Corporations across the country are closed today to celebrate Labor Day, the unofficial close of summer. Last Friday likely marked the last Summer Friday of the year for those companies that still, in these tough times, offer such perks benefits to their employees. But, after this difficult year, as we celebrate with friends and families, it’s wise to realize just how far we’ve come from that first Labor Day “parade” in 1882…and how far we still need to go.

128 years ago, Peter McGuire and 100,000 workers took to the street to demand better working wages, more reasonable work days and safer work conditions. More strike than parade, this uprising put the conditions facing workers out in front of the public in a manner that demanded change and attention. And it worked. Shorter work days, safer workplaces, better pay all came to be. Legislation that resulted in OSHA took just short of a century to follow but for most, the workplace became a better place.

In recent years, focus on corporate reputation and a desire to win the talent wars — a byproduct of a robust economy — had led companies to vie for “best place to work” status. From a greater sensitivity to diversity and inclusion to on-site masseuses and lactation stations, Corporate America had put “keeping talent” high on the list of items necessary for a sustainable business and strong corporate reputation.

Today, in a tougher economy, where keeping staff seems less of a concern, it is tempting to forgo the niceties that were adopted to keep employees happy. It is tempting for a business to demand longer work hours when operating “lean and mean” to save costs. Forgoing the company summer outing is an obvious way to save dollars when things are tight.
But, to maintain talent and a reputation as a place that the best want to work, as the economy turns around, it will be critical for businesses to remember why Peter McGuire and others marched in that first Labor Day parade.

Exploding oil rigs that put workers lives at risk, collapsing mines and trapped miners, and scientific studies that show that those with jobs today are more likely to die young than the unemployed, remind us that at the heart of any business are its people.

Protecting and nurturing them is the best way to sustain a strong business and a healthy reputation amongst workers, customers and communities.

awadler General Corporate, Uncategorized Corporate Reputation, Labor Day, Labor Relations

We all know that a corporate reputation can get hammered at light speed six ways from Sunday, thanks to the explosive, viral nature of social media. But I’ll bet none of us saw this one coming.

An executive assistant quits her job using a dry erase board, digital photos and a wicked sense of irony and humor. In doing so, she calls out her boss for lots of bad behavior – including wasting most of his work week playing FarmVille.

Details are sketchy so far, but given that the story of Jenny the HPOA appeared this morning on TechCrunch, it’s only a matter of time before we know all about Jenny, her former boss Spenser and the name of the brokerage firm where Spenser works.

Reputational danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

Elsewhere on this blog, my colleague Carreen Winters has catalogued a variety of situations that can trigger the need for a company’s crisis response. Now she can add “angry executive assistant armed with a whiteboard” to the list.

bsilver Employee Engagement, General Corporate Corporate Reputation, Crisis Response, employee communications

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’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

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

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

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