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Advocacy to Cushion Reputation Risk

No one can argue that the challenge of managing and protecting company reputation is an enduring leadership agenda item, taking on priority status as the online community becomes more sophisticated. Opportunities abound for companies to connect with their staunch, passionate, and highly influential supporters – their advocates – to help build and protect reputation. New technologies seem to surface every day that allow organizations to build relationships with these advocates and cultivate new advocates.

To assess the online reputation risks and vulnerabilities in business today, and how advocacy can reduce threats and create opportunities, we recently completed a large global study about online reputation management, called Risky Business: Reputations Online™. We conducted it in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit, surveying more than 700 senior executives from 62 countries.

Risky Business determined that executives believe the threat level to their companies’ reputation is high – a striking 67% of top executives regard their company’s reputation as vulnerable.  However, the study also found that advocacy helps safeguard company reputations in many ways. Below are a few highlights to whet your appetite, but we’ll be releasing more from the study over the next few weeks.

• Reputation threat levels are lower at companies with loyal advocates. Less than 6 in 10 executives (56%) who believe that most of their company’s advocates would stay with them if they faced a reputational crisis (i.e., those with “very loyal” advocates) report high or moderate threat level to their company’s reputation today. Comparatively, 79% of executives whose company’s advocates are not loyal (i.e., most would abandon them in the face of a reputational crisis) consider the threat level to their company’s reputation high or moderate.

• Executives at companies with very loyal advocates are far less worried about online badvocacy from dissatisfied customers or critics than executives at companies that lack loyal advocates (31% vs. 47%, respectively). This confidence is probably a result of their companies’ rigor in managing reputation online: those with very loyal advocates report having a more rigorous approach to online reputation management than those whose advocates are not loyal (65% vs. 44%, respectively).

More proof to come of the benefits of finding and nurturing advocates…