Having a publically accessible reputation is something just about everybody has come to terms with. In today’s highly connected online environment our friends, family, colleagues and potential clients are just a mouse click away from finding out a great deal about us – both good and bad. This has forever altered the playing field and brands are increasingly being defined by their consumers – no longer by the brand manager.

This change in brand control has opened up Pandora’s box. The entire discipline has been shaken and a new set of rules and trends are coming forward.

Trend 1 – Combating Brand Diffusion:

One of the most powerful attributes about online is that content consumers are also creators. This means that brand’s experience so called generations of PR – which typically starts with an event, moves to Social Media, goes to online press, moves to offline press and back to Social Media – and so the cycle continues.

With each generation the brand is slightly diffused - less about what the brand manager wants said and more about what the consumers believe. From an interaction perspective, I believe we will see more corporates using engagements to correct and re-align the brand between PR generations – ultimately providing brand and marketing managers with more control over their messaging.

At the end of 2008, the Edelman Trust Barometer was released which startlingly showed a 23% decrease in trust for companies (down to just 36% in the USA). Thankfully, in their midyear report they found that trust in companies is up by a whopping 12% in 6 months. In terms of online engagement, this certainly bodes well, but the trend is not without its reservations. Brands can increasingly expect to earn the trust of their stakeholders and those which successfully build relationships with their consumers will flourish from a new found trust – ultimately providing a higher success rates with communication activities.

I’m sure you know more than a couple of people who have had their Twitter and Facebook accounts banned at work and I believe the situation will get worse before it gets better. This year we will see more companies either banning Social Media sites all together or putting very stringent rules in place.

While Social Media Protocols are considered Online Reputation Management best practice, I believe companies are yet to develop their understanding of Social Media to a level where they appreciate that their staff are a useful marketing machine themselves.

Trend 4 – Transparently Transparent:

As more of a company’s confidential information finds its way online, brands are going to be forced to either spend their resources routing out and dealing with outbreaks or embracing the trend and providing more information online. This has a number of benefits (if you can stomach this very bold move). These include stakeholders taking an active role in the brand through Wisdom of the Crowds and Crowdsourcing and secondly through the growth of trust through transparency.

Trend 5 – Filling the Information Vacuum:

All too often we find that - while brands provide a great deal of information about themselves - they often talk at their target market not with them. Consequently consumers are left with a knowledge vacuum – the gap between what consumers know about a brand and what the brand says about itself.

As brands spend more time understanding their consumers’ needs, by using Online Reputation Tools, the model for PR and communication online will change to fill the vacuum and empower communicators to perpetuate the conversation more effectively.

Trend 6 – Social Media Measurement (SMM):

SMM is the current holy grail of digital. With the dramatic shift from the impression (traditional media) and engagement (digital media) paradigms, there currently exists no standard means of measuring the value of online activity and PR. That said, online marketing and PR agencies are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate the value of their activities (something which digital typically does very well) and I believe that this need will be sufficient to garner the necessary R&D for a global solution to be found – I believe 2010 will be the year we find a solution.

In 2009 the King 3 Report was released, which included a full chapter (ch. 8) on Stakeholder Reputation Management. From past experience we know that changes in the King Reports take some time to filter into big business, but as the value of reputation becomes more apparent, there will be a dramatic shift, only in part because of King 3, for corporates to be concerned with their online reputation.

Already we are seeing the most successful brands heavily investing in Reputation Management and with the added legal considerations, 2010 is bound to see corporates and individuals taking their reputations far more seriously.

With Google’s recent addition of real-time results (from Twitter) in their Search Engine Results Pages, we will see a dramatic reduction in the acceptable response latency, by consumers, should a crisis hit. Consumers increasingly expect brands to instantly engage them and failure to do so is causing brands to be tarnished. In 2010, brands which are monitoring the conversation and are nimble in their responses will gain huge favour from their community, not only as a brand which cares, but also as a brand which accepts the role which consumers play in its development.

If history is anything to go by, all major reputation crisises have been lead by a champion: Dell Hell by Jeff Jarvis, United Airlines Breaks Guitars by Dave Carroll and QVC vs. Blogger by Donn Edwards. In all cases the champion became the focus person for general unhappiness towards the brand. As we understand more of how social norms are established online, I believe that brands who are, correctly, monitoring (and engaging) the conversation online will be able to resolve many of these problems before a champion is able to come forward. That said, identifying possible champions and sincerely resolving their problems will begin to provide substantial returns when compared to the downside where brands lose millions through reputation crisises.

If you are planning to engage, there are some key considerations which you need to be aware of. Primarily, your engagements need to focus not only on the marketing and communications needs, but also on branding needs. Engagement is ultimately another touch point, one which is truly one-to-one, and adding a little something special to the conversation (be it a voucher or thought leadership) can certainly help with the perception of a brand. As brand managers, marketing managers and communications professionals get a better grip on this digital landscape, we can expect to see some very cunning brand engagements in 2010 and beyond.

Online Reputation Management is an ever-changing approach to marketing, communications and branding. Focusing on the intersection between consumers and business needs provides a way to empower strategic decision making at all levels within a business.

2010 is going to be a very exciting year as we have tremendous global media attention with the world cup coming to our shores and as the digital environment takes off even further!

May the conversation be with you!

Reputation has been human’s ally for millions of years. We use it to make a judgement on something based on a combination of our own and others experiences with that object or individual. The Wikipedia definition of reputation hints to this: “Reputation is the opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of the public toward a person, a group of people, or an organisation. It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status.”

From a pure sociological perspective it has been theorised that the risk and reward associated with reputation gains or losses has a huge impact on our decisions made (a theory which is fast becoming a business philosophy – as I discussed in my post of the King 3 Report). Take for example the ByStander effect. Given a situation where somebody else requires emergency assistance, the ByStander effect has shown that an individual is more likely to get involved if there are fewer bystanders. The cognitive theory behind this well-documented happening, takes place on two levels; firstly, Social Proof is unconsciously applied in that participants rely on the input of others to validate their action. As such, everybody doing nothing becomes the correct thing to do. Secondly, Diffusion of Responsibility takes place where nobody feels accountable to their actions (as is the case in mob violence etc) and as a consequence nobody takes the initiative.

Reputation can also be explained as a consequence of evolution and as an output mechanism of prejudice. The theory states that prejudice, on an individual level, is necessary in order to make decisions about a group or individuals based on past experience (their reputation) – irrespective of the accuracy of the claims. This applies to all things – ranging from your choice of clothes through to your social circles.

But how does this apply to online and how does one measure it?

With the advent and astronomical growth of the Internet increasingly more information is becoming publically available. As such, a fully representative view of a brand is becoming more accessible through tools such as BrandsEye. We are finding that the Internet is empowering us consumers to research a brand and build it’s reputation from a number of interactions which others (the brand in question included) provide us with. This has resulted in a divergence between what the brand wants you to believe and the now verifiable reality – and with that widespread distrust (Edelman Trust Barometer found that trust of companies dropped by 10% to 17% in 2008).

This does however provide a great opportunity for companies and individuals to step forward and manage their reputations, with potential to reap great rewards. At BrandsEye, we believe that reputation is the widespread view of the brand itself. This is then determined by how all relevant stakeholders feel about the brand – which is itself determined by how others view the brand (see Social Proof).

We then break up stakeholders based on two factors, namely their social influence and view towards the brand in question (and competitor brands when relevant) – their sentiment towards the brand. We then take it one step further and break down their individual conversations into the volume of overall conversation, the rate at which they are passed on (momentum) and finally the origin (which determines trust).

All is driven by conversations online and along with a range of other factors, provide us with a way of recording reputation.

• Page title
• Author
• Date published
• Date picked up
• PageRank
• Alexa Rank
• Media Origin (Press/Enterprise/Consumer/Directory)
• Language
• Credibility (0 to 9; unknown to authoritative)
• Sentiment for each brand (-5 to 5, emergency to celebration, no zero)
• Number of phrase matches
• Is the mention linked to your website: Y/N

* There are a number of other variables which we record for additional clarity.

Bloggers, tweeters and journalists love to redistribute content. It’s one of the biggest advantages of using the Internet as a communications platform – free community driven PR. The Internet empowers individuals to perpetuate PR and present their own views and it’s a continually iterative system where content morphs each time it is rewritten.

Craig and the team have been working hard on this new update to BrandsEye which makes maximum use of regular redistribution of content. BrandsEye will now search for similar content and automatically mark it as relevant, irrelevant, duplicate or spam based on how you marked the initial mention. It is entirely automated and requires no setup, but it will help to further reduce the time necessary to manage your account – particularly when an article is redistributed across the Internet or when you get retweeted.

Public Relations is the practice of managing the communication between an organisation and its publics. This can be seen to include anything (intentional or otherwise) which is communicated on behalf of the company as well as the brands, public, response to consumers/press. Ultimately, PR is about creating communications which drive the brand objectives – be it proactive or reactive.

There have always been whispers of this urban legend that “all PR is good PR”. While I don’t personally believe this to be true, there is certainly a case to be made for both sides of the argument.

The simple reality is that there will always be conflicting views in terms of priorities in marketing theories. Many advocates of the “All PR is Good PR” rely on the “top of mind awareness" principle. This theory states that purchasing decisions are made based on the brand which comes to mind first and is recognised.

From this standpoint, it makes sense that brands do whatever possible to drive top of mind awareness. This does however, come with some fundamental flaws. Way back in the 1890s Ivan Pavlov was doing some great work on classical conditioning which states that we have unconscious emotional responses to all stimulus and that these responses are learnt based on past interactions. According to this, your publics may be all too aware of your brand and you may have top of mind awareness, but for all the wrong reasons.

Take for example the recent situation with Kanye West at the VMA. Following the awards, Kanye got a great deal of publicity which certainly drove top of mind awareness but the associated sentiment was terrible and he was being ridiculed online – which ultimately affected his reputation.

On the other hand, Vegemite used a clever strategy of inciting consumer unrest to drive PR for a new product which they wanted to launch. By naming the product iSnack2.0 consumers got incredibly upset and an onslaught of #vegefail comments erupted. Vegemite then quickly launched the actual product and converted the top of mind to positive brand engagement. A fantastic case of how strategically all PR can be good PR.

The point is that in the correct circumstances all PR can be good PR. This is particularly true in the case when the brand is new and requires some buzz to assist it in its launch. Moreover, if it’s followed up with a quick credibility driving campaign it can be incredibly powerful as the awareness is then converted into a positive reputation.

While the top of mind awareness approach certainly has its merits, there are contrary theories.

Take for example Kevin Keller’s Brand Equity model (which plays more to Operant Conditioning), in this model it is theorised that all interactions with a brand result in either a positive or negative change to the brands perception which impact purchasing decisions. It’s critical that brand touch points provide a positive stimulus to the consumer (as is the objective of all good brand managers). Unfortunately, negative PR undermines this effort – as was the case with the PR crisis which recently faced United Airlines in the form of “United Airlines Breaks Guitars”, which lost them $180 million in market capital.

As consumers are increasingly empowered to research brands and investors are increasingly impacted by what they read online (see the Steve Jobs heart attack hoax), controlling the perception around larger brands through PR is fast becoming a critical activity. Negative PR can have disastrous consequences for a brand and it’s therefore clear that not all PR is good PR.

In essence all PR can be good PR but it really depends on what the brand is trying to achieve and how much of a reputation the brand already has established. If simple brand recognition (irrespective of the associated emotional response) is important – as is the case with new and smaller brands – then a shotgun approach to getting PR will certainly lead us to believe that all PR is good PR.

On the converse, an established brand requires a strategic communication strategy which ensures that the brand achieves positive brand equity, top of mind awareness and that its overall reputation is maintained as positive.

The best measure of this is to track a brand online, its direct competitors and compare the brand momentum (KPI for top of mind awareness)and reputation (KPI for brand equity) and from this, determine the success of a communication campaign and recommended next moves.

Increasingly, companies are being held to their actions by their stakeholders. As staff, suppliers and the community are equipped to communicate and research companies online, they are empowering to inform and become informed about any brand. There are many recent online reputation blunders ranging from the false reports of Steve Job’s heart attack through to the recent United Airlines Breaks Guitars (losing the companies $4 billion as reported by TechCrunch and $180 million respectively as reported by The UK Times). These provide more than enough food for thought and the power which stakeholders have over companies is increasingly becoming self-evident.

Chapter eight of the most recent version of the King III report details six core principles on managing stakeholder relationships. Four of these points relate directly to the management of reputation and a means of managing the gap between perception and the company’s performance.

Principle 8.1: The board should appreciate that stakeholders’ perceptions affect a company’s reputation.

There are over 500 000 new content producers joining daily (through Social Media giants such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and blogs alone). This combined with news, company comparison and consumer review sites appearing all over the Internet ensures stakeholders are increasingly informed and empower. So much so that the European Tourism Board ascertained that Web2.0 impacted the purchasing decisions of over $10 billion worth of travel alone. This is in direct agreement for the chapter’s assertion that “stakeholders interests and expectations, even if not considered warranted or legitimate, should be dealt with and cannot be ignored”. Furthermore, Edelman’s Engaging the New Influences Summit of June 2009’s key takeaways assert that, “what you say and what you do must align”. No small shakes considering that the same company found, in 2007, that 93% of journalists use the Internet for research. This forms an intrinsic link between stakeholders online and media offline.

Principle 8.2: The board should delegate to management to proactively deal with stakeholders relationships.

Stakeholders are increasingly more judgmental of their referral networks. Corporate CEO/MD trust dropped by 10% in 2007 (to 17%) while “somebody like me” improved in trust to 56%. A similar study conducted in 2007 by Neilson ‘Trust in Advertising’ Report, found that 78% of individuals trust the recommendations of other consumers. With Online Reputation Management tools, such as BrandsEye, it’s possible to track online conversations and engage consumers in an incredibly personal environment. Delegating this responsibility to management empowers the company to flatten communication responsibilities - empowering employees to build a relationship with stakeholders thereby improving trust levels, impact and influence.

Principle 8.5: Transparent and effective communication with stakeholders is essential for building and maintaining their trust and confidence.

The age old maxim that “people buy from people they trust” still holds very true. The recent Ask Africa report stated that, “The link between reputation, trust and CEOs are clear, considering that winning companies have winning CEOs and executives”. The trend of complete transparency to your stakeholders (as has been successful with Dell’s Idea Storm and General Motors’ new business strategy among many others) demonstrates a need for companies to re-earn the trust of their consumers. The use of online stakeholders as an ongoing research sample and unrelenting reputation tracking and engagement provide companies with high level strategic inputs, proactive brand integration. Ultimately this provides an opportunity to build an honest relationship with stakeholders. Critically, stakeholders can find any information they desire online and companies which embrace transparency claim first mover advantage and stay ahead of this curve.

Principle 8.6: The brand should ensure disputes are resolved as effectively, efficiently and expeditiously as possible.

The Internet is a brave new world for many corporates and traditional actions can have very unexpected consequences. In the beginning of 2009, the case of QVC vs. Blogger resulted in an unexpected outcome for Quality Vacation Club. When their actions in response to a blog post (where they attempted to sue the blogger for R461 000) was met with over 100 articles and post of similar influence and sentiment. Monitoring (and being empowered to engage) the online environment is critical.

Warren Buffet said it succinctly, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you will do things differently.”Online stakeholders tend to gravitate to a champion of the cause and resolving the problem before this champion rises up is a sure-fire way to save face and keep the share price on a stable footing – for this ongoing monitoring is required.

Ultimately, the measurement and subsequent management of online reputation provides the key insights to know where, when and how to manage a brand’s corporate reputation. If ORM is correctly used to drive communication in both an online and offline environment the company can be certain that their reputation is in check, stakeholder’s perception are being managed. Ultimately ensuring the company is narrowing the gap between perception and performance to ensure sustainability.