On Stephanie Fierman, Google and your Online Reputation (Jarvis Cromwell)

Listen up, because this is important to your professional reputation and career.

Readers know I blog about the impacts of low trust on all kinds of human exchange and enterprise. Do you trust me as a credible expert? If you're not so sure, what action would you take?

Did I hear the word "Google"?

Well, google me and you'll get a bunch of corroborating evidence. I'm a seasoned chief marketing officer (CMO), I've contributed a chapter on trust to a marketing book and I speak about trust and reputation at conferences around the country. Unfortunately, a Google search on my name also serves up this result:

"A 25-year-old Goldsboro man -- wanted by New York City police on two murder charges -- was arrested Tuesday by Goldsboro police."

That other Jarvis Cromwell – who apparently is a couple of decades my junior – shows up on page 7 of my Google search listings. If you ever thought he was me, your opinion would surely change. Which is why online reputation is so important, and that brings us to Stephanie Fierman.

Last week Stephanie Fierman, a well known and respected marketing executive, spoke at a CMO Club dinner in New York and shared some thinking on managing online reputation. You can find coverage on this topic by Anna Maria Virzi in ClickZ here. You can also read Stephanie's blog, here.

Stephanie got everyone’s attention by discussing how widespread gossip, innuendo and misinformation about executives are on the internet. And it is easy for executives to wake up one morning and find themselves the victim of misinformation or worse. And the more senior and visible you are in an organization, the more vulnerable you are to potentially damaging disinformation campaigns. The scary part of the story is that everyone from recruiters, to new hires to clients can and do check you out on the web.

So start taking action now. Here are a few of the tips Stephanie shared the other night:

1. Monitor your online footprint. Many people rarely if ever check out their search listings. That's a mistake. Make sure you check your online presence regularly on all of the search engines. You should also monitor online news services, newsletters, blogs, chatrooms and image banks.

2. Build your online reputation before you need it. If you haven't already done so, you need to begin creating search-engine friendly content before a crisis arises. Blog, post to other blogs, create a website, create online profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) be active at work and in other activities that will get you mentioned online.

3. Respond quickly to damaging, inaccurate or slanted online content. If you find yourself attacked or worse online, don't hide. You need to respond quickly and authoritatively in the realm where the original content appeared, with clear and open messages and factual information. Tell the truth.

4. Be discriminating. If you participate in social networks, be very discriminating about whom you connect and what content you post!

5. Appeal to the webmaster. Ask the webmaster to remove questionable or defamatory content. Frequently they will.

In some ways, Google is bringing us back to a Victorian age when social circles were smaller and gossip could spread throughout a community like wildfire. There was little or no anonymity in those circumstances and ladies and gentleman had to vigorously defend their reputations because ruination was a real possibility.

The takeaway for trustmeisters: today's professionals live in a google-centric world where rumor and innuendo can be used against them. All the more reason to manage your personal reputation proactively and with care.

Should you apply the green lipstick? (by Samantha Taylor)

There is a lot of lip service being paid to the environment by marketers of all stripes. Is it authentic? A ‘greening of business’ cover story in Advertising Age (here) suggests the answer may be no in some cases.

For marketers, the more important question is whether or not donning “green lipstick” will ultimately pay off down the road.

Not if you’re not real about it.

According to Ad Age, while companies are flocking to add green to their marketing platforms, their true environmental conscience is being questioned. Hmm. The issue of consumer distrust that haunts marketers at every turn seems to be in play here. The learning for would-be trustmeisters: It takes a lot more than clever advertising to convince consumers that you’re serious about embarking down the road of sustainability.

Examples of companies who are doing more than wearing the green lipstick include Intel and GE. Both are developing sustainable programs. Will such emphasis pay off for them? GE says it will grow revenues that provide some kind of environmental benefit to $20 billion by 2010.

GE is being more authentic than most, but it still has its critics. Our take here is that as companies engage more actively in issues of societal responsibility, they also must beef up communications programs – with particular emphasis on dialoguing with stakeholders and critics alike.

We expect to see continuing debate in executive suites on what to do about this issue, particularly because in our view the payoff potential can be significant. Considering that $179 billion was invested in socially responsible mutual funds in 2005, moving beyond mere conscience touting seems not only sensible, but profitable.

Fellow trustmeister Jarvis Cromwell points out in a previous post (here), that the LOHAS consumer segment is a growing and highly desirable market. New industries will emerge, and reputations and empires will be built, as we see the greening of corporate America.

And need we say that future generations are depending on it?

Less lip service please. True brand trustmeisters will do more by re-engaging with nature, science and the bottom line in an authentic way.

Our advice: Don’t move forward on green efforts until you’re ready to be real. That means first aligning causes with business operations and stakeholder communities, and then backing your actions up with strong communications.

So Don't Do That! (Jarvis)

It’s easy to grow callous over the daily scandal sheet. On this week’s critical-care list: World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. And for shock jock Don Imus, the lights have now officially gone out.

But so what? While Wolfowitz and Imus are clearly victims of their own bad judgment, the learning for the reputation-minded can be summed up in an old Marx Brothers bit:

“Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” (Gesturing with arm.)
“So don’t do that!”

At first blush, the cases appear quite different. Radio's famous bad boy Imus was dethroned by his notoriously noxious tongue – a thoughtless joke, he says, gone terribly wrong. The Daily Show had some fun, saying Imus offered up an excuse for his remark: he doesn’t have a PR agent.

PR can’t help much once the genie is out of the bottle.

To other matters, Wolfie, as our President likes to call him, may also lose his job - in this case over more than a slip. Indeed, a series of bad decisions could send him packing.

A quick recap of the Wolfowitz case: boss gets girlfriend generous pay package and transfer. Boss claims he got approval for his actions from the ethics committee. That claim is later called into question. Boss apologies for the mistake. Board deliberates boss’ future.

Both “trust events” will cost plenty. The Imus show brought in an estimated $20 million in revenue to CBS last year. That's gone poof. And then there’s the issue of management distraction. The growing controversy at the World Bank has overshadowed major development meetings taking place this weekend. And it has also caused further turmoil among staff, who have called for Wolfowitz’s resignation.

According to the Financial Times, the scandal has jeopardized the one asset the President of the World Bank has: his credibility. Indeed, Wolfowitz has been mistrusted by many both inside and outside the bank since his appointment. All this makes it harder for the World Bank to do what it's supposed to do: fight global poverty and raise the world’s living standards.

The take from this Garage “trustmeister” is that Groucho’s advice is sound. Don’t do that. Reputational risk is real and companies need to find effective ways to mitigate poor decision-making. Large organizations are especially vulnerable to dangerously myopic judgment. What’s often missing is a zoom out lens. In other words a mechanism to help companies look out from the point of decision and understand its impact on brand reputation.

It’s a necessary practice, whether your talking about a brand, a company, a CEO, or a shock jock.

Why we started the Reputation Garage (Jarvis)

The world’s business community has reached, well, let’s just call it a low point: Practically nobody trusts big business. (In the U.S. the number who say they trust big companies and brands hovers around 13%)

So the intent behind this blog is as simple as it is ambitious: We're an experienced group of professionals who want to help change the dismally low worldview of business. We are pushing for a new era of business performance - where companies and their brands are trusted more than they are today. (Along the way, we also expect to see continuing seismic shifts in marketing practices as we know them.)

Our merry band of “trustmeisters" includes yours truly, a consultant and former big company CMO who is known for his thinking on this topic; a U.S. ad agency chairman who questions the efficacy of many traditional marketing programs and practices; a corporate social responsibility expert and U.K. native who has also served as co-head of the U.S. branding practice for a global communications firm; and a leading thinker at the intersection of marketing and technology whose day job happens to be at one of the world's leading consulting firms. We'll be adding more trustmeisters as we go along.

Are we out to change the world? No, but if trust matters, then a lot of organizations are not supported by strong footings. More importantly, a majority of customers and employees around the world are expressing unhappiness with the current state of affairs. That doesn't exactly spell brand power or, to use the catch phrase of the moment, employee engagement. Because traditional practices have failed to prevent or solve these problems, new ideas and actions are called for here.

So for the record, trust matters. Indeed, if you’ve attended any of the last several World Economic Forum meetings in Davos over the past few years, you know that there is significant hand-wringing taking place over this issue. When trust declines, the nature of virtually every exchange and transaction is altered. Brands, which are built on trust, lose value. Sales become harder to generate. Customers defect, as loyalty deteriorates. Employees disengage from their jobs and the company mission.

So where's the fix for organizations looking to improve upon this sorry state of affairs? Join us here in the Garage as we uncover, evaluate and share emerging new ideas and solutions for what may be the most important marketing issue for our times.