Kineo Australia

Reputation Management: what are they thinking about you…?

I’ve stumbled upon this really well written article by Keith Goldberg – “How You Can Stay in Control of Your Brand’s Reputation” which hits the nail on the head about the issue.

Reputation management for a Brand is like having swipe card access to the server room…it’s simply not an option.

Goldberg sets also a very simple but clear approach to the matter divided in three main areas:

• Build
• Maintain
• Repair

Keith Goldberg - Senior VP-client strategy at EWI Worldwide

Truly most of the business that we work with have not even approached the matter, and as reputation management mistakenly seems to fall under the “social media stuff…” often gets dismissed investing more and more in Brand Advertising as a bad reputation counter measure. The results as we’ve seen are actually the opposite, polarizing even further those who are vocal about the particular brand.

You might remember the famous or infamous case of Kryptonite Evolution 2000. The basic story is that someone posted the classic Youtube video of this lock coming undone almost effortlessly with a bic pen. The effect of this spread like wild fire through the net and the particular product maker was hit with a significant loss in sales. Quoting Keith’s articles this is like the time you got taken to the Principal from your school teacher. Whether or not you were guilty of something every one could see you sitting outside his office and the guilty verdict was emitted.

The real question i suppose is: Can any brand afford a Kryptonite case? Many brands don’t even know the damages of a bad online reputation. So just to break it down very simply: if the first Customer instigated interaction with a Brand (meaning i want “brandX”) in over 95% of the case is online and customers finds more negative feedback that links to your site, i can assure you that life is going to get tough.

Nico Abbruzzese (Kineo MD)