Brand Reputation is Now More Important Than Ever

As a public relations or strategic communications professional, you understand the hefty value of your brand and its reputation's impact of your company's bottom line. 

I am a senior at the Medill School of Journalism also studying in the Integrated Marketing Communications program. During my previous work experience in media analytics with Zignal Labs, I became convinced of the value social and news monitoring can add to businesses and I recently came across two excellent articles that explain why. 
How to Use Media Data to Measure Brand Reputation written by Tom Howells of Zignal Labs stresses the importance of not just having a data overload of all things potentially relevant to your brand, but instead having a tight grasp on the specific topics of conversation that revolve around your brand's values. Tom also stresses the competitive insights brand reputation data can provide, "Every company wants to be known as a thought leader within their space. One way to calculate their effectiveness is to look at all the conversations within an industry and measure the number of times each competitor is mentioned, as well as looking for how they are mentioned — are they mentioned positively, considered a thought leader or being associated with a particular trait?" 

Photo C/O Unsplash:     https://unsplash.com/photos/8wClLnwbNkc    

"Branding is no longer limited to what consumers experience when they encounter a company’s advertising, marketing, communications, or customer service representatives," according to the CMO Insights and Analysis publication on the Wall Street Journal website. Deloitte says there is an increasing connection between a brands reputation and perception and their underlying business operations performance. According to the Deloitte article, the relationship between operations and a brand's reputation health is strong because a reputation is rooted in trust, which requires a brand to consistently deliver a consistent product. “The closer a customer experience is to the brand promise, the healthier the brand,” writes Deloitte. 


Based on these two articles and my academic experience at Northwestern University, I have created a list of 3 items for you to consider next time you are evaluating your company's brand health, looking to mitigate reputational future risks or making strategic decisions regarding your brand's values. 

1. CLEAR IS BEST
The most important aspect of a brand’s reputation is trust, and what better way to establish trust than to give your customers a clear, truthful brand value proposition that your product can deliver on.

2. ACTIVELY LISTENThey say to keep your friends close but your enemies closer, so I suggest you listen and develop a through understanding of the space your brand occupies in the marketplace as well as your brands strengths and weakness compared to your competition.

3. ALWAYS DELIVER
The best defense has always been and will always be a good offense, so sound operational performance is the best way to ensure your brand reputation stays spotless.

Author:
Northwestern Student
Class of 2019

Name and Metadata/Tags not included because student does not want to limit future employment opportunities.