Wanted to direct you to a great article written by Weber Shandwick’s own Colin Byrne, CEO UK and Europe. It appeared last week and includes practical tips for minimizing reputation damage that comes from a company’s badvocates. Colin also cites real-world examples of the kinds of damage companies have experienced when they haven’t kept “the window to sabotage” shut tightly. Enjoy the article.
As a follow-up to Leslie’s Pay Dirt post - about how important it is for organizations to know, understand and engage their advocates and badvocates - I thought I’d share some data from our Risky Business: Reputations Online survey we conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Our study suggests that executives are taking on the job of advocacy intelligence. In the 30 days prior to taking our survey, one-quarter of global executives searched online for information about their supporters and/or detractors. While this is not a majority level, it is a rather large proportion when you consider how busy a typical executive’s life has been during the past year and how much pressure he or she is under to just “make the numbers.” The finding that one-in-four found it an important enough task to take time to do an advocate/badvocate search underscores the recognition of the opportunities and risks.
Adding to the import of the activity is our finding that it’s not a task delegated to junior staff: 29% of CEOs/Chairs took it upon themselves to do such a search. With CEO approval ratings at rock-bottom levels and badvocates piling up, these top executives are finding it critical to know who their friends and foes are.
Thought I’d share another finding about advocacy from our study with the Economist Intelligence Unit - Risky Business: Reputations Online. This research snippet is about where Badvocacy meets Web 2.0.
Although global executives identify major media as the most threatening to company reputation (84%), plenty of executives (42%) recognize the damage new media can impose. Blogs and discussion forums are the most feared with online videos, comments on social networking sites, Wikipedia entries, and online pictures compounding potential destruction. Considering that fast-rising Web 2.0 new media and social networking tools can literally rally advocates and badvocates overnight, more executives should be concerned about new media as a reputation killer. Here’s how each of these rank in terms of global executive fear:
While the blog is considered the king of Web 2.0 badvocacy risk now, it will be interesting to see how the other technologies evolve as badvocacy threats.
If you’ve been following this blog you know that we at Weber Shandwick firmly believe in the “return on advocacy.” Simply, it’s the business benefits of finding and connecting with your advocates. Now maybe it’s time to kick off the “return on BADVOCACY.” Can there be such a thing? Afterall, our own study, Risky Business: Reputations Online™ clearly identified the fear instilled in global executives by customer and employee badvocates.
Employee badvocates are a big concern: executives ranked employee criticism (41%) in a tie for first place with leaked confidential information as the greatest online risk to their own company’s reputation. As employees wrestle with declining pensions and possible layoffs, reputation bandits will be even harder at work online.
The Internet provides innumerable platforms for employees to strike, usually anonymously, at a company’s reputation. However, rather than being immobilized with fear about the potential for such strikes, Nokia, as noted in an article in this week’s BusinessWeek, is embracing employee badvocacy. They are allowing their employees to rant anonymously on an intranet soapbox called BlogHub. “Workers can be savage as they flame thier employer…Nokia managers want them to fire away.” Nokia believes that innovation is accelerated by encouraging employees to say what is on their minds. I would surmise that the other benefit is that by allowing employees to release their frustrations in a “safe” environment, they won’t be tempted to go outside Nokia’s four walls and vent.
It will be interesting to see if Nokia sees a Return on Badvocacy as it struggles in a tough economy with strong competitors. In the meantime, we’ll keep on eye out for other examples of turning badvocacy into a positive return.
Tags: Badvocacy, Badvocate, BusinessWeek, Nokia, Weber Shandwick
June 2 was a proud day for badvocates - they had finally been affirmed as a group when MarketingProf’s selected Weber Shandwick’s “Badvocate” as The Marketers Addictionary’s Word of the Day. Weber Shandwick was congratulated for our talent on word play. The Badvocacy terminology was created when we developed our Advocacy Starts Here thought leadership initiative. The word of the day is a pretty cool site - you should check it out and add your own if you have a creative word to share.
How often can a senior executive say his or her biggest ally in the company is the CEO? Well, frankly, I don’t know what the average senior executive says, but I do know that the chief communications officer (CCO) can proudly make the claim.
We conducted our second annual study among CCOs at the world’s largest companies with Spencer Stuart and KRC Research - The Rising CCO II - and found that the CCO’s #1 organizational ally in both North America and Europe is the CEO. Investor Relations is a distant #2 (a predictable ranking given how closely corp comms and IR have had to work together in the tough economic climate).
Our survey asked about top organizational allies and rivals (respondents could choose just one department for each). As communications professionals, we were quite relieved that only 1 person in our sample said his or her biggest rival is the CEO. Worldwide, Marketing is the CCO’s stickiest thorn (as we saw last year) but in North America Human Resources is nearly tied with Marketing.
Why the admiration from the corner office? As our study partner George Jamison, who leads Spencer Stuart’s Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Practice, says, “When many organizations endure critical times, CEOs are increasingly looking to the CCO for their strategic crisis communications and ability to quickly react to a variety of scenarios.”
And Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist Leslie Gaines-Ross adds: “CEOs and boards are under tremendous pressure to navigate through the stormy seas of the current economic tsunami. Like never before, CEOs are depending on CCOs for crisis and issues counsel to steady their company reputations and calm stakeholders. CEOs who do not communicate using traditional and social media do so at their own peril.”
We’ll see when we do the same study next year if the love continues to flourish. But for now, if you’re going to have an advocate in your company, may it be the CEO!
Weber Shandwick recently published The Good Book of Badvocacy, the first in a series of Thought Leadership “mini-books.” As you might have guessed, The Good Book is all about badvocacy. Take a look and let us know what you think!
We recently completed a five-month weekly tracking audit of the home pages of the largest financial services firms in the US and Europe. Our goal was to see if and how these companies, which are already in the hot seat and presumably anxious to positively connect with customers in every way possible (i.e., ensure their advocates remain advocates), were using prime real estate to address the global financial crisis and reassure customers during this time of great turmoil.
When we started the audit in mid-October 2008 we found that just 27% of 57 companies referred to the crisis. We gave them the benefit of the doubt, given it was such a tumultous week, and assumed that as they got their bearings they would increase their communications. Over the next few weeks, as another few financial institutions went out of business (we ended up with 55), the percent of home page crisis communicators inched up slowly to where eventually four in 10 mentioned the economic crisis on their home page. Our final audit was February 28, 2009 and some had ceased their home page communications, landing at 34%. That means a solid two-thirds were not mentioning one word on their home pages about the crisis at the end of February.
Why do we think its important for the financial sector to pull out all the stops to acknowledge consumers’ fears about the crisis? For one thing, a Boston Consulting Group study released results from a recent U.S. study that suggested financial services providers can diminish defections by simply communicating with consumers. It found that consumers want factual reassurance. Further, exactly half of the survey respondents said the economic crisis has caused them to lose trust in their investment/brokerage firms, followed by investment advisors and banks (46% each).
Barb Iverson, president of Weber Shandwick’s financial services industry practice group, commented about our research: “It is not enough for leading financial services companies to communicate only in good times. Our ongoing analysis leads us to recommend to financial services companies that they use their low-cost/high-impact home pages to communicate more directly and personally with their stakeholders by acknowledging and addressing customer and investor financial concerns.”
It seems that financial services firms should at least let their customers, and potential customers, know their angst is acknowledged and respected. Otherwise advocates might take their advocacy elsewhere.
Forrester Research really stirred the social media pot this week when they launched their report, Add Sponsored Conversations To Your Toolbox: Why You Should Pay Bloggers To Talk About Your Brand. Their POV is that paying someone to blog about your product, provided full disclosure of the sponsored relationship, is one more communications tool for marketers to leverage. Since the release on March 2 through the morning of March 6, there have been 95 mentions of “sponsored conversation” in social media. In the entire month of February there were only two. The clamor is generally over the appropriateness of this tactic. I am not joining this discussion, rather I raise the issue because the Forrester report underscores what we at Weber Shandwick have been demonstrating through our research for a few years now - there are benefits when companies tap into their advocates who can spread positive word-of-mouth (we call it “Return on Advocacy“).
Our latest research identifies that there are also reputational returns from advocacy. Risky Business: Reputations OnlineTM, conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit among more than 700 senior executives worldwide, found that positive word-of-mouth about a company is considered almost as important as corporate transparency and is more important than financial performance and employee talent in terms of value to a company’s reputation.
|
Factors most valuable to a company’s overall reputation… |
Global Executives |
|
Quality of products and services |
76% |
|
Leadership/credibility of executive leaders |
63% |
|
Transparency of policies and operations |
48% |
|
Word-of-mouth about the company |
44% |
|
Financial performance |
39% |
|
Employee talent |
33% |
CEOs and Chairmen especially believe in the impact of word-of-mouth on company reputation. Not only is positive word-of-mouth more important to those in the corner office, the power of positive word-of-mouth to counteract negative word-of-mouth seems to be recognized more clearly by CEO/Chairs. They consider negative word-of-mouth as critical to damaging reputation as positive word-of-mouth is to building reputation. Other executives may be minimizing the “buffer” effect positive word-of-mouth has on negative word-of-mouth.
|
Percent of executives who consider… |
CEOs/Chairs |
Non-CEOs/Chairs |
|
Positive word-of-mouth valuable to company reputation |
56% |
42% |
|
Negative word-of-mouth damaging to company reputation |
60% |
52% |
These executives acknowledge what earlier global consumer research conducted by Weber Shandwick with KRC Research found, that advocates have significant influence to spread their point-of-view and mobilize others to act. Regardless of your opinion about paid conversations, it’s impossible to overlook the influence of advocates on a company’s bottom-line, especially during these tough times.
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 co
mmunity 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.
|
|
Companies with very loyal advocates |
Companies without loyal advocates |
|
The threat to my company’s reputation today is high or moderate |
56% |
79% |
|
I am concerned that a dissatisfied customer or critic will launch an online campaign against my company |
31% |
47% |
|
My company is very/somewhat rigorous today about managing its reputation online |
65% |
44% |
More proof to come of the benefits of finding and nurturing advocates…
