Tag Archives: #corporate reputation

February 5, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Why and How to Market Your Firm’s Brand Integrity

As the limitations of a virtual marketplace continue to reduce most B2B firms to commodities, it’s become increasingly important to communicate not just what your company does, but to generate interest in what your enterprise stands for. This task of expressing your firm’s raison d’être involves far more than sticking a “Mission Statement” on its website.

Prospective clients not only want to know what makes your firm unique; before they put you on their short list for consideration, they also want assurance that your company is a “safe choice.” Decision-makers at every level are unwilling to risk their career on selection of an outside firm that may fail to meet expectations, or even harm their firm.

Regardless of whether your firm is the leader or an upstart in its marketplace, brand integrity matters. And it’s a corporate asset that needs to be marketed.

Unfortunately, telling target audiences and opinion leaders that your company is smart, honest, unique, innovative, creative, cutting-edge, trusted, etc. never succeeds. People require hard and soft evidence to support their own conclusions about your brand attributes, notably its integrity.

So how does a B2B firm market its brand integrity through online and offline channels? Here are 10 tangible and intangible factors that, on an individual and combined basis, can drive marketplace opinion on brand integrity:

Transparency: Is information regarding your firm’s philosophy, products / services, processes and people available and easily accessible? (Acid Test: How much digging is required to gain a basic understanding?)
Consistency: Is all information kept up-to-date, and relevant to current market conditions? Does bad news get communicated to your clients as quickly and openly as good news? (Acid Test: What’s the frequency of content generation, and the number of direct and indirect “touches” with target audiences?)
Enthusiasm: Does your firm appear genuine and enthusiastic about communicating with external audiences? Or does communication appear to be treated as a necessary evil? (Acid Test: How often are innovation and fun baked into those efforts?)
Values: Are your company’s core values expressed in a compelling manner? More importantly, are those values demonstrated through its actions? (Acid Test: Are they aspirational and inspirational? Is there tangible evidence that values really drive decision-making?)
Clarity: Are explanations clear, devoid of technical jargon or mystery, and easily understood by all outside audiences? (Acid Test: Would an 8^th grader get it?)
Culture: Is there a visible common culture, beyond shared academic credentials or charitable activities? Are there tangible signs that employees are valued, have a unified vision and enjoy working together? (Acid Test: Other than the annual mud run photo, do employees appear to be engaged as a team?)
Associations: Who and what are the people, organizations, ideas and causes associated with your firm? Are those associations respected, credible and trustworthy? (Acid Test: Is the firm actively connected with the outside world?)
Validation: How is your firm’s value proposition validated by objective 3^rd parties? Do reliable sources express open support or inherent endorsement? (Acid Test: Do credible media sources cover the company? Do clients identify themselves by name and company?)
Leadership: Are efforts made to share / promote your firm’s intellectual capital in a helpful manner that’s not directly self-serving? (Acid Test: Do other opinion leaders reference your firm’s ideas or contributions? Are white papers just poorly disguised sales collateral?)
Persona: Does your firm appear to be run by interesting human beings, or hide its personality behind an opaque, institutional veneer? (Acid Test: Does the overall impact of public-facing communication project warmth and sincerity, or distance and arrogance?)

Marketing tactics aside, companies looking for a guiding principle on brand integrity are well-served by heeding the advice of the late John Wooden, basketball coaching legend, who said, “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

Glassdoor.com: Social Media Tool or PR Nightmare?

Learning to Live With Employee Opinion

Since its founding in 2007, Glassdoor.com has become an important research tool for job hunters, corporate recruiters, and anyone looking for unvarnished behind-the-scenes insight into what really goes on behind corporate doors. Although Vault.com – established more than a decade earlier – serves much the same purpose, Glassdoor.com represents a far greater online brand risk…largely because the website provides free access to remarks posted by real, bogus and often disgruntled employees, and because those negative postings are often found on Google page one searches involving the company under fire. For many of the 250,000 companies it currently covers, Glassdoor.com can be a PR nightmare waiting to happen.

Websites dedicated to employee dissatisfaction were social media pioneers; empowering workers to publicly call their manager a “5-Alarm Nut Job” without retribution, to gripe about low pay or a lousy lunchroom, and to warn others to look elsewhere for a job. The most notorious of these early sites included RateMyEmployer.com (currently on life support), F**kedCompany.com (which died in 2007) and JobVent.com, which was acquired by Glassdoor.com in 2009. The demise of this scruffy first generation of workplace gripe sites gave way to an even more powerful and credible second generation of professionally managed, sophisticated sites like Glassdoor.com, backed by private equity investment, and fueled by business models that ensure their long-term existence.

Here’s a survival guide for companies seeking to avoid, minimize or benefit from brand exposure that’s delivered on Glassdoor.com:

Address Root Causes – Companies that focus on employee satisfaction and provide internal channels for rank & file feedback have far fewer negative postings on Glassdoor.com. Effective workforce management, however, does not ensure a positive outcome on the site. For example, Texas-based Beryl Health (formerly Beryl Companies) is well-known for its employee-focused culture, and was a “Best Place to Work in Healthcare” according to Modern Healthcare magazine. Beryl’s former CEO Paul Spiegelman even wrote a popular book about the importance of employee motivation. But Beryl’s current Glassdoor.com rating is 2.5 (unsatisfactory) on a 5-scale, based on a few negative postings (of seven reviews in total) from its employees.

Work The System – To their credit, Glassdoor.com does have a protocol for screening out employee rants that violate their standards of legality and good taste. They also have a viable internal system for moderating comments that are flagged by another party as “Inappropriate.” As a last resort, if a posting is believed to be bogus, particularly harmful or libelous, a company can appeal directly to Glassdoor.com’s corporate General Counsel. There’s no need to be victimized. Companies should monitor employee comments on Glassdoor.com, and respond directly and aggressively when appropriate.

Purchase a Profile – For a fairly reasonable price, Glassdoor.com will provide an “Enhanced Employer Profile,” featuring a comprehensive description of your company. I don’t work for Glassdoor.com in any capacity, or receive compensation for promoting its products, but it’s a no-brainer to take advantage of an opportunity to provide credible, positive content that can offset misinformation, warts and shortcomings that others are sharing online.

Lobby for Support – It’s no secret that many companies “encourage” their happy employees to post positive comments on Glassdoor.com as a means to bolster their overall Company Rating. Unfortunately, some companies assign this role to their PR department, whose staff members pose as anonymous employees, pumping out false praise and motivating detractors to post additional rants. In some cases, it may be beneficial to lobby for employee support on Glassdoor.com by asking them to express their satisfaction with the company. However, this solicitation must be carefully planned and expressed in a genuine manner, or the potential for this effort to backfire, internally and online, is fairly high.

Embrace Criticism – When online detractors echo similar complaints, it usually means there’s some underlying truth to what they’re griping about. It also means that Glassdoor.com visitors will begin to believe them. Although it’s contrary to corporate instincts, the quickest way for a company to stop online rants is to fix the related problems, or to explain to employees why it won’t or can’t. Allowing Glassdoor.com to serve as a canary in the coal mine can avoid problems that may be more significant than brand reputation.

Glassdoor.com is an online reality that requires pro-active and consistent oversight by fiduciaries of the corporate brand. Understanding how to peacefully coexist and leverage this influential social media tool enables companies to minimize negative brand impressions, drive recruitment and demonstrate their institutional backbone to current employees.

Fighting Online Brand Sabotage 101

Brand Sabotage May Warrant Ninja Tactics

Complaint websites such as Yelp, Glassdoor and Ripoff Report – that empower actual and imaginary customers or employees to anonymously post their accurate or bogus comments online – have created new brand-related challenges and opportunities for their corporate targets.

Thanks to search engines and social media, anyone with a computer and a personal agenda can now inflict substantial, long-term damage to the reputations of institutions that may or may not be deserving of their viral sabotage. It’s become a dangerous and foreign world for CMOs, PR heads and others charged with protection of their company’s brand; especially for small and mid-sized companies lacking the sophistication or deep pockets to mount a serious defensive strategy.

At the risk of oversimplification, here are a few down & dirty street-fighter tactics that should be on the do-it-yourself checklist of every company that’s a real or potential target of brand saboteurs:

Keep Your Eyes Open – This advice appears rudimentary, but many companies don’t bother to stay on top of online content. At the very least, all companies should use Google Alerts to keep track of what’s being said about them online. This service is free, but does not provide a comprehensive view of everything that’s being said. There are scores of sophisticated social media monitoring solutions, tailored to meet your budget and level of interest. Here’s a list of them.

Take the High Road First – If your company has made mistakes or fallen short of expectations, it’s best to man up quickly. If there’s a way to respond directly to a negative post, then admit your error, offer to make amends, and follow through on any promises you make. Negative posts are opportunities to showcase your company’s integrity and to build goodwill.

However…if it becomes clear that an employee, customer or competitor is using social media primarily to inflict brand damage, it’s appropriate to protect your company in a far more aggressive manner. The basic ninja tactics and rules involve:

Hit and Run – At the risk of being labeled a “troll” by the strange subculture of people whose hobbies include trashing companies online, it’s worth the effort for your company to fight fire with fire, by anonymously posting contrary opinion and evidence, on a selective basis, to discredit the brand saboteurs. If your defensive post is well-crafted (which means it’s not totally obvious that it was written by someone from your company), readers will conclude that the saboteur may not be correct, or at least that there is a difference of opinion.

Avoid Fistfights – If you employ anonymous hit and run tactics, never go toe-to-toe online with saboteurs by responding to their follow-up posts (where they will accuse you of being a shill for the company.) If you engage with them, your original post will lose its credibility, you’ll give them additional opportunities to trash your brand, and it will attract additional attention. If you can’t maintain your discipline, then don’t use hit and run tactics.

Call In The Cavalry – The odds are, if you’re running a successful business, that you have plenty of satisfied employees and customers. The problem is that brand terrorists are always more motivated to trash your brand than your brand ambassadors are likely to praise it. The solution is simple: swallow your pride, and ask for help from your fan base. Don’t tell them what to say, but do provide them with the specific information (or send a page link) they will need to post their positive opinions where it will have the greatest impact. Solicit at least one positive post every month, and don’t forget to thank those who take the time to help you.

Become Transparent – In a world driven by search engines, no news is longer good news; in fact, no news is a brand liability when you are the target of a brand saboteur. The most effective way to reduce and offset brand sabotage is to consistently generate online content that positions your company in a positive manner. This does not simply mean pumping out a press release every time your company introduces a product, wins an industry award, or appoints a new vice president. The content with the greatest value – both in terms of viral shelf life and marketing impact – provides insight into your firm’s intellectual capital…so that target audiences have a clear understanding of your company’s value proposition.

Pull Out the Legal Saber – If the damage caused by brand saboteurs is substantial and consistent, your company should consider legal means as a last resort. This can be expensive, but some companies have succeeded in neutering false and defamatory posts by first filing a lawsuit against the author of the post (not against the website or search engine); if successful in that suit, obtaining a court order related to the offending post; then presenting that court order to Google…which typically will honor the court order by removing the webpage with the offending post from its search index. Although this legal tactic will not remove the post from Ripoff Report, Yelp or Glassdoor, the post will no longer appear in Google search results, which is a significant damage control victory.

Many companies will continue to do little or nothing to prepare for online brand sabotage, on the assumption that it’s unlikely to ever happen to them. Like the classic Fram Oil Filter commercial, they can pay a little now, or pay a much bigger price later. But there’s a growing list of CEOs who regret having rolled the dice with their company’s reputation at stake.