CEO Reputation Management

Author: Simon Merrick, PR Director, Zest ST

There is an extricable link between the CEO and corporate reputation. No matter whether the Chief Exec believes this or not, a planned and effectively implemented CEO defined reputation programme can add great benefit, not only to an organisations profile, but also to the individual’s standing with their peers.

CEOs are generally clustered in to one of four different personality groups: democratic, autocratic, consultative and laissez-faire, each with their own leadership style which influences how they approach communications, both internal and external. No matter which type of CEO you are, you will benefit from a considered investigation into how much better you could be communicating with your stakeholders.

Many corporate communications campaigns are clearly implemented to promote products and services to develop the brands as assets and create market leading awareness and the opportunity to generate sales. Often brand programmes build their own momentum which can diverge from the higher level corporate plan. The CEO’s platform is therefore essential to communications throughout the organisation and as such their leadership should influence the development of all other communications plans.

Communications divergence is an important topic, and requires investigation in its own right as this divergence can dilute energies away from core communications goals. However, at the top of the organisation the CEO needs to provide a strong platform to lead divisional, operational and of course corporate communications.

Good reputation is carefully planned and managed and is a highly valuable asset and should be considered as such. Great reputations are built over time they do not appear over night. On the other hand they can fail that quickly.

The majority of CEOs have reached this pinnacle of their career through a combination of talent, salesmanship, grit and experience and the best of these are aware that being accessible to customers, the media and other audiences, while delegating to capable management team members, can create an environment for a long and successful tenure in the top job.

Are some businesses now too large for the CEO to make a positive effect on the communications agenda? If the CEO believes he must be involved in all decisions then yes, but as CEO the role is to set the organisations agenda, implementation is for others, although the CEOs involvement as the figurehead and chief thought-leadership proponent must be cultivated to achieve maximum exposure.

Creating a profile as a CEO is often a about treading a fine line between adding value to the organisation and self publicity. And therefore it is usually advisable to ensure that the development of a profile building programme is based around a CEO platform that promotes credibility and complements the corporate communications objectives.

Communications channels have dramatically changed during the past 10 years and any CEO reputation programme must consider the communications options in a creative manner to project the most appropriate profile to the target audiences. So we must understand and consider the corporate goals, the CEOs personal vision for the organisation and audiences requirements in terms of messaging and delivery route.

The CEO must take the lead in the communications agenda, when it works the organisation and the leader benefit, when it is left to chance and fails a enterprise’s reputation suffers, so do the company’s culture and bottom-line.

Double sided sword

We all have those moments when what appears on the face of it to be a cast iron opportunity, could quite easily become the proverbial double edge sword.

During a client meeting with a new client we discussed media opportunities and the client brought up an incident which recently happened in one of their offices. A burglary in fact, little of value was taken and the police shrugged their shoulders in the belief that there was nothing they could do. A little later, a sharp eyed office administrator noticed blood on a filing cabinet and the police were called back. After analysis a DNA match was found and the burglar brought to book.

The client wondered how they could use this to generate media coverage and we discussed this for a short time – the Miss Marple angle, etc. After coming up with a variety of headlines to match the circumstances, I asked, what does the fact that your offices were broken into inform your customers and potential customers about you? What type of information was available in the office that may have been potentially damaging to you or your clients? What level of security was implemented on the IT systems? As these questions sunk in the faintly amusing headlines faded into the background.

We went on to discuss what level of crisis management planning they had implemented and how this could be strengthened through the development of contingency plans.

The economic climate has created the environment where clients are inclined to listen to PR professionals concerning the impact on a business’ reputation that negative events will have. In today’s environment all clients must be made aware of the steps that can be taken to guard against disaster or to protect the business from the worse effects of negative publicity.

As we know there are always at least two sides to every story, let’s ensure our clients’ version is the one that is heard loudest.

Crisis, what crisis?

Perhaps not surprisingly I have recently had discussions with a number of CEOs concerning what politely we call Contingency Planning, or more brutally, Crisis Management. These discussions have ranged from a charity wanting advice in order to be prepared for difficult questions concerning donations, to companies investigating business-threatening product and organisational scenarios. Luckily, none of these discussions has yet turned into a real-life crisis, and taking our discussions further we hope to prevent or reduce any negative outcomes at such time when that happens. What it reiterated to me was that, even in sophisticated organisations crisis management is often swept under the carpet, until it is too late.

It is often said that Crisis Management is not about ‘if’, but it concerns being prepared for ‘when’. There are numerous accounts of companies, governments, individuals and other organisations being seriously damaged, both in terms of brand value and financially because they were caught unprepared by something that was unforeseen, which tends to reflect the very nature of the topic. My recent meetings have encompassed the full range of experience, from CEOs who have been around long enough to have worked through various crisis events, to newer senior management who have climbed the ladder during the boom period and are facing new situations in today’s economic environment.

There are a number of key considerations, but as with any communications strategy the devil is in the detail. You know your company is different, you have probably spent a great deal of money promoting your differentiating factors to your audience and so you need to consider these carefully, however there are a set of broad headings that are a useful start point.

Your company or organisation
What is it you do? Who are you accountable to? Are you publicly or privately owned? What size of organisation are you and how does this affect the locality that you operate from? What are your wider influencers?

Your services and or products
Think about any possible way that these may create an adverse reaction in the market place. Product recalls, tampering, product failure and service failure. This can happen so understanding that it can allow us to plan for it.
How are you regulated and are you compliant with all current regulation?

Your people
Consider how staff and associates work internally and externally, how they communicate with each other and with the outside world. Remember there are numerous non-approved staff sites on the internet that have caused customer backlash on organisations. So it is not just what they do while within your jurisdiction that affects your brand.

Outside influencers
There are always external risks but how can you plan for these and in so doing minimise the likelihood of adverse external actions, such as damages claims. Are you involved in any activity that could attract protest, hackers, criminal investigation, or exposé from the media? What about changes in regulation and in some situations governments.

The environment – Acts of God
What happens if there is a fire, flood or other event that closes your business for an extended period? Have you considered computer facilities back-up and the consequences of not having this provision?

Bizarre events
Take some time and think about events that are really ‘shouldn’t happen’, a plane landing on your site, staff being kidnapped, or an extreme cult renting property from you. Long shot events that you are on the periphery of may be hard to imagine, but they could still attach themselves negatively to your brand, and therefore need to be considered.

A comprehensive Crisis Communications approach document and or process is an essential element in the modern high bandwidth communication savvy world, where a short video on YouTube can change your company’s relationship with thousands of customers. What often becomes evident during contingency planning is that there is investment required and these discussions often take place at the point in the economic cycle when investment is at its most restricted, but consider the effect of not implementing the process?

If we accept, and we must, that crisis will happen. It is not a question of how much will it cost to implement the process, but how quickly can we implement it.

Why Bother!

I guess most, if not all, bloggers go through the why bother phase! We’ve contemplated our musings on numerous home pages and facebook, we’ve twittered reduced thoughts from mobiles and web-books and posted client and personal videos up to the various community sites to engage with like-minded audiences. Although we generate demonstrable results from innovative multi-channel campaigns there are pitches and even clients who still compartmentalise public relations as physical media communications and web-based activities as something separate. Perhaps it is the earlier relationship between websites and company brochures that these people still cling to, believing their web presence to be linked to their advertising budget rather than a wider communications platform to build brand and image.

The internet has provided access to audiences in a more interactive and often very personal manner that was impossible to achieve previously without large scale guerrilla tactics and an on-street presence. This is not to say that any campaign would not benefit from both web and street activities when appropriate.

How many of us have recently heard the sharp intake of breath when presenting the big idea to prospects and clients. The mantra of previous years - ROI - appears to made way to, sorry budget restrictions.

Louder and more esteemed voices than mine have recently repeated what the most successful companies know - in a down turn the companies that continue to spend on communicating with their audiences and customers witness a faster pick up in sales and maintain a higher than average brand value. There are obvious examples where companies cannot continue with their spending, but for most organisations that will survive the recession they need to plan smart to navigate their way through the hard times. They need to maintain their links to current and potential customers and audiences through plans based on best guess scenarios. Communications professionals can help achieve amazing results but require open and honest briefings. Campaigns can then be created that are highly targeted to rigorously defined audiences that will again demonstrate high levels of ROI.

I guess that my opening statement is in big part rhetorical. Communications professionals know why we bother, because we believe in our clients and our own judgement, and often demonstrate that sharp thinking on campaigns does result in positive up lift for clients even in the hardest of economic times.