The beauty award this year goes to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), followed by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and Unicef. The lowest reputation scores, however, were received by International Olympic Committee and NATO. Not surprising at all ! You should not expect that military and sport organizations would have been ranked higher than that, especially when their image is closely related to the general image of the services they offer and the image the places where their headquartered are based. Being accountable is also a tough task for most corporations as they fail to deploy effective policies and active management systems.

The Contest: According to the latest survey of One World Trust (a British Think Tank), the IFOAM, along with 29 other powerful organizations, have been assessed in terms of their accountability to stakeholders and wider public. The scope of the research was based on the assessment of four major criteria such as transparency, participation with outsiders, evaluation and complains handling. Turns out that none of the companies actually managed to score higher than 70 percent accountability which is very low and insufficient result. The official report also states:

A score of 70 percent indicates that an organisation has policies in place that meet only some good practice principles and the basic management systems to support their implementation. This is the floor, not the ceiling, of accountability capabilities. If global organisations are to be part of the solution to global challenges, there needs to be a step change in their approaches to accountability. They need to start implementing the more challenging accountability reforms which truly empower external stakeholders to hold an organisation to account. Organisations must also take the necessary steps to embed accountability in their culture and ensure it is being translated into practice.

The other interesting conclusion that has been made is that all of the evaluated companies failed to show good scores (more than 50 percent) in their transparency policies and complaint handling procedures. It is funny that Transparency International (a global organization that tries to fight corruption) takes one of the lowest positions in this chart. Why is this so important? Well, from a Black PR perspective, these are pretty severe vulnerabilities. If an attacker manage to hack into the corporate complaint tracking software and steals all of the important data, he can easily turn that into a massive negative campaign. The affected organization will be not only caught into a very awkward situation, but it will be unable to respond properly to the increasing flow of stakeholders complaints. This also leads to intense media attention and general public dissatisfaction.

One more thing – I did a little research on my own and I found out that the Google Page Ranks of the less accountable organizations is way higher than the the Page Rank of the organizations on the top of the list. However, if you type their name and the word reputation into the search box, you will find that the first couple of pages are filled with negative publications and comments . I guess popularity is not always proportionally related to the general stakeholders’ respect.

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I don’t know about you but today I have started writing my New Year’s Resolution List. One of the things I am eager to do next year is to learn how to surf. It’s cool, risky and very challenging. What I like most about it is the sense of uncertainty and the way you need to survive with a minimum set of resources.

Surfin is like crisis management, don’t you think? If you actually compare some of the basic tutorials in both disciplines, you will probably find a lots of similarities. So, once you master the ability to stay upright on the board, you can easily gain a confidence for dealing with some of the most severe crisis in the corporate world.

How to Start

When a crisis occurs, the first thing to consider is finding the balance point. Use your company’s strengths and all those positive qualities that cannot be doubted by the others. This will help you to balance out all the negative publications and unfair accusations. For example, if your organization is being socially responsible and undertakes many charitable events, this actually can help to save your stakeholders’ trust and turn the crisis into unexpected corporate profit.

The second crucial habit that must be developed is the ability to respond as quickly as possible to the changing environment. The speed is absolutely everything for both surfing and crisis management. It gives you not only a competitive edge, but also the power to predict every negative outcomes. At the same time, do not forget to keep it low once you get the situation back in control. In almost every zoology book it is stated that the most dangerous moments for the target is right after its escape form the predator. So if you keep looking at your feet, you will definitely fall down again. Instead, you should “cover the back of your head” and protect all your vital assets from further damages. Stay “under the water” as long as you can, but never lose the honesty in your conversations.

Safety should always be in the back of your mind, which is a reason why you should never be surfing alone. You never know what might go wrong even on the smallest of waves – its good to have someone who can help you out if you get into trouble.

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As it turns out, the free public mind is one of the greatest threats to many corporations and political regimes as it could easily destroy their long-term goals, ideologies and operations. Chomsky also says that the idea of democracy gives an enormous, anarchic power to the regular people, which could be quite harmful to the society in general. Actually, propaganda is one of the Chomsky’s favorite topics as he wrote many books about it – Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media and Propaganda and The Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky. Great reads for those who are interested.

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It is official! Hillary Clinton is finally appointed as the new Secretary of State. Congrats!!!! Let me tell you, this lady is everything, but a loser and will do everything just to get to the power of the state. It seems like she is absolutely capable of taking every political position you can think about of – a first lady, a senator, a president wanna-be, a vice president and if all this fail why not a head of international affairs. There is nothing wrong with this, except that the recent political history is entirely dominated by families like the Bushes and the Clintons. Looks like once you taste the power of the White House, it is not easy to give it up. I cannot help but wonder, where is the real change that we are awaiting for so long?

Funny enough, just few weeks ago both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said that they want to improve America’s standing in the world. The Democart’s victory was easily labeled by different media outlets as “historic” and has put hopes for a brighter future not only in US, but also in the whole world itself. Barack Obama is not just the first black president; he is a symbol of new political standards, a chance of economic survival and a representative of new class of world leaders. For a first time in many years (maybe after Nelson Mandela’s jail release), people all over the world were united in something bigger than their own social troubles. They were proud of the choice they made and were actually interested in following the news, counting the votes and somehow been personally involved in the whole competition.

What happened?

Let me take you back to the time when Hillary Clinton tried to “nominate” herself as a potential candidate for vice-presidency. Every rational political analyst at that time fiercely criticized the opportunity of pairing the “two former rivals” into the same election list. Moreover, it was said to be an absolutely wrong move and a second chance for Bill Clinton to overshadow the upcoming cabinet. Hillary was also seen as an obstacle that could put many prospective voters off the Obama’s political platform. Not to mention about the numerous dirty tricks that both candidates used to play to each other. Actually the fight between them was even more bitter and more aggressive than the one with the Republicans.

Today, after the election, the partnership between Obama and Clinton has been suddenly seen as logical conclusion of a long, exhausting race. However there are still a couple of issues that must be considered. Hillary is not the type of a woman that will be easily controlled. No matter how suitable or experienced she is for being a Secretary of State, she also has a wide network of business/political connections which could put her into a great dominance over the rest of the crew. This means that her political leverage will be getting stronger and stronger each day, which kind of makes this team ineffective at its very beginning.

Bottom Line:

One of the good things about Democracy is the idea of free choice. The American people were actually unable to vote about the alliance between Hillary and Obama (as it would happen if she was officially named his running mate). Now they are forced to accept it. All this raises the question if we ever had the opportunity to choose between different democratic alternatives or everything was already set up as part of a nasty, political scenario. No matter how good it sounds in theory, the change has been already made, unfortunately not by us.

Definitely not a good sign for the American reputation!

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In the mood of the upcoming Christmas feasts, here are our tips of how to stay corporate fit during the season. As you know, during this time of the year most companies are quite busy with the execution of various sales campaigns or are rushing to close important deals right before New Year’s Eve. Christmas also means lots of parties, reunions and gatherings. However that urge for having a fresh start sometimes cost millions to the organizations as they tend to neglect their competitors and therefore easily become victims of lethal reputation attacks. While many attribute the cause for this as an excessive preoccupation during the holidays, much of the Black PR cases are due to the carelessness of managers to assess security threats and their actual frequency. CEOs also foolishly underestimate the objectives of negative campaigning and refuse to believe that someone will ever dare to affect their flawless corporate systems.

I don’t think is even worth mentioning it here how idiotic approach this is and to be honest many organizations deserve their own reputation misery. So instead of spending quality time with friends and families, many employees end up the year setting crisis teams and fighting bad publicity. Sounds like lots of fun, isn’t it?

What is the healthy diet?

First of all, I think it is very important for corporations to understand the power of a good reputation. Although it is not something that you can touch and hold in your hands, having a good name (personal or a brand) is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. It affects not only your annual financial reports, but also it gives you a competitive edge and a whole new meaning of your marketing strategies, internal relations and in general sales performance. Companies with strong reputation are more likely to recover from severe crises, than the ones with inconstant behavior and negative image.

Secondly, there is a common misunderstanding which I want to clarify. Usually when PRs talk about reputation, they tend to refer to it as good or bad one. The truth is that the reputation of an organization can be much more colorful as it can take many different shapes or sizes. Keep also in mind that the corporate image means different things for the different stakeholder groups, such as employees, suppliers, shareholders and the media. It is vitally important to keep the balance between them as you risk to put yourself in a very untrustworthy position.

The size always matters

There is no big or small reputation. It is all relative. Companies with big reputations are those with a greater popularity among the general public. This s the case with Body Shop. Everyone think of Body Shop as a company that is deeply concerned with the environment, fair trading and biologically clean products. This is something that nobody doubts or dare to counter.

Organizations with small reputations are those that fail to established any strong images in the minds of the audience. Usually those are start-ups or corporations with controversial past and lack of political protections. Even worse – firms with no individuality and international media presence.

The question here is what will happen when these two types of reputation collide. Obviously it will be much easier for a bigger organization to smash down the smaller one. It has wider network of connections, more money and better PR team. The smaller competitor won’t even noticed that they are being a victim of Black PR campaign or even if they do, nobody will believe them or even want to invest in an entity without any market future.

However if a start-up succeeds in the defamation of a bigger company, it will automatically position itself as better consumer alternative and even secure its own market place. This opportunity is especially seductive for the retail industry. The only difficult thing here is the creating of an effective Black PR strategy and a new marketing plan for after that.

So, take the tape measure and prepare for the upcoming festivals!

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There is a new documentary coming up this weekend on MTV about Britney Spears. It is called Britney: For the Record and it aims to rebuild her reputation after months of a total meltdown. It is expected to be a heart-breaking story about her emotional collapse and the way she completely lost her way to the top. Funny enough, MTV was blamed a year ago that it deliberately helped destroying her image by letting her on stage of the MTV Music Awards 2007. If you remember well she was brutally criticized by the tabloids at that time for her poor performance and horrible look, which put Spears even into a deeper depression. Britney easily became a synonym of psychological disorder and a topic of numerous humorous plots. For more then a year people all over the world were literally shocked by her tabloid-chronicled personal spiral that has included rumors of drug and alcohol abuse, a scalp-shearing breakdown, a few trips through rehab, visits from the department of child welfare, and a lot of genital exposure.

What is happening now?

For the last couple of months, the falling POP-star suddenly raised from the ashes. It was not something that I expected to occur so soon, at least not with the same magnitude. Today, Britney Spears looks like an entirely different person. She behaves well, spends quality time with her two sons, hits the top charts with a brand new single and even won two MTV awards. Larry Rudolph, her manager, kindly refers to as the official beginning of the comeback. However I couldn’t help but wonder, is it really a comeback or a well-designed reputation strategy?

There are a few disturbing things which make me reason that Britney Spears’s brake-down could be part of a complex, self-created Black PR campaign. I know this sounds insane! Who could possibly do this to himself, but if you think about it – Why NOT???

First of all, Britney released her fifth album, Blackout, right in the peak of her emotional troubles. Ask any reputation advisor and he will tell you that this is a wrong move, especially when you carry such a horrible media karma. That is completely true, but not if your singles are all about depression, self-lost and bad decisions. What would be a better way to promote your label, but your own self-destructing life. Keep also in mind that the target audience of the album is mainly composed of teenagers and I don’t even want to start discussing the emotional problems this particular group have to go through. What I am trying to say is that, Britney’ life may be seen from some as a total wreck, but for others (young troubled girls) it is empathy, etc.

On the other hand, people love to see their idols falling down. They want to assure themselves that the celebrities are just regular people as everyone else and have the same domestic and professional problems. This is how I can personally explain the whole hysteria around reality programs and behind the scenes features.

Believe me, Britney Spears’ record company knew this extremely well and as a result Blackout set the record for the biggest-selling digital album debut by a female artist in a week.

New Album requires a New Image

The next album of Britney Spears, Circus, is set to be released on 2th Dec (her birthday). The date it is not accidental. It should mark her comeback and new personal stage of life. She will be portrayed as more mature and emotionally stronger woman and she will probably start aiming at different type of audience.

Britney already looks different. She has better style, better figure, boosted self-esteem and professional attitude. She seems quite womanized and in peace with herself. All she needs to do now is to start excusing herself and her recent behavior. She is aiming at people’s compassion and fortunately for her, we all like to forgive.

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There is a new reputation term I stumbled across yesterday (via Authenticorganizations blog) so I thought it is worth discussing it. It is called collateral reputation damage and the idea behind it is that some companies could be incidentally defamed, just by having random similarities with another, less respectable organizations or individuals. According to the author:

The collateral damage, (is) not intentional damage, because the folks taking action don’t intend to damage the organization’s reputation. Instead, the damage occurs through guilt by association

How does it work?

The most popular example of collateral damage is when two similar names (let’s refer to them as A and B) are being negatively associated with each other. Usually there is no any relevant connection between them, except their names, nicknames, corporate symbols or initials. Visual resemblance is also possible. The only requirement here is one of the subjects (let’s say A) to have an established bad reputation in people’s minds. So, every time when people hear about the other one, B, they will subconsciously associate it with the negative qualities and characteristics of A. Fortunately, this works only for a very short period of time. However, it could be really damaging only if A is in the middle of a corporate/personal scandal.

This is what happened with Sarah Pailn and the Chiliean wine Palin Syrah. According to Chris Tavelli (a wine bar owner), Palin Sayrah was one of the best selling wines in his pub before her nomination as a Republican V.P. People were constantly put off of its low price and questionable quality.

How the affected party should react?

Well, there is no a straightforward answer really. Everything depends on the specific situation and whether the affected organization is willing to take any further steps to rebuild its reputation. The main point here is the harmed company or the individual must distant itself from the one with a bad image and make sure to demonstrate different corporate values. If the company publicly complains about its reputation loss and provide enough evidences about it, such as significant financial drops, then it has the real chance to increase its popularity, find new markets or even entirely re-position itself. As I always say, it all depends on the abilities of finding an opportunity in the crisis.

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Ask any reputation strategist and he will tell you that the most vulnerable asset of any corporation is its very own leader. Actually CEO’s reputation represent around 49%-65% of overall corporate reputation and thus it is inevitable part of numerous Black PR scenarios. The reason for this is because it requires much less efforts and time to defame a person, than to concentrate on the disparagement of an entire organization.

The objectives of the smear campaigns, on the other hand, could also be different. Usually there are two simple goals behind every reputation attack. The first one is directed at the personal qualities of the target and it aims his official resignation. Most of the time these types of attacks come from inside the company and are used when the leader is no longer suitable for the general corporate performance. It is also very convenient when he/she cannot be dismissed directly or is a great obstacle for someone’s interest. The second reason for CEO defamation is when the black- hats are trying to distract the attention of the industry’s stakeholders or are aiming to cause extra troubles for the organization. It is not a surprise that this is a very common situation during important events like new product launching or some forthcoming acquisitions.

Due to the high volume of recent reputation attacks, I tried to summarize the most common malicious scenarios that CEO’s could be involved in. Of course, there are a lot more scenarios than those that I have listed. Keep in mind that everything depends on the creativity of the attacker. The golden rule here is that the more uncommon the plan is, the more effective the results would be.

1. Sexual Harassment – This is the most popular type of attack that a leader could face. It is quite easy to be proved and works almost every time. All you need to do is to find a suitable victim, sufficient evidences and a tabloid editor, willing to pay enough for the story. Once the scandal is triggered, you can just sit down and relax.
2. Hypocrisy – The point here is to reveal a discrepancy between leader’s official attitude and his actual deeds. The latest example is the Sara Palin fashion affair. The problem there was not that she likes to wear very expensive, designer clothes, but the fact she is not a regular American girl as she had been trying to portray herself.
3. Membership of controversial groups – This is a really powerful approach. If you can prove that the CEO is a part of a mob gang, religious cult or secret society, than his media crucifixion will be certain. The corporate long term strategies will also be affected.
4. Professional Incompetence – if the leader is incapable of making good decisions and taking responsibilities of his action , then the quality of the corporate services will be put under a serious suspicion. This is pretty scary for most of the B2B type of companies.
5. Misuse of corporate resources (Embezzlement) – Financial wrongdoing and unethical behavior are probably the most significant threats to every corporate reputation.Such is the case with the Deyaar’s ex-CEO, Zack Shahin, who was suspected of embezzling over $33 millions into his personal accounts. The scandal broke earlier this year and let to his immediate discharge as the head of the biggest property developer in Dubai. According to the Gulf media sources, the company is still trying to recover its tarnished reputation and to regain the trust of its shareholders.

I want to clarify that the person who was accused of embezzling Deyaar Development’ resources is Zack Shahin , not Nasser Al-Shaikh as was stated earlier before. Mr. Al-Shekih is the current Chairman of the company and The General Director of Dubai Department of Finance. Spin Hunters apologies for any inconvenience we might caused with this post.

6. Indictment – When it comes to CEO’s reputation, ethical conduct is always on the top. Bernard Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom, learned that the hard way when he was indicted on federal charges stemming from the multi-billion dollar accounting fraud at the telecommunications giant. He was also charged of conspiracy and false filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. Today he is serving his sentence at the FCI Oakdale.
7. Personality and Lifestyle – The main goal of the attacker here is to reveal all the dirty secrets of the target that are not publicly known. If the leader is a drug addict, a racist or a homosexual and this type of an image is in total clash with the position he takes, then not only the reputation of the organization, he is associated with, will suffer but also the reputation of the entire industry itself.

Bottom Line: CEO’s reputation will always be a target of professional smear campaigns. The best thing CEOs can do is to be completely honest and sincere with his PR strategic team, as this is the only way to tackle all pending reputation risks.

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There is a new widget that caught my eye the other day and I have been playing with it ever since. It’s called Tell-a-Friend and its general purpose is to help users to share any type of information without leaving the website where it is installed. Nothing new, you may say, but the point I want to make is that this tool actually enables visitors to access their friends with much greater speed and scope. So, instead of remembering all the contact details of your LinkedIn network, you can now spread your messages with less efforts and boring authentication requests. Convenient for ones, quite scary for others! Tell-a-Friend is a two-edged sword that can successfully build and destroy your reputation in a matter of minutes. Everything depends on the professional skills of both the black-hats and the reputation management consultants.

It is not a surprise that most of the serious PR agencies today design Word-of-Mouth (WOM) strategies as part of their promotion services. They are well aware of the power of peer-to-peer sharing and that most potential costumers heavily rely on the advice and the input of the people they trust. A professionally executed WOM campaign is hundreds of times more effective than any other advertising platform combined with the best communication tactics, especially when it can also help boosting the sales performance and corporate operational profit.

One of the most specific features of WOM marketing is that it barely relies on any substantial facts, but personal opinions. So, even if you read something about yourself on the Web that it is not entirely true, the measures you can take are pretty limited. It is almost impossible to start legal actions against a whole community, especially when the initial source of the rumor is hard to be identified. It is also quite stupid for a company to blame someone because of his personal believes and thus all marketing books share the opinion that customer is always right.

I will stop here. I think it is pointless to explain further the importance of Word-of-Mouth and its global impact on corporate reputations. However, I believe it is crucial to discuss its usage as rumor spreading accelerator and general defamation tool.

What makes Negative WOM so powerful?

It is proven that people trust negative information way more than any superlatives. If you hear something bad about someone, this is more likely to be remembered than the high volume of positive stories you can find about that very same person. The reason for this are the libel messages with their embellishing nature which causes the drama effect. This means that if you start a rumor about something,,at the end of the day it will sound totally different from its initial form. In fact, every time when somebody repeats the story, the impact will be much bigger and stronger over the target audience. None of the other communication tools enable you to do that.

The other thing I would like to mention is the tempo, with which viral messages could be disseminated. This is extremely important for every defamation campaign , because it disables the target to react promptly on existing reputation attacks. If the target delays its official respond or fail to give a reasonable explanation of the buzz (with enough number of facts), then the allegations will be subconsciously confirmed by the audience. Moreover, this delay may actually help the rumors to spread even more and this is how the target’s reputation can be permanently damaged.

In conclusion, I can only say that most of the big corporations tend to underestimate the power of negative communication. They are willing to spend enormous amount of money for creating a positive buzz, but not fighting the negative one. In short term perspective, this may look reasonable, but keep in mind that there will always be someone that doesn’t like your product and will try everything to take you down. As I always say, it is up to you to decide whether this is going to happen.

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The high volume of recent smear campaigns has led to the need of a special acknowledgment.

Spin Hunters is eager to rate the most popular cases of reputation attacks in the last year. Whether this will be the hysterical speculations over the upcoming election or the intensive rumors about the crush of a big financial institution, it is up to you decide. Therefore if you suspect that some of the current affairs are part of a malicious Black PR plot or you know this for sure, please submit your nominations by emailing us. At the end of the year, we will honor the most over-hyped stories by giving them a special award and public rebuke.

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