🆘Crisis Management Unit 12 – Reputation Management and Recovery

What's Reputation Management?

• Reputation management involves actively influencing stakeholder perceptions and public conversations about an organization and its brands
• Includes monitoring perceptions and conversations, responding to reputation threats, proactively seeding positive messages, and cultivating thought leadership
• Spans multiple disciplines including public relations, marketing, customer experience, and corporate communications
• Increasingly important in the digital age where information spreads rapidly and negative sentiment can quickly escalate
• Key goal is building reputational resilience - the ability to bounce back from negative events and maintain stakeholder trust
  • Requires a proactive, strategic approach to reputation management
  • Involves identifying potential risks and having response plans in place
• Reputation management is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix for a crisis situation
• When done effectively, reputation management creates a bank of goodwill to draw on in challenging times (reputational capital)

Why Reputation Matters

• Reputation is one of an organization's most valuable intangible assets
  • Impacts customer loyalty, employee retention, investor confidence, and more
  • Affects bottom line: companies with excellent reputations outperform rivals by 2.5x on average
• Strong reputations create competitive advantage by making an organization the preferred choice for customers, employees, suppliers, and partners
• Positive reputation fosters trust and credibility with stakeholders
  • Makes stakeholders more likely to give an organization the benefit of the doubt in a crisis
  • Enables organizations to charge premium prices and attract top talent
• Conversely, reputational damage can have severe consequences
  • Loss of market share, plummeting stock price, difficulty attracting employees
  • Can take years to fully recover from a major reputation hit
• In today's transparent, connected world, reputation can be made or broken almost instantly
  • Social media enables rapid spread of both positive and negative information
  • Stakeholders expect swift, authentic responses to concerns and criticisms
• Proactively managing reputation is essential for long-term organizational success and resilience

Common Reputation Threats

• Product failures or recalls that raise questions about quality and safety
  • Example: Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery fires and eventual recall
• Data breaches that expose customer information and break trust
  • Equifax data breach impacted 147 million consumers
• Executive misconduct or scandal that damages leadership credibility
  • Charges of improper workplace behavior against former McDonald's CEO
• Negative customer experiences that go viral on social media
  • United Airlines passenger removal video viewed millions of times
• Employee activism over social issues or company policies
  • Google employee walkouts protesting handling of sexual misconduct allegations
• Supply chain issues like worker exploitation or environmental damage
  • Reports of poor working conditions at Apple's Chinese suppliers
• Offensive or inappropriate marketing content
  • Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner accused of trivializing Black Lives Matter
• Failure to meet evolving social expectations around issues like diversity and sustainability
  • Brands called out for lack of diversity in leadership and advertising

Building a Strong Reputation

• Develop a clear, authentic corporate narrative that articulates the organization's mission, values and unique value proposition
  • Consistently communicate and reinforce this narrative across all touchpoints
• Deliver high-quality products and services that meet or exceed customer expectations
  • Stand behind offerings with strong warranties and customer support
• Treat employees well and create a positive, inclusive workplace culture
  • Engaged employees become powerful brand ambassadors
• Be a good corporate citizen by supporting social causes and minimizing negative environmental impacts
  • Align philanthropic and sustainability efforts with core business
• Cultivate thought leadership by openly sharing expertise and insights
  • Establish key spokespeople as go-to experts on industry issues
• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders including customers, employees, investors, and influencers
  • Regularly seek out and act on stakeholder feedback
• Communicate transparently and authentically, even about difficult issues
  • Explain the rationale behind decisions that may be unpopular
• Deliver on brand promises and admitted shortcomings quickly
  • Establish a track record of accountability and follow-through

Monitoring Your Reputation

• Regularly assess current reputation using surveys, focus groups, and interviews with key stakeholders
  • Measure perceptions on key reputational attributes like trust, admiration, and overall esteem
• Monitor traditional and social media for brand mentions and sentiment
  • Track volume, reach, and tone of conversations across all channels
  • Use social listening tools to identify trending topics and influencers
• Watch for early warning signs of potential reputation threats
  • Sudden dips in customer satisfaction or employee morale
  • Increase in negative reviews or customer complaints
  • Critical comments from industry analysts or influencers
• Monitor competitors' reputations and benchmark performance
  • Assess how you stack up on key reputational attributes
  • Identify opportunities to differentiate based on competitors' weaknesses
• Establish KPIs and dashboards to track reputation over time
  • Share insights with cross-functional leaders to inform strategies
• Have a crisis radar to rapidly identify and escalate serious reputational threats
  • Clearly defined criteria for what constitutes a reputational crisis
  • Roles and notification protocols for crisis response team
• Don't just track, analyze reputation data to uncover insights
  • Identify drivers of positive and negative perceptions
  • Determine high-impact actions to bolster reputation

Responding to Reputation Damage

• Acknowledge the issue quickly, even if you don't have all the answers yet
  • Express concern and commitment to fully addressing the situation
• Investigate thoroughly to gather the facts and determine root causes
  • Avoid speculation or defensiveness in the absence of complete information
• Take responsibility and apologize sincerely if the organization is at fault
  • Explain how the failure happened and what's being done to prevent recurrence
• Be transparent about what you know and don't know
  • Commit to providing additional information as it becomes available
• Show empathy and concern for those negatively impacted
  • Offer meaningful remedies to make the situation right
• Communicate response across all relevant channels
  • Website, social media, email to key stakeholders, press release, etc.
• Equip frontline employees to respond to questions and feedback
  • Provide approved talking points, FAQs, and escalation protocols
• Monitor reaction to the response and adjust approach as needed
  • Watch for new issues or concerns surfaced by stakeholders
• Keep key stakeholders updated as the situation progresses
  • Share corrective actions taken and progress against commitments
• Conduct a post-mortem to identify opportunities to improve crisis preparedness and response
  • Document learnings and integrate into crisis playbooks and training

Reputation Recovery Strategies

• Deliver on commitments made during the initial response
  • Provide proof of progress and results to rebuild credibility
• Go beyond fixing the immediate problem to address broader stakeholder concerns
  • Make changes to policies, processes, or personnel as needed
• Proactively communicate the steps taken to prevent similar issues in the future
  • Highlight new safeguards, training, or quality control measures
• Reinforce core brand narrative and values through storytelling
  • Share employee and customer stories that demonstrate brand purpose in action
• Implement initiatives to strengthen key reputational attributes
  • Launch a customer experience transformation to boost satisfaction and loyalty
  • Double down on sustainability efforts to build trust and admiration
• Engage stakeholders in the reputation recovery process
  • Solicit input on areas for improvement and act on the feedback
  • Partner with trusted influencers to help reshape perceptions
• Look for opportunities to generate positive news and social media coverage
  • Announce new product innovations, partnerships, or social impact programs
  • Activate employees and brand advocates to share favorable stories
• Measure progress and celebrate milestones along the road to recovery
  • Track stakeholder perceptions and compare to pre-crisis benchmarks
  • Recognize individuals and teams helping to drive reputation turnaround

Case Studies: Reputation Wins and Fails

• Reputation Win: Johnson & Johnson's response to the 1982 Tylenol tampering crisis
  • Immediately pulled 31 million bottles of Tylenol from shelves nationwide
  • Established a 1-800 hotline to respond to customer concerns
  • Pioneered tamper-proof packaging to prevent future issues
  • Result: Tylenol market share rebounded within a year and J&J remains a trusted brand
• Reputation Fail: Wells Fargo's fake accounts scandal and initial response
  • Employees opened millions of unauthorized accounts to meet aggressive sales goals
  • Initial response blamed individual wrongdoers and denied systemic issues
  • Later investigations revealed leadership knew about misconduct for years
  • Result: CEO resigned, $3B in fines, and lasting damage to trust and reputation
• Reputation Win: Patagonia's consistent environmental activism and transparency
  • Donates 1% of sales to environmental causes and uses recycled materials
  • Encourages customers to buy less and offers free repairs for its products
  • Took out "Don't Buy This Jacket" ad to combat Black Friday consumerism
  • Result: Fiercely loyal customers and reputation as a purpose-driven brand
• Reputation Fail: Boeing's handling of the 737 Max crashes and grounding
  • Rushed plane to market and downplayed safety concerns from pilots
  • Deflected blame and resisted grounding after the first crash
  • Slow to take responsibility and apologize to victims' families
  • Result: Grounding cost $20B+, market share losses to Airbus, and tarnished safety record