Dennis Wilcox: 5 Q&A on Corporate Reputation

Well, I couldn’t manage to organize my trip to Subotica last month and meet THE public relations guru, Dennis L. Wilcox, in person, but I did contact him through facebook and asked him for a short interview on corporate reputation.

Reputation, its management and measurement, is the focus of my interest these days, as a part of the research I do for my master thesis.

So here are his answers on my questions.

1. How do you define corporate reputation?
Corporate reputation is the collective perceptions of an organization's various stakeholders. It represents the collective perceptions and opinions of individuals who have some relationship with the organization as customers, suppliers, employees, members of a community where the organization has a store or plant, government regulators, investors, financial analysts, journalists who cover the organization, etc.

2. What is the difference between corporate reputation and corporate image?
A corporate reputation is formed by stakeholders involved or affected in some way by the organization. Corporate image, on the other hand, is more internalized. Image is what the organization believes it is and wants to project. A bank, for example, may wish to project the "image" that its staff is friendly and helpful, or that the bank is successful and well managed. Public relations and advertising campaigns are often focused on projecting an "image" of an organization or that its product brands represent quality and good value.

Customers, for example, may feel that the "image" being projected is wrong or misleading. They find that the bank staff is not particularly helpful or friendly -- or that the product is of poor quality. Thus, the bank might have the "reputation" of being unfriendly although the bank continues to project the image that it is friendly through its advertising.

3. What makes a good corporate reputation?
A good corporate reputation is based on the organization's core values and actions. A corporation that treats its employees well, makes excellent products, actively participates in the community, supports worthwhile projects, and actively works to ensure that its environmental impact is minimal, usually has a good reputation. Reputation is based on actions, not slogans and lofty speeches. There is a good quote from Abraham Lincoln, which puts things in perspective: "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

4. Measuring corporate reputations accurately is crucial if they are to be managed. What is the best way to measure corporate reputations?
Measuring corporate reputation involves a mix of methods. The basic concept is to continually "listen" to the corporation's key publics. This may be in the form of focus groups among employees or customers, monitoring customer service queries and complaints, doing a content analysis of comments and discussion about the corporation and its products on the Internet and social network sites, and even in-depth interviews with community leaders and industry "influencers." It's important to establish a matrix of various publics to assess reputation within each public. The corporation may have an excellent reputation among the financial community (investors and analysts) but not a good reputation in the communities in which it operates. Or a particular product may have a poor reputation for quality, whereas other products have a much better reputation. By assessing "reputation" in various sectors, the corporation can then take action to correct problems and enhance its reputation as a responsive organization. There are also international indexes -- reputation surveys of corporations by various publications and nonprofit groups. In the U.S, for example, Fortune Magazine does an annual ranking of the 100 most admired companies. Apple, Google, Coca-Cola often come out as the "most admired" companies based on a number of factors.

5. How do mainstream media influence reputation?
Mainstream media have much to do with forming perceptions of a company because people who don't know much about the corporation rely on media reports to form their opinions. If the corporation is in the news because of a plant disaster, or being forced to do a product recall, people usually perceive that the corporation is not very good -- thus lowering the reputation of the company. The extensive media coverage of corporate CEOs making large salaries (in some cases, $l00 million) while, at the same time, laying off thousands of workers and asking for government bail-outs caused a severe erosion of reputation for such companies as AIG, Citigroup, and the Bank of America. On the other hand, Walmart -- the world's largest retailer -- has improved its reputation in recent years by a series of actions and initiatives that have put it in the forefront of the "green" movement and sustainability. Favorable media coverage of these initiatives have done much to improve its reputation among the general public.

Thank you, professor! :)