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Organisations thrive or die by their reputation. Good PR is about managing that reputation, which can include getting positive media coverage, but it is only a tactic, not the goal. There are many other aspects to building and maintaining a reputation.
Think of a company, a person, or even a political party, and you will be able to tell me what their reputation is, in more or less detail depending on how familiar they are to you. In some cases, particularly political parties and celebrities, that reputation will be different for different people. It can also change very quickly due to an incident. But in most cases, there is consensus about what that reputation is. Apple, for example, has a reputation for innovation and good design; British train companies for delays. That’s their reputation, whether the facts support it or not.
Reputation is formed from our own experience of that person or organisation and what other people say about them. Media coverage is only part of that. We might have read about train delays, but if the trains always run on time for us, we’re more likely to form a judgement based on that.
Most recognise that awards and positive reviews also give a company external, independent, validation. But many other, often overlooked, factors contribute to your reputation. How the company responds to complaints and the behaviour of representatives of the company are two important examples. Is customer service warm and friendly, or impossible to reach, defensive and unhelpful when you do manage to talk to someone? Is the speaker at the event, representing the company, informative, helpful, friendly and entertaining, or boring and arrogant? Are processes customer-focused or focused on making life easy for the company?
And reputation is not just important for winning customers. To succeed as a business, you also have to attract the best people to work for you and to do that you need to develop and maintain a great reputation with employees, and potential employees. Sites such as Glassdoor and other social media mean that word spreads quickly. If your interview process is disrespectful to applicants, for example, you will soon struggle to attract the people you need. Conversely, those organisations with a great reputation for how they treat employees have their pick of the best people.
Of course, media coverage can have a significant impact on reputation, but it’s not the only issue PR needs to manage. And the coverage has to be positive and on message or it can do huge damage. I struggle to understand why the myth, that all media coverage is good for a company, still exists. Gerald Ratner and Prince Andrew are two high-profile examples of how damaging media coverage can be. Many companies, not just Ratners, have failed to recover from a PR crisis caused by terrible media coverage.
Some companies have made the conscious decision to avoid media coverage. The intelligent ones still employ PR experts to manage their reputation because if you don’t actively manage it, then others (your competitors and hostile press) will do it for you. The best companies think long and hard about what they want their reputation to be and then ensure that they deliver the customer experience to support it. However, what too many companies do, is employ a PR to deliver media coverage and don’t think beyond that.
