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