DummySpit

In research I have been undertaking, two of the topics were the management of reputation and the management of relationships. One of my respondents, a top corporate communications person in a multinational firm, responded with a very good question – “Who is the owner of the relationship: the PR professional or the business line?” Acknowledging one of the favoured models in public relations is “PR = relationship management” (Bruning & Ledingham), he has raised the very challenging question of how can this model be operationalised.

Although public relations academics and practitioners are staking out this ground as their own, the reality in the maze of relationships between an organisation and its stakeholders is that they may not be able to control or even substantially influence this field. For example, they could do so in the relationships between the organisation and government and with communities in general but it is almost impossible to “manage” the relationship between a sales force and its customers, purchasing staff and suppliers, and the Chief Financial Officer and bankers. These are crucial relationships to the performance of the organisation and are “owned” by those who are responsible for, in this case, sales, purchasing and finance. 

In a recent Harvard Business Review* paper on reputational risk, Eccles, Newquist and Schatz propose that one person is put in charge of reputation in each organisation. Although 84% of respondents to an Economist Intelligence Unit survey in 2005 said it is the CEO’s job, the authors say, “the CEO does not have time to manage the ongoing process of coordinating all the activities that affect operational risk [including reputational risk]” (p.110).  

This person will be responsible for “assessing reputation, evaluating reality, identifying and closing gaps, and monitoring changing beliefs and expectations” (p.114). For this task, they suggest the COO, CFO or those with responsibility for risk management, strategic planning or internal audit as “they have the credibility and control some of the necessary resources to do the job” (p.114).

But what of the claims of PR/corporate communication people? “In general, those whose existing responsibilities pose potential conflicts probably shouldn’t be chosen. People holding top “spin” jobs such as the heads of marketing and corporate communications, fall into this category” (p.114). 

What strange logic. Why would the COO, CFO and functional managers not have “conflicts” which affect their bonuses and position within the organisation or their ability to take an objective view? As the heads of marketing and, especially, corporate communications are in contact with the widest range of stakeholders unlike the inward-facing senior management staff, surely they are best suited to the task of monitoring reputation and coordinating responses. They usually have a greater set of research skills than operations and financial senior management, too. 

What’s your view on this model of the single person to monitor and manage reputation and organisational relationships? Can it be operationalised or is it a coordination task? If it isn’t the CEO, then who should be responsible? 

* Eccles, RG, Newquist, SC and Schatz, R (2007) Reputation and its risks, Harvard Business Review, February, pp104-114

Some examples of corporate behaviour are a joy to bloggers. The latest example is the famed advertising and marcoms group Saatchi & Saatchi’s creation of a girl band called ‘Honeyshot’. As reported in The Guardian (UK) recently, it had the explicit role of “a vessel for covertly advertising products to music fans”.

At the beginning of April, Honeyshot’s first single ‘Style, Attract, Shock’ was sent out to DJs but without notifying them that it had been created by a subsidiary of the ad agency and that its title was the new slogan for a hair gel called Shockwave.

It was quickly rumbled by the BBC, whose Radio 1 is the top audience pop and rock music station in the UK, and banned from playlists. But not without being played. This may have been an outcome that got coverage for the brand, which has been mentioned for reasons of explaining the story in the previous paragraph. And probably someone has already told the brand’s owner that this furore was worth some absurd figure in advertising value equivalent.

Peter Robinson, who broke the story, makes two cogent points – “From Saatchi & Saatchi’s point of view, it (the record) betrays a stunning level of deception – which is going some, in the ad industry” and “… it is important that the Honeyshot project fails, which it has, unless the whole thing was a double bluff aimed solely at securing Shockwave’s column inches to promote the company’s penchant for insulting their customers’ intelligence.”

Will brands, their owners and advisers ever learn that honesty and authenticity are integral to their reputation?