A number of big brands have experienced public relations crises over scandals caused by events that are not compatible with their marketing messages.
Crises like the Volkswagen’s car emissions rigging, Innoson Motors and GTB legal tussles, H&M’s racially insensitive ad for their sweatshirt collection, Boeing’s 737 MAX plane crash in Ethiopia and the battle of the banks on twitter #Bankwars.
These scandals within days got customers talking and airing doubts about their ability to trust them. Companies of recent, have learned that a good brand reputation is not easy to build but can be easily tarnished.
The damage done to a brand’s reputation from a scandal, disaster or accident can be very terrible and long-lasting. For instance, if your CEO was arrested for fraud, or maybe you’ve just made a very bad business decision, and it’s finally caught up with you or some other worse scenario, some businesses never fully recover.
That is why from time to time, risk assessment and a well-prepared crisis management strategy are essential in today’s social-media world, to protect valuable brand reputation if disaster strikes.
In the digital world we live in today, with so many platforms, chat boards and online review sites on ground, the best marketing effort can easily go south with one click of the mouse by an unsatisfied customer.
You have certainly heard about customer online reviews on blogs and social platforms. A negative tread can be widely discussed on twitter and seen by an infinite number of internet users, even before anyone from the company even notices.
Here’s are some tips on how you can protect and manage your brand’s reputation;
1. Reputational insurance policies
There are insurance policies(reputational insurance) that cover for the loss of brand reputation.
In the event of such disasters, they offer policies that compensate companies for negative reputational events that can affect brand sales.
For instance, a product recall, a cyber breach or a case where a celebrity-sponsored by the brand becomes discredited. Reputational Insurance will cover the losses associated with that scandal at some cost. A bad reputation can be avoided if a better risk management strategy is implemented.
2. Improving Risk Management
It is true that these tarnishing events may sometimes be unavoidable, but there are other times when these events could have been avoided if there had been better risk management.
The way it ought to be, company boards are supposed to be aware of the risks facing their business by risk mapping – which are graphical illustrations of foreseeable events and their likely impact.
But these maps are limited by the ability of risk managers to imagine possible risk scenarios, so they miss both the unexpected events and the most obvious failures which very often bring companies down.
Companies are advised to take a detailed look at this reputation risk, they need to look at what protects their reputation by putting into consideration the customer and services rendered. By taking a stakeholder-detailed approach, it forces you to ask questions you don’t ask in the usual risk-mapping process.”
Companies need a very effective crisis management strategy in place, for instance, knowing the exact actions to take when such a situation come up and ensuring the situation is quickly contained.
And if possible, practice run-throughs of crisis management strategies to make sure your team is ready to act if the worst happens.
3. Managing Reputations
A lot of companies are aware of the importance of brand reputation but fail to take the necessary steps to protect their brand until it gets out of hand. Brand reputation needs to be understood in a much broader sense, as something that affects the entire company and not just a particular department.
For most businesses, the department that handles reputation is usually the public relations and marketing departments. However, the crises that damage a brand may not come from this department, which is the reason why you need to grow every department in your company in a way that they all master how to manage risk and minimize reputational damage.
Brand reputation is one valuable asset many companies have. Since social media has the ability to influence a brands reputation, businesses need to be alert and be sure to avoid a dented image as It is way better to protect your image than struggling to convince customers you are worth it.
When prospects search for your business online, you want them to easily find you, along with all of the positive things being said about you.
It is possible to build an excellent reputation through sources like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, your company’s website, and advertising campaigns. And then, when you do, ensure you maintain it.
