buy is doing – making investments in responsible companies, organizing employee networks for growth and opportunity, offering electronic take-backs in stores and auditing foreign factories for carbon emission and fair labor practices. They are considering all audiences, internal and external.

What seems, as written, to be such strong commitment makes me think a little about the evolution of corporate responsibility. With CR, the business imperative seems to be evolving not so much incrementally but in big waves.

Allow an abridged and unscientific history:

For a while, “strategic philanthropy” was the totality of social commitment. Companies should simply write checks to charities and that is enough. Plus, giving out those oversized novelty checks made for good photo opps (and still do).

But in the early part of this decade, there was an overwhelming push to “be green.” Any claim about being green, no matter how specious, was endorsed by an excited media happy to cover a new business trend, only creating more companies that wanted to bask in glowing media attention.

Then, the inevitable backlash. The media began demanding proof that the claims were more than hollow marketing brochures (some of which were likely not even printed on recycled paper) designed to dupe the consumer. “Greenwashing” was the battle cry and companies were exposed left and right for distorting the truth.

But that greenwashing hunt seems to be dying down. Companies – some, not all – got smarter about what they should and should not claim, and are realizing there is pressure to be more than “green” though environmental responsibility is still a critical part of the mix.

Companies that want to be better citizens – now existing in an era of extreme suspicion in the wake of stunning scandals and staggering greed – are focusing on fair labor practices, commitment to employees, increased support in local communities, and more transparency with consumers and other stakeholders.

There are those that say it isn’t up to corporations to solve societal problems; that by focusing on simply making money and creating jobs they are fulfilling their responsibility. And to an extent I agree. But that mindset doesn’t build a sterling reputation or earn the trust of the public.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR, Employee Engagement, Sustainability Corporate Reputation, CSR, Sustainability

If I had a dollar for every prospective client who wanted to be on Oprah, I would be lying on the beach rather than sitting at my desk writing this blog.

Oprah is truly a phenomenon…

She revived the publishing industry, almost destroyed the beef industry, and has become the Holy Grail for PR programs of all kinds – every new product wants to be on her “favorite things” show, every cause wants to be connected with her. And executives want to be on lists and panels with her, hoping her reputation rubs off on them; hoping that conferred upon them is the good-will that she engenders.

Heck, I’ve even had an IR client ask if we could get Oprah to invest in them.

Oprah is the ultimate example of the power and influence of third party endorsements and the impact on reputation. She can make or break. For those who dismiss her as simply purveyor of daytime fluff, remember her tough interview with James Frey – whom she made a household name with her endorsement for her book club – after his use of fiction in a memoir came to light. His reputation never recovered. He who underestimates Oprah does so at his own peril. (Though one could argue that the controversy simply sold more books, so perhaps that was a trip to the proverbial woodshed Mr. Frey was only too willing to take.)

But Oprah wasn’t always Oprah. Remember big haired Oprah who clutched her microphone as she took questions by phone with a demanding “Caller, you say what?” I remember a time when Oprah was just a talk show host, not a market maker, industry savior or philanthropist extraordinaire.

When did Oprah become Oprah?

Was it when she unveiled her size 8 self with the wagon of fat, achieving the nearly impossible and inspiring people everywhere? When she gained it back and became just a little bit more like the rest of us?

Did Oprah become Oprah when she started a book club and reading became fashionable again? When she swore by Uggs, Spanx and a properly fitted bra? When she discovered Dr Phil? Or when she challenged us to pay it forward?

Oprah is the quintessential American success story – a modern day Horatio Algers. Even if you don’t like her, you can’t help but admire her. She survived what can only be described as a horrific childhood, beat the odds in an industry where everyone told her she had no chance. And became the richest, most successful woman in America. Through it all she has stuck by her friends – like Gayle and Stedman; given generously (and no one seems to notice that as generous as she is, she is giving from her abundance of riches, and could hardly even miss it.) and become part of the fabric of our
lives.

With the clock ticking down, PR professionals around the globe are pondering…who will be the next Oprah? And how do I get my clients in on the ground floor?

I am not sure we can identify the next Oprah, because I’m not sure even Oprah anticipated being the Oprah she became. Perhaps this is a formula that can’t be replicated. Maybe it is just the end of an era.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters General Corporate Reputation Management, third-party endorsements

So, news has spread far and wide that Goldman Sachs has launched a $500 million program to help small businesses. This commitment accompanied an apology from GS head honcho Lloyd Blankfein for GS’s role in, ya know, our economic near-apocalypse.

Thoughtful.

But I’m sure GS knows they will have to excuse some people who might see this as nothing more than a (insert audible gasp) specious PR play to salvage its reputation.

Recognizing this, GS did something smart. It decided to partner with some people who can, by sheer aura, lend the necessary credibility for this to work. On the program’s advisory council sits – in not a throne but a befittingly humble office chair no doubt – is Mr. Warren Buffett. His reputation is such that his endorsement is sacrosanct.

Also in the mix is HBS Professor Michael Porter, one of the pioneers of the corporate responsibility movement in the U.S. While not a household name, he is a well-respected authority known in all the right business and corporate responsibility circles. He adds the academic gravitas.

Therein is the lesson. When reputation is on the line, companies should engage friends – influencers who can burnish legitimacy and say, “Hey, I’m vouching for them.”

Whether it works in this case, with public anger at a furious boil, remains to be seen.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks CSR, General Corporate Corporate Reputation, Reputation Management

This week I was working with some colleagues on messaging for a client to prepare for a series of interviews. This is a client with a compelling story, a contrarian view point and a CEO who is thoughtful, intelligent and easy to like. And these colleagues are brilliant, successful and among my favorite people to work with because they are thoughtful, passionate about their work and continually challenging themselves, and me, to be better.

But that thoughtfulness and excellence somehow became “over-thinking” this week. And our first pass at the messaging was so complex that it became obtuse, practically requiring an interpreter to understand the story.

Your client’s messaging should not be like a treasure hunt – weeding through reams of content for the nuggets of truth, and piecing them together to make a story. Members of the media are dealing with the issues we are all struggling with – doing more with less, fewer people, more work. Newsroom staff has been reduced, often dramatically. We need to make it easy for them to understand the story we want to tell. To adapt an old adage, if we are OVER-explaining, we are losing.

I recently wrote about the Corner Office column in the NYT, and the beautiful simplicity with which iconic leaders reveal their “secrets to success” which really aren’t secrets at all. If it is good enough for the who’s who of Corporate America, it is good enough for me.

Let’s keep it simple.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters General Corporate Corporate Reputation, messaging, Reputation Management

I don’t have kids, so I know nothing of strollers (other than my jealousy of these kids getting pushed around all day), but evidently, Maclaren is like the Volvo of the stroller game – noted by parents for dependability and reliability.

Now, it’s, well, the kind of car known for amputating kids’ fingers.

Just a few days ago, Maclaren had to recall about 1 million strollers as reports of unsafe hinges and resulting amputated fingers surfaced.

A reporter for Time.com put it succinctly – “This recall is a nightmare for Maclaren.” Probably not a nightmare per se for Maclaren’s communications team, because having a nightmare is predicated on getting some sleep, of which I’m certain they went without for a few days.

In theory, the company tried to handle the situation right, but, at a cursory look, in practice had some snags. A few notes:

• Maclaren was getting ready to make the voluntary announcement in conjunction with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But then the news leaked through the Internet and they did not get the credit for being forthcoming.

• Maclaren went live with a variety of vehicles for parents to get answers, but their Twitter feed sent followers to broken links, their website was rendered inoperable, and their customer service line was overwhelmed.

• Maclaren immediately began to offer free hinge covers to U.S. customers. Good thought. But then customers from around the word were upset by their exclusion from the offer. Maclaren had to go back and offer equal treatment to all.

Today, a quick visit to the Maclaren homepage got me a landing page espousing the company’s commitment to safety, and a link to customer service resources regarding this recall.

It is too soon to see how this plays out in terms of sales, but since Maclaren was recognized for dependability before and has been working hard to fix the problem, I think some parents are cutting them a little slack.

A quick, unscientific scan of some Mommy blogs and online parenting communities show that some parents are giving Maclaren credit for the voluntary recall and providing repair kits, and recognize it’s also their job to help keep their kids’ fingers away from mechanical hinges (a message that Maclaren’s executives were pushing in interviews). That’s some. Not all. Some are still pretty mad.

It’ll be an uphill battle to win back parent trust.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks Crisis Communications Crisis Communications, product recall, Reputation Management

I admit it – I love the corner office column of the New York Times. I love the opportunity to get “inside the heads” of iconic business leaders, and am often intrigued by the simplicity of the key tenets of their leadership style.

This week’s piece featured Jeffrey Katzenberg, who talked about the value of his unceremonious departure from Disney. This was the obvious topic that would have been noticeable in its absence. But for me, the most interesting content of this piece focused on Katzenberg’s simple rules of leadership. Here are my takeaways:

1. Return phone calls every day – even if to say you don’t ever want to speak with someone again.

2. Be punctual – and demonstrate that you respect other people’s time.

3. Talk to your employees – and talk to them about what they want to know, not just what you want to say. In Dreamwork’s case, that meant acknowledged that people are afraid for their jobs, and entrusting them with financial information that would demonstrate that things were solid and safe inside their Company – information that is often reserved for the executive ranks.

The importance of arming employees with substantive information cannot be over-stated. And in this environment, one of the most important priorities for leaders is managing, if not eliminating, employee fear. Joblessness in America has created unprecedented fear in companies in every industry. As a leader in this environment, whether of an organization or a small team, every move you make goes through that “fear filter.” Things like not calling people back or being late get elevated from mildly irritating to indicative of impending doom in the minds of employees.

It’s important to provide employees with the information they need to deal with their fears, and do their job well. But what you do is even more important than what you say.
 
Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters Executive Visibility, General Corporate Leadership, Reputation Management

Fortune has breathlessly declared Steve Jobs the “CEO of the Decade.” Quite an honorific. And certainly not undeserved – Fortune makes a persuasive case and few would dismiss Jobs’ eye for design, commitment to innovation and the customer experience, vision, and mastery of the message. No question he was the driving force behind the Apple of today and has, along the way, reshaped the technology biz.

But that might also be a problem. The article asks, When he’s gone, how long will the company thrive without him? It’s a valid and important question; one that companies – particularly those run by a founder or someone else who was “there at the beginning” – struggle with.

I wonder if Apple’s and Jobs’ reputation might be too tangled up in one another. Can we imagine Apple without him? The same words you’d toss out to describe Apple can be ascribed to Jobs, and vice versa. That’s not inherently a bad thing, just a fact that makes Apple’s corporate reputation unique and more challenging to manage. Berkshire Hathaway is in a similar spot with the venerated Mr. Buffet, as was Microsoft as Gates handed off the baton.

Corporate reputation has to outlast management changes. A great leader is focused on what comes after him or her, and making sure the organization is set up for success. No one should be irreplaceable. In fact, part of strong corporate reputation is how well that corporation handles major management and leadership changes. Succession is an emulsifying ingredient to corporate reputation – but perhaps a post for another day.

It’ll be interesting to see how Apple’s reputation evolves in the post-Jobs era.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks Executive Visibility, General Corporate CEO communications, Executive Visibility, Reputation Management

Recently, a friend of mine experienced a leadership transition at work; CEO is leaving, and the replacement is not yet known.

Every PR person’s worst nightmare, right? Conventional wisdom says change is scary. Employees, customers, and suppliers will all be worried. That would be my reaction. I am the person who would rather add on to a house than move, reinvent my job rather than look for a new one. I take comfort in the familiar. And for a long time, I would have subscribed to the conventional wisdom that people fear change.

But the reality is that things change – often dramatically – all the time. People vote for change whenever we elect a candidate who is not the incumbent. People change jobs, and even careers, multiple times in their adulthood. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. And my friend told me that that CEO change barely raised an eyebrow….her colleagues felt that it either wasn’t relevant to them, or that it was time for a change at the top.

Do people really fear change? Or do they just fear the unknown? Is constant change the new familiar? And if so, how does that impact the conventional wisdom of communications?

My thoughts:

1. Trust becomes even more important in an environment where change is the new constant. You don’t have to have all the answers, but your stakeholders need to trust that you will make good decisions. The role of your leaders – and stakeholder trust and confidence in those leaders – is paramount. You can’t build, maintain or preserve reputation without considering and leveraging your leaders.

2. Speed is king. You can’t wait until you have all the answers, because answers change all the time. I’ve said before that in crisis communications 60 seconds in the new “first hour” (the traditional response time that was considered a “best practice”) – I think this holds true for all kinds of news – good, bad or indifferent. People equate speed with transparency, and trust is earned when they hear it from you first.

3. Define the “non-negotiables” – make sure people understand what the commitments and values are that won’t change….these become the “anchors” of their confidence and trust.

4. Seek input and involvement in the process. Change is a lot more fun when you feel you are a part of it, versus something that is happening to you.

I would love to hear what you think. Maybe you will change my point of view.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters General Corporate leadership transition, Reputation Management

To follow up on Carreen’s post from yesterday, I too am a politics junkie. While she used the New Jersey governor’s race as context through which to discuss corporate reputation, there are also lessons from the Virginia governor’s race.

In the Old Dominion, Democrat Creigh Deeds got walloped by Republican Bob McDonnell. There are certainly a lot of reasons why in the midst of a complicated political dynamic. But I’d point to something relatively simple – and striking – that Deeds didn’t do that McDonnell did.

Deeds didn’t tell his audience (voters) why they should be for him in a compelling, resonate way. Instead, he focused on telling them why they should be against McDonnell. And in the end, voters (and people like me following it from out of state) likely didn’t have as clear a picture of Deeds as they did of McDonnell.

The same lesson applies to senior executives, particularly those in hyper-competitive industries and categories. You have to let your stakeholders – customers, consumers, regulators, shareholders, NGOs, media – know what you’re for on a given issue; why what you’re company is doing is deserving of notice; why you are uniquely qualified to solve a problem.

When folks in the communications industry refer to thought leadership, that’s what they mean. Leadership – the stuff of reputations – is not built on talking about the other guy.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks General Corporate Leadership

I admit it…I love election day. In my house, we watch election returns the way some people gear up for watching the Oscars, the World Series or some other major televised event. And while I find the process both fascinating and frustrating, I also find it informative. There are many great lessons to be learned from politics and elections that apply to the practice of corporate communications, particularly executive eminence and reputation.

Recently, I wrote about the value and role of reputation in selecting President Obama for the Nobel Prize. On this post election morning, there is another great lesson to be learned from the change in power in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election: You’ve got to define success in a way that is meaningful to your constituencies.

Experts have been opining all night long about the anti-incumbent sentiment, about the off-year benefits of being from the other party and of course, the economy and taxes. Campaign wranglers are looking at the GOTV efforts, the numbers by county, campaign strategy, who peaked too soon and messaging of the final days. For me, the issue is much simpler. Governor Corzine did not define success, and he did not define himself. His plan, his accomplishments and his leadership were largely defined by others. Chris Christie kept it simple… lower taxes, lower taxes, lower taxes. (Whether he can deliver on that remains to be seen, but he definitely stands for something.)

Here are my five simple rules for defining success:

1. Keep it simple – Your definition of success must be authentic and represent what you stand for and believe in, and it must be relevant to what your constituencies value…what is in it for them?

2. Clearly articulate what each of your audiences can do to contribute to success. Tell them what you will do and what you need them to do.

3. Define how success will be measured, and clearly define the interim steps or benchmarks that will be positive indicators of success. Today, more than ever, your stakeholders want evidence that they should “stay the course” – not just promises of future success. Defining and achieving those benchmarks will become your currency in the future when you ask for their trust.

4. Communicate interim progress – How are we doing so far? And what do we need to do to continue our progress or to correct the course? The environment can change very rapidly and demonstrating the ability to adapt and remain successful builds trust and confidence in your leadership.

5. Celebrate success. It is OK to take credit for what goes well and to share that credit with your team.

Rinse and repeat. Success must be continually defined and re-defined.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate Leadership, Reputation Management

The new GM chairman, Ed Whitacre, has taken to the picture box as the face of the embattled auto-maker in what is part of a bigger plan to, if not restore GM to its former glory, at least begin winning back consumer confidence and sell some rides.

I’m not commenting on Whitacre’s performance. We (the U.S. taxpayer) paid for the ad, and I think it’s kinda cool that I was a silent producer on the project. But it got me thinking about the broader philosophy of using the top boss as spokesperson in the media – not just in the cocoon of advertising where do-overs are allowed -particularly when things are tough. Like most things in the reputation management world, there are no easy answers as to whether you use the chairman or CEO or not. The answer is almost always “it depends.”

In either an urgent crisis or slow-burning attack on reputation, sometimes bringing out the big gun escalates rather than mitigates a situation. You might want to hold him or her back for later use. Sometimes you need the authority only a CEO-type can lend to put a quicker end to media frenzy. Sometimes you want to put the executive front and center, but have to weight it against their lack of the presence or preparedness needed to be an effective spokesperson. And sometimes the top executive should comment on a matter simply because it’s the right thing to do, when it otherwise would look like he or she is hiding from a precarious circumstance. There are a lot of variables to be sure and such a decision has strategic implications for communicators.

In cases like GM’s, where the very efficacy of the company is in question, demonstrating competent (or at least the perception of competence) and resolute management can go a long way to rebuilding a damaged reputation. Of course, communicating those qualities at all times is what helps fortify corporate reputation against damage in the first place.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks Executive Visibility, General Corporate Executive Visibility, Leadership, rebuilding reputation

I’ve had a lot of opportunity this fall to talk to friends and colleagues about life, the economy and work these days as I stand at various fields and courts to watch my children’s sports. Regardless of industry or company size, I hear a lot about employee morale as an issue facing leaders at all levels. Workplaces are difficult. The economy is challenging. And employees are feeling the pressure. And I frequently hear comments about the need for “better communications” to combat employee morale.

Indeed, employee engagement – the buzz phrase of choice for employee communications these days – is a hot topic. On any given week, articles are written in various trade journals, in the PR industry and in the industries of many of my clients. What they all overlook is one simple fact:

Communications – no matter how artfully designed and executed – will not remedy bad decisions.

And every company, even the best company, will sometimes make a bad decision. The best way to fix a problem like that is to actually fix the problem. Employees are much more interested in our actions than our words…and in the face of enormous anxiety and skepticism, words alone can be downright suspect.

This is not to say that an unpopular decision is a bad one. Sometimes, a good decision can be unpopular, disruptive and difficult. And in those cases, effective communications can make that information more palatable, easier to understand or even understandable. In these cases great communications can make a world of difference.

Employee communications is one of my passions. Nothing makes me happier than hearing a company say they want to do a better job at employee engagement. But it isn’t pixie dust.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters Employee Engagement employee communication, Leadership

Today’s Wall Street Journal takes another in a recent series of looks at the way in which digital media is reshaping the way businesses manage their reputation and react and respond to their customers and stakeholders. Seemingly small issues online are combustible PR problems if not attended to properly, we are demonstrably warned over and over, and this article shows some companies doing the digital thing right.

Domino’s learned the lesson the hard way just a few months ago. But, it seems more and more companies are striving to avoid such a fate by ramping up their social media bona fides.

Coca-Cola is taking a step that, I’m guessing, might give other companies’ executives (and maybe PR staff) heartburn. Coke is rolling out a training program that will school marketing, public affairs, and legal staff on social media, allowing them to post to social media sites – in essence, represent the company on Twitter, Facebook and the like – without needing permission to do so. I think that’s smart, within reason.  

It’s smart because it recognizes the greater trend – we are approaching a time when every employee must be responsible to some degree for the reputation of their company. Reputation managers need speed and agility, need to be in a position to actually solve customer/stakeholder problems when warranted, and need to train others throughout their organization on what to look for online and how.

PR departments must empower colleagues to solve minor online complications on their own as they spot them. The digital world simply moves too fast and with too impossible a volume for a small team to mitigate every snag.

However, I do wonder how much is too much. In the race for companies to show how attentive and attune they are, are we forgetting the bigger picture? Does every complaining Tweet  - let’s face it, some can be downright silly – warrant a response? Part of the communications team’s charge is to help shape their company’s message and narrative for all the audiences that matter to them; to tell a unique but strategic story; to draw out into the light those qualities for which their brand wants to be known. Every Tweet must be made with that in mind.

Michael Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks Social Media Social Media

Rumors of the death of The Employee Free Choice Act have been greatly exaggerated.    Today’s New York Times discussed further changes to the bill, including possibly dropping the “card check” provision of the legislation.  But before employers take a victory lap, read carefully.  

For sure, the card check provision -  which has been a central plank of the legislation and would have eliminated secret ballot elections by automatically certifying a union – was a huge concern for employers, and even called un-Democratic for the lack of privacy in voting.  But removal of this provision comes with other compromises - including possibly barring companies from holding mandatory employee meetings during an organizing campaigns, and requiring elections in a very fast timeframe after cards are signed.  It also may be required for Companies to allow organizing right on their property.   These compromises are still significant changes that fundamentally alter the dynamics of organizing efforts.

What does this mean for employers?

• You MUST have a direct relationship with your employees….which included interactive exchange and conversation – not just “messages.” Employees need to understand the benefit to them of a direct relationship with their employer
• Difficult decisions, and those that have an impact on employees, need to be communicated and “sold” – not just implemented.
• Employees must feel they are getting a fair deal…it isn’t enough to treat them fairly – they need to believe and acknowledge that they are being treated fairly.
• You need a campaign in a box before the organizers arrive – this enables you to act quickly to build on your foundation of “exchange” and educate employees before they have to make a choice that will impact them – and you – forever.

Unions count on the fact that big corporations aren’t nimble, and can respond with speed and effectiveness.   The time to think about creating a better foundational relationship with your workplace is now.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com

cwinters Employee Engagement Employees, Labor Relations

If you missed the coverage yesterday, Johnson & Johnson’s response to FDA warnings on the dangers of excessive acetaminophen use and its calls for ‘extra strength’ doses to be available by prescription only was a great example of aggressive issues management. 

Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol, one of J&J’s biggest sellers.  Rather than assume a defensive posture, go dark and avoid the issue or contest the FDA’s claims with a torrent of scientific facts and figures, J&J took a clear and simple stand.  They took out full-page ads in USA Today, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others clearly stating that Tylenol is “the safest brand of pain reliever you can choose”…”if you take more than the recommended dose…you can cause serious liver injury.”

It is refreshing to see a company which has specifically told us how to use their product, stand their ground and hold consumers accountable for their own actions.  If the box says take two…and not to exceed a certain number of doses per day…and you proceed to down half a bottle like they were jelly beans…guess what, you did it to yourself. 

In a perfect world all manufacturers would have products as well-tested as Tylenol and all packaging would include directions as crystal clear as those that J&J provides.  In that same perfect world consumers would actually read the directions and abide by them.  Making something as simple as Extra Strength Tylenol available only by prescription really doesn’t solve the obvious problem here – consumers need to start taking responsibility for their own actions and ownership of the outcomes.  After all, once the CVS pharmacist hands you a full bottle of prescription-grade acetaminophen – you know, the one with the big words on it that says “TAKE TWO” just like the current packaging says -isn’t it still in the hands of the consumer to actually use some common sense.

Bravo to J&J for taking a stand.  Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.  Most people shun accountability and lawyers abound.  It shouldn’t take long for someone with liver ailments or an aggressive attorney to start dreaming of a new in-ground pool or trip to Paris financed by a class action lawsuit.  Perhaps one day it will dawn on us that “consumer rights” don’t include the right to avoid responsibility.

msacks Crisis Communications Crisis

From my colleague, Michael Sacks:

In this volatile business climate, every perceived misspent dollar or undeserved bonus is met with hostility and every corporate move is dissected and scrutinized to identify malfeasance or just plain stupidity. Today, protecting or rebuilding reputation can feel like a Sisyphusian task. Threats to reputation both lurk quietly and loom large.

In an effort to provide some practical help, June’s issue of the McKinsey Quarterly asserts that rebuilding corporate reputation must be achieved through more that “traditional PR tactics,” and swipes at the outmoded idea of “spinning” problems away.

A more nuanced strategy is required, the authors posit. This strategy must be multi-disciplinary and cross-functional internally, and must engage a variety of external stakeholders beyond the consumer and traditional media – NGOs, advocacy groups, grassroots supporters, bloggers, community influencers, and more. As my boss and editor-in-chief of this blog would say, you need a strategic “circle of friends” to help tell you story during a crisis. Undeniably true and invariably useful. And savvy communications counselors have always known and practiced this.

In the main, the article is correct – a company needs many more reputation protectors than a small marketing and public relations department. Colleagues from across an organization and across business units must be able to recognize threats – right in front of them or 100 miles down the road – and understand the reputational impact they can have. External friends must point out gaps in word and deed.

But one of the article’s fundamental assumptions doesn’t account for a very real and very active threat to reputation: the motivated adversary. The authors write much about “getting your side of the story out” and spreading “positive messages” when confronted with serious threats, particularly in the media. The assumption here is that a company can meet serious, if not legitimate, criticisms by simply proclaiming, Yeah but look at all the good stuff we’re doing! It also assumes that ardent critics have open minds and can be persuaded. More often than not, this just isn’t the case.

No amount of positive messaging is going to pacify those with entrenched and principled disagreements with a company’s actions. Advocacy organizations dedicated to organic food and healthful eating simply aren’t going to be on board with Fast Food Chain X. Greenpeace will not be persuaded that Oil Company Y is good for the environment.

Where companies can discredit critics, they should. Where there is a legitimate deficiency outed, companies should fix it. Over time, doing the right thing – and communicating it authentically – wins friends. “Getting positive messages out” doesn’t. Wal-Mart, as an example, was long a favorite target of environmental activist groups. Recognizing that it could do better, Wal-Mart stepped its game up, made a real commitment to sustainability, communicated it effectively, and now stands among the world’s enterprise leaders in responsible environmental stewardship.

Winning hearts and minds is nice, but not always in the cards. Sometimes, getting an opponent to leave you alone is the most prudent and best outcome.

Michael Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com

msacks General Corporate Corporate Reputation

Pleased to see the following news from our CEO, Michael Kempner:

MWW Group: CarbonFree for Three Years Running

I am very pleased to report that MWW Group is once again CarbonFree through our partnership with Carbonfund.org, a leader in carbon reduction and offset solutions. For the past three years, MWW Group has offset the total carbon emissions of its operations, roughly 4,600 metric tons of C02 (2009 certificate below) for that three-year period. That’s an amazing amount, particularly for an organization of our size. It represents more than 10 million pounds of C02, the emissions equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil or taking 850 cars off the road for a year. And while the entire MWW Group team can take pride in this accomplishment, we’re by no means finished.

As an organization we believe that without a well-trained workforce, the promise of clean energy is unattainable. Therefore in 2009 and beyond, MWW Group will extend its partnership with Carbonfund.org and support specific, verifiable renewable energy projects that create the infrastructure and skills necessary to drive a global, clean energy economy and further reduce carbon emissions. This year MWW Group will support the Iowa Lakes Wind Energy and Turbine Program, an initiative of Iowa Lakes Community College responding to the growing demand for skilled technicians who can install, maintain, and service modern wind turbines. Information on the program can be found here x men origins download download dragonball evolution dvd .

taken online

MWW Group remains firmly committed to doing our part to protect and preserve the environment. We challenge our peers in the industry, as well as our clients and partners, to join with us in this important work, or to adopt your own programs to help bring about a clean energy economy.

msacks MWW Group Green, Sustainability

In today’s marketplace, tangible commitments to protecting the environment are rapidly becoming the ‘greens fees’ for doing business. Whether it be introducing environmentally-friendly products and processes, reducing carbon footprints or assuming cradle-to-grave responsibility for the items you sell, environmental considerations have permeated every aspect of business. So too, they increasingly color how audiences evaluate your organization.

Environmental responsibility is a building block of corporate reputation and a key component of much-heralded “Most Admired” and “Best Places to Work” surveys. It impacts everything from consumer brand preference, purchase decisions and employee retention, to partnership opportunities, analyst perceptions and investor confidence. Strong environmental initiatives can be leveraged to establish leadership positioning among peers. They can also build goodwill among constituencies which help mitigate the impact of the inevitable crises.

Publicizing your organization’s strong environmental record and progress towards improvement goals is absolutely critical, as is the ability to market differentiated products and services that address customers’ environmental priorities or that enables consumers to enjoy a “green” lifestyle. The challenge: executing reputation-boosting environmental communications initiatives without crossing into “greenwashing” territory.

The line between credibly reporting environmental achievements and running afoul of environmental watchdogs varies widely from product-to-product and industry-to-industry. There are no secret formulas, no silver bullets. There are, however, several principals that can be applied to help you steer clear of trouble:

Leadership Required: Accepting an organization’s claim that the environment is a high priority is significantly easier when senior executive ownership is clearly evident…and the closer to the C-suite the better. Vesting responsibility for environmental initiatives in your marketing team sends is a clear tip-off that organizational commitment goes only as far as the annual marcom budget will take it. In many cases, senior-level ownership also provides a spokesperson capable of telling the organizations environmental story to media and through thought leadership efforts.

Authenticity Matters: While ‘doing the right thing’ is noble, most audiences understand what being a ‘for-profit’ organization entails. Confidently link environmental responsibility and value creation. Align your environmental initiatives with your core business and communicate how those efforts boost performance, whether by driving sales, minimizing expenses or strengthening relationships.

Embrace the Process, Communicate Your Progress: Being “Green” or environmentally responsible is a continuous improvement process, not a journey to a fixed destination. Identify your path and the key milestones along the way and regularly report on your progress. Transparency in reporting is critical as your audience is savvy and certainly capable of seeing though hollow claims masquerading as fact-based progress reports.

Less is More: It is not necessary to change the world all at once…nor is it possible. Identify the environmental issues your organization is facing and on which real progress can be made. Tackle those and report progress on a regular basis. As momentum is achieved, begin adding additional issues to be addressed. Engagement at all levels of your organization and confidence in the process will be aided by early wins.

Engage Your Ambassadors: If your environmental story falls on deaf ears internally it will be an uphill battle to sell it to the outside world. Promote active employee engagement in environmental initiatives and create pride in the organization’s progress. Engage partners and customers where possible. You will be rewarded with a cadre of supportive storytellers more than happy to spread the message of the organization’s good works.

msacks Sustainability Corporate Reputation, Green, Greenwashing

I was asked recently if recessionary pressures were killing social responsibility initiatives at companies struggling to hit their quarterly numbers, and by default triggering the demise of socially-responsible investing.  I don’t believe so.

Companies realize that past statements of corporate commitment would come back to haunt them, and the respect of employees, customers and others would be erodede, if they ran from their stated responsibility initiatives when money got tight.  And, so long as social responsibility is alive and well in the private sector and environmental issues continue to get top billing in the national dialogue, socially-responsible investment opportunties should continue to flourish.

As Brian Baskin’s wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal, social responsibility is still attractive to investors:

Investors, it seems, still have a proclivity toward good.   So notes Ingrid Saukaitis Dyott, co-manager of Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive Fund (symbol: NBSRX), who says that the economic downturn hasn’t hurt interest in socially responsible investing.

The Socially Responsive Fund is still seeing investor inflows despite the global economic downturn, Ms. Dyott says. Hard times can bring out the best in investors and companies, she said, noting that funds didn’t yield to pressure after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when some called for screens blocking investment in weapons companies to be dropped.

“At that time more than ever clients committed to our values,” Ms. Dyott says. “A horrific event doesn’t mean people re-evaluate their values.” 

The fund’s focus has worked well this year. While the fund is up 0.1% as of Thursday, in comparison the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is down 5.2%.”

msacks CSR Corporate Reputation, Sustainability

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A family vacation last week enabled me to catch up on my reading, including Fortune’s list of Most Admired Companies.  Billed as “the definitive report card on corporate reputations,” it’s only right we discuss it here. 

It’s always interesting to see which companies move up, fall down or appear for the first time, and attempt to interpret the root causes of changing positions.  In recent years I’ve noticed the “intangible” categories increasingly impacting positions on the list.  This year that impact appears even greater. 

An old business maxim dictated that influencers focused 80% of their attention on “the business”: asset utilization, competitiveness, financial performance, etc., and the other 20% was for those ’softer’ activities – thought leadership, corporate responsibility, brand development.  This year’s list shows that the ratio is more like 60/40, at least in terms of the elements we consider to be part and parcel of a strong reputation.  In some cases the ratio seems closer to 50/50.  In other words, influencers now give quite a bit of weight to things beyond the balance sheet, particularly when balance sheets are in disarray amidst today’s recession. 

I’m not suggesting companies should abandon focus on the bottom line in favor of the intangibles.  What I am suggesting is that companies are realizing that marketing the intangibles of reputation can in some cases be just as critical to long-term success.  Take Apple, which comes in at the top spot as the Most Admired Company. Apple ranked lower in categories like “Global Competitiveness” and “Long Term Investment” but did very well in the likes of “Innovation” and “People Management.”  Of course, part of Apple’s reputation comes from that of Steve Jobs – the very name is synonymous with innovation – and the brand awareness generated from its iPod publicity machine doesn’t hurt. 

Numerous other companies saw a jump up the rankings on the strength of intangibles like social responsibility, increasingly an aspect of a company’s personality scrutinized by consumers, customers, investors, and shareholders alike.

The trick to a potent reputation (and doing well on Most Admired rankings) is striking the right balance between the tangible and intangible…and between investor relations and reputation management.  There is no magic formula or ratio, but determining what is important to each of a company’s constituencies is a good place to start.

msacks General Corporate Corporate Brand, Corporate Reputation

PR Week (UK) reported yesterday that Microsoft will be “slashing” the PR budgets for its corporate social responsibility activities “in favour of driving awareness for key products such as Windows 7, Office and Xbox,” and that “the company was looking to ‘protect its business lines first’ – in response to this year’s economic upheaval.”

They noted that “across Europe and the UK, it is thought as much as a quarter of Microsoft’s citizenship PR spend is being shelved. Similar cuts have been made in Asia, while a source said pullbacks in global and US budgets were imminent.” 

Microsoft’s PR director said the claims were incorrect and that CSR communications remains an important focus area for the company.  Even still, their agencies in Europe and the UK are none too happy.  One “agency source involved in the process” said that budget cuts on the CSR front will ”hit hard at Mic­rosoft’s reputation as a committed advocate of long-term CSR policies.”

The article goes on to say, “Microsoft account dir­ectors at key agencies said specific programmes affected by the PR cuts include the Imagine Cup student technology competition and CSR work around human trafficking. Other PR budgets under threat include the BizSpark initiative that pairs start-ups with Microsoft software, and the Unlimited Potential community technology programme. ‘These initiatives will definitely happen, but PR support will go down, and a lot of the stories are driven by PR outreach,’ said a source.

It seems to me that the unnamed agency sources griping about cuts are missing a couple of key points. 

First off, corproate social responsibility is about outcomes, not outputs.  Microsoft isn’t cutting the actual socially-responsible programs or abandoning their commitment to community and environmental initaitives, they’re reducing the investment they make in getting credit for those good works.  25% fewer press releases, media hits, etc. doesn’t make the actual CSR activity any less effective, it just reduces the “look at me” factor. 

Second, a good PR team could turn the fact that even amidst the current economic ice age, Microsoft is maintaining its commitment to the environment and the community.  Facing the need to reduce expeditures associated with CSR, Microsoft weighed the importance of ‘looking good’ and ‘doing good’ and decided the later was far more important.   Sounds like the right decision to me…perhaps even a bit noble.

A bit of advice for the agency exec offering up pearls of wisdom on how hard a PR budget reduction will hit their client’s ”reputation as a committed advocate of long-term CSR policies”…be very glad you’re not losing 100% of the budget.  There are plenty of other agencies willing to take over that assignment at the reduced budget level, and who could enhance and extend Microsoft’s reputation as a CSR advocate regardless.

msacks CSR Corporate Reputation

Just days after the President’s latest address, the seemingly singular focus on the economy has given way to a broader agenda -and the presumed “back burner” priorities such as healthcare and the Employee Free Choice Act are once again front and center.

Thus far much of the debate around Employee Free Choice has centered around the pro’s and cons of the legislation with a recent report dominating the news suggesting that an employee has a one in four chance of being fired for union activity.

Whatever your politics, this is a game-changer.  And whether the Act as it is currently written ultimately passes or not, one thing is crystal clear – organized labor is re-asserting its relevance in a way we haven’t seen in generations.  This should serve as a wake-up call to corporate leaders and managers everywhere. 

At the heart of the decision to seek third party representation is the employees’ relationship with management.  Is there mutual trust and respect?  Do employees have a voice?  Are their concerns taken seriously?  Do they get a “fair shake?”   If the answer to these questions is yes, the issue of EFCA is academic.  But if the answer is no, you need to take an honest look at your policies and your employee communications.  (Whether your EOS data will actually answer those questions is another topic for another day…too many of those surveys are designed to demonstrate that HR is doing a great job, rather than truly measuring employee opinion.  But I digress).

For sure, the issue of employee policies is key….no amount of access to management and no fancy newsletter will make employees feel good about lousy policies.  But the idea that employees only care about themselves is as outdated and untrue as the idea that CEO’s only care about profits.

In its simplest form, this is a communications problem.  Employees at all levels need to support the Company’s goals, and see their own success as intrinsically tied to their employer’s success.  This requires an understanding of the overall priorities, process for decisions, and when an unpopular decision is made the context and benefits of making that hard decision.   In the current climate, where fear of unemployment is at an all time high (reports the Associated Press) many employees are willing to sacrifice short term or personal gain for the longer term benefit of the enterprise…but only if they are actively engaged and committed to a shared vision, and believe that there will be shared benefits later.   

The good news is that actively engaging your employees now – which requires an emotional connection between the employee and the Company – has an urgent an immediate benefit to the Company, beyond smooth labor relations.   Employees who are engaged are better informed, less fearful and more likely to alert you to issues before they become big problems.  They are more likely to deliver the kind of service that helps you win and keep customers in this environment.  They are a competitive advantage, in any industry.   

So regardless of your point of view about EFCA, and the labor questions being played out in dueling op-eds and by television talking heads, make employee communications a priority.  

Not sure where to begin?  Start by listening.  But start today.  Tomorrow may be too late.

Carreen Winters / cwinters@mww.com

cwinters Employee Engagement Internal Communications, Labor Relations

The benefit of working with a solid team of corporate communications counselors is the constant exposure to broad expertise, experiences and opinions.  Periodically my non-blogging colleagues may contribute thoughts to Reputation Premium.  When they do, I will include their name and email address at the end of the post should you wish to contact them directly – Matt

What’s In A Name?

Do you remember the days when Employee Communications was simply that employee communications?    Well that nomenclature soon gave way to a variety of terms – Employee Relations, and the latest term of art – Employee Engagement.

At first blush it might seem like some mid-level person in a cubicle in corporate-land decided that he or she was under-appreciated…inventing a loftier sounding phrase was an easy path to respect, appreciation, even admiration.

But the reality is that this is more than just a change in nomenclature…the evolution of the terms reflects an increased understanding of the importance of the employees to the success of an enterprise. 

Communications suggests one-way delivery of messages….we talk…you listen.  This worked great in the era of the Company Man, tirelessly working for his retirement luncheon and gold watch.  But as employees found themselves in the driver’s seat it became increasingly clear that both parties had some skin in the game, and that in order to keep the best and the brightest talent there is indeed a relationship – a two way street of sorts.  So on the heels of employee relations we saw programs like flex-time, company sponsored training, creative approaches to the workplace that allowed for telecommuting, job sharing and countless other innovations.

Most recently, the concept of employee relations  gave way to Employee Engagement….and with it the implication that the employment relationship should be more than a series of great dates.  It requires an emotional vesting in the job, and for companies in the employees.  And with that investment comes a longer  term commitment, yielding numerous benefits to the Company and rewarding careers for the employees.   It’s finally gotten personal.  Some argue that this was driven largely by the war for talent and the cost of turnover.  And this may be true for some organizations.  But for many companies, the driver of Employee Engagement is more about the benefits to all parties, most notably customers.

It will be interesting to see whose commitments to Employee Engagement remain intact in this market.  For those who mistakenly believe that the current economy gives employers license to back away from employee communications and engagement – think again.    I love the way the Gallup Management Journal put it:  “In bad times, employee engagement means the difference between surviving, or not.”

So unless you are planning to go out of business….get engaged…and keep your employees engaged.  Start today.

Carreen Winters / cwinters@mww.com

cwinters Employee Engagement Employees, Internal Communications

A recent Harvard Business Review article on effective strategies for a smooth CEO transition retells an old joke:

The new CEO asks the departing CEO for advice. The outgoing says there are three envelopes in the desk, and the newbie should open them as crises hits.  Sure enough, the first crisis hits, and the new CEO opens the first note which reads:  ”Blame your predecessor.”  The next crisis hits and the second message read: “Reorganize.” A year after that, a third crisis hits and the CEO opens the final envelope, which plaintively instructs him to: “Prepare three envelopes.”

For all companies, CEO transitions are a risky time, ripe with difficulties and innumerable variables. Is the departing CEO gracefully taking retirement, or quickly getting the boot on the heels of a scandal?  By picking a certain candidate for the job, which others were spurned? What do the most important investors think? What is the level of expectation for the new guy or gal?

Protecting corporate reputation during this process is critical. Do it correctly and praise (along HBR case studies) is yours.  Do it wrong and the reverberations may cause problems for months…even years. Communicating a clear, consistent message to the media, to employees, to shareholders and investors is a simple but sound strategy.

The HBR article rightly points out that during this time, the departing CEO should let the next CEO own the public face of the company.  Executing on this can be far more difficult and no transition is without missteps.   Leaks from unnamed and disaffected sources make print. Reporters covering it like a horse race – who’s in the lead, who’s behind. Investors with shaken confidence looking for the door.

This is acutely so in the event a venerated leader exist the stage. Such was the case when Jack Welch turned over GE’s reins to Jeffery Immelt.  A leader like Welch, the media breathlessly speculated, was impossible to replace, and the unlucky soul tapped to replace him would face a steep climb.   More recent examples of this ‘irreplaceable leader’ phenomenon – Gates-Balmer at Microsoft, or Lee-Duke at Wal-Mart.

The thing about transitions is that if they are done correctly and communicated effectively, they can reinforce notions of operational excellence and superb leadership development. Stakeholders of all stripes abhor confusion – they want to know who is in charge.  Make the message about that.

msacks Executive Visibility Leadership, Transition

In late-2007 I participated on a panel at E&Y’s annual clean tech conference.  As it closed we made predictions on the future of “green” as a marketing concept and business driver.  My prediction was that “green” will fade from vogue and be replaced by the broader platform of “sustainability.”

Yes, environmental responsibility is vital, but so too is social and economic responsibility.  A reduced carbon footprint doesn’t absolve corporations that avail themselves of child labor or deceive investors.  And, from a marketing perspective, “green” is limiting whereas “sustainability” delivers scale by binding together good works across the corporation.  As the regulatory environment evolves and standards are established, “green” will lose its effectiveness in the marketplace.

Clearly, I didn’t spark a revolution with my pearls of wisdom.  There wasn’t a mad rush to de-green advertising and marketing campaigns…at least not that I noticed.  Was nobody listening?  Could I have been wrong?  Perhaps if “sustainability” looked better on T-shirts…

This morning I was pleased to see an Environmental Leader editorial by John Rooks, president of THE SOAP Group, called More on the Color of Sustainability.  Rooks and Adam Werbach, Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, have a running debate on the value of colors to social movements – think the Green Party or the Orange Revolution – and where we go from “green.”  Rooks wrote:

When Adam writes that we need to move beyond Green, he is right. But moving it to Blue is only a temporary fix – a branding and design project, an opportunity to differentiate it for a while; an academic exercise for branding geeks like me.

The beneficial business movement does need to shake free of Green – yes.  Shaking into a new color is one possible strategy. But dropping the concept of color altogether and making sustainability ubiquitous – therefore invisible – might be even cooler.

Movements are hegemonic forces of swelling ground and visceral rally cries and the color assumes the cause (not the other way). And they can all be derailed through propaganda.  So, Ok, I give, I give.  Make it Blue.  I really don’t care what color it is.  But as long as it is painted veneer, it can be counterfeited.  Get ready for a new trend of bluewashing.

Seems to me that companies thinking now about what they’ll do after the “green” revolution…and then taking an active role in shaping the vocabulary of the next revolution – sustainability…will be the winners in the long run.

msacks Sustainability Corporate Brand, Green, Sustainability

On January 15th we witnessed commercial aviation history and saw first-hand the dynamics of crisis communications in today’s digitally-enhanced communications environment. 

Just before 3:30 pm Flight 1549 skimmed to a stop in the middle of the Hudson and immediately became the focal point of a squadron of news helicopters and scores of observers armed with every digital toy known to man.  Within minutes Tweets were flying, bloggers were posting and video was streaming across the Net.

Three hours later the ether was awash in coverage of Flight 1549 – over a quarter million Web pages highlighting the incident, several thousand related Twitter posts, nearly 3,000 stories from media outlets, over 400 blog posts, some 1,500 videos available online. ..all of this plus the expected deluge of coverage from traditional media channels.

The pace at which the news spread was as startling as the potential for catastrophic reputation damage had the landing gone differently.  What could have been a reputation nightmare for US Airways instead turned into something very different thanks to Flight 1549’s heroic pilot and crew.  As far as crises go, this was a “best case” scenario but few organizations get so lucky when crises hits.

Following the incident I wrote a white paper looking at the timeline of events during the early hours following Flight 1549’s miraculous landing.  From a communications perspective all did not go smoothly that afternoon and there is much to learn. You can download the white paper here.

msacks Crisis Communications Airline, Crisis, Social Media