The Quirky Reputation of Rob Stokes

Reputation has long been a very real, yet immeasurable, by-product of marketing and Public Relations and up until very recently had been based on a fair bit of guess work. No matter what marketers attempted to do, through traditional market research, reputation has never been accurately measured.

Thankfully, with new tools it is possible to fully quantify reputation and this has afforded us the opportunity to quickly pull deeper meaning of what is happening in a near-real-time environment. One such nugget of information is the relationship between a company’s CEO and the company’s overall reputation.

In this example, we’ll be looking at how Quirk eMarketing’s reputation and that of our CEO (Rob Stokes) are so closely matched. I will also explore reasons to explain this relationship.

Looking at the graph below, it’s quite clear that Rob’s and Quirk’s reputations (the yellow and blue horizontal lines) are quite similar. Starting from 1 November 2008 through to today, 10 February 2009, there is a definite trend which sees Rob’s reputation dropping slightly due to decreased public appearances (in the form of conferences). Following this both Quirk’s and Rob’s reputation remaining in step.

Public Relations is largely about presenting the correct spokesperson to the correct audience within the correct environment and modifying these variables to gain maximum value. Using a tool like BrandsEye, it becomes possible to identify who your spokespeople should be in relation to particular brands and sub-products. That said, for the sake of this post we will be looking at the “why is this happening” – which is far more interesting and often more important.

Thankfully this isn’t where BrandsEye’s functionality stops and there are additional reports and graphs which help to explain why this is the case.

Over this period BrandsEye tells us that there have been 502 Quirk mentions. Over the same period, Rob received 71 mentions. This means that in 14% of all conversations about Quirk eMarketing, Rob is mentioned by name. This is considerable and compared to my own measly 2.5% mention rate, it illustrates the actual depth and brand association between Quirk’s brand and Rob’s personal brand.

This is largely due to Rob’s 10 years of 24/7 engagement with the community which has resulted in a strong brand association between Quirk and Rob. In some cases, Rob and Quirk are used interchangeably and it is this relationship which is so critical to Quirk’s success.

Rob is the champion of the Quirk cause and our community has fast learnt that he is the source of all things Quirk as he often leads the charge for new brand launches, announcements etc. This has resulted in the ability for us to do a two phase launch – firstly through Rob and secondly via the “traditional” Quirk routes.

This has resulted in elevated levels of interchangeability across both consumer and press conversations. So much so that Rob experiences a 37% mention rate in press.

A 2004 study showed that between 39% and 46% of a brand’s reputation is derived directly from its CEO. This implies that despite the fact that Rob’s reputation is often bolstered by the reputation of Quirk, it is in fact a two directional relationship.

Ultimately, Rob’s and Quirk’s brands are considered as near identical entities. It is this relationship which many brands experience and is the reason for the close correlation between the CEO and the brands success. That said, this kind of relationship can be risky to Quirk’s overall reputation as if Rob’s reputation were ever to become tarnished it would result in an overall reputation loss for Quirk.

It’s therefore worth considering that sharing risk across a number of spokespeople (and having a number of people representing your company) results in a securer reputation. This does however have some negative effects, including decreased spokesperson recognition.

As reputation becomes more measurable, it is these relationships and the subtle brand nuances which will increasingly become our marketing metrics of the future.