How to Know If Your Corporate Reputation Needs Fixing

When you’re in PR, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day dramas, crises and opportunities, and to lose sight of big picture. The name for that big picture is “reputation management.”

Essentially, reputation management is everything you do over the long-term to protect, enhance and burnish your company’s reputation. It’s not something you can do once you’re being attacked or on the defensive over a crisis, and it’s not something that lends itself to quick fixes.

That’s probably why, in the latest Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient (RQ) survey, 71% of those surveyed had a poor impression of corporate America. Furthermore, Americans said the overall reputation of corporate America has declined a little (33%) or a lot (18%) over the past year, while only 11% say that it has improved.

You can download a PDF of the survey results here at Harris Interactive.

Why worry about corporate reputation? As Harris notes in its survey, “a strong relationship exists between a company’s overall reputation and the likelihood of purchasing and recommending a company’s products and services.” And, “the stronger a company’s overall reputation the greater likelihood of the general public investing or recommending investment in the company.”

So — what can you do? Amanda Duckworth, a partner in the San Francisco office of Brunswick, one of the leading reputation management consulting firms, says that companies who are complacent about their reputations are the first ones who may find themselves in trouble when a crisis hits. “The key is to never get too confident, and to always have the wisdom to second-guess yourself.”

Duckworth says it’s important to keep track of how outsiders view your reputation and not rely on a purely internal feedback. “Periodic research with critical audiences — investors, media, customers, employees and other influencers — to get data on external perceptions and how people respond to messages and communications is essential. Armed with this feedback, you can ensure you’re communicating the right information at the right time to preserve respect and trust in a company. It sounds obvious, but very few companies make a habit of good research practices.”