Courting Cyberbuzz Can Enhance Your Firm's Reputation
April 2001
This article explains what can be done—proactively,
by way of the Internet—to monitor, enhance, and protect corporate reputations.
By systematically listening and responding to the cyberbuzz, you can open up
new opportunities to create meaningful dialogue with key stakeholders.
by Jeanne
Finegan, APR
The Garden City Group, Inc.
Cyberbuzz about your company can be a threat, but savvy risk managers can
turn this potential threat into an invaluable sounding board to preserve and
enhance corporate reputation. First of all, what is corporate reputation? It
is the collective perception about a company's integrity, compassion, and responsibility.
Corporate reputation is based on a set of values that employees, customers and
clients, shareholders and stakeholders share about your company. Think of it
as pennies in the "goodwill" piggy bank.
This article will discuss online strategies to protect and defend corporate
reputation. An article published in the September/October 1999 issue of Reputation Management provides an excellent
example of how to turn a potentially negative threat into an intelligence-gathering
opportunity.
What Happens When Corporate Messages and Actions Are in Opposition?
In a corporate advertising campaign, Dunkin'Donuts indicated that customers
could have "coffee their way—with four kinds of milk." But when one customer
visited the local store and asked for skim milk, employees advised him that
he could not get skim milk. It wasn't that they were out, he simply couldn't
get it. The corporate action was in opposition to its message, and this angered
the customer. He wanted to vent and couldn't find an easy way to do it. The
company didn't have a Web site, so there was no opportunity for him to vent
his frustration to customer service. He then opted for the next best solution.
He added "Dunkin' Donuts Sucks" to his personal Web site. The site was viewed
by only a handful of visitors each day, that is, until it was listed on Yahoo's
consumer opinion section. Soon traffic blossomed to over 1,000 visitors a day.
Usually, this is the time legal counsel may become involved. However, it
is important to note that the Internet is a pulpit of "Free Speech" and is protected
in many ways by the First Amendment. Cyber speech that expresses an opinion
is strictly protected. Only when a statement of fact is made that is intentionally
or recklessly false and damages corporate reputation is the line crossed between
free speech and actionable defamation.
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 gives Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
immunity from defamation suits for content they provide. Here are some cases
that interpret the Act.
- Zeran v America Online, Inc., 958 F Supp
114 (1997), concerned a bogus posting to a bulletin board advertising t-shirts
making fun of the bombing in Oklahoma City. The anonymous posting contained
Zeran's name and phone number, and he was getting angry calls and death
threats in response. He sued AOL. AOL said the Telecommunications Act gave
them immunity. The court agreed, saying the Act, "creates a federal immunity
to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information
originating with a third-party user of the service." The court went on to
say … [the Act], "precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place
a computer service provider in a publisher's role. Lawsuits seeking to hold
a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional
editorial functions are barred." Case dismissed.
- Blumenthal v Drudge, 992 F Supp 44 (D
DC 1998), concerned a posting on Matt Drudge's "Drudge Report" suggesting
that White House Aide Sydney Blumenthal was a wife beater. Blumenthal sued
Drudge and AOL. AOL again sought to have the case against them dismissed.
The court again agreed "Whether wisely or not, it (Congress) made the legislative
judgment to effectively immunize providers of interactive computer service
from civil liability in tort with respect to material disseminated by them
but created by others." Concerning the potential for the Internet to quickly
spread false info, the court said, "Congress has made a different policy
choice by providing immunity even where the interactive service provider
has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared
by others. The court added, "None of this means, that the original culpable
party who posts defamatory messages would escape culpability."
Listening to the Opposition Can Give You Valuable Intelligence
In the alternative to litigation, the savvy risk manager might marshal key
customer service staff to use these sites to their advantage as intelligence
gathering tools. The understanding is that these sites are akin to a focus group
composed mainly of one kind of consumer—unhappy. But there is a great deal to
be learned from unhappy sources. One can seize the opportunity to listen, learn,
and, most importantly, quickly respond to threats.
The negative discussion on these sites could be an indicator of corporate
message and action misalignment. To test possible problems, conduct a reputation
audit with the help of public relations staff. The audit will help to identify
the message action misalignments.
Risk managers can quantify the level of misalignment by developing a questionnaire
that rates and ranks on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 low, 5 high) the level of concern.
Most definitely, you'll want to expand this list, but here are some of the questions
you might want to ask:
| Are our corporate messages and actions
consistent? |
1 2 3 4 5 |
| Do we fix problems in a timely manner? |
1 2 3 4 5 |
| Do we identify the source of future
problems? |
1 2 3 4 5 |
| Do we believe that customer comes
first, etc.? |
1 2 3 4 5 |
Misalignments in any of these areas can open the door to cyberbashing and
possible litigation.
Next, work with senior staff to establish reputation goals. How does the
company want to be perceived versus how is it perceived? It is important to
note that corporate actions have to be accepted and directed from senior officers
all the way down the chain of command. Senior management must take an active
role in merging actions and messages.
By identifying issues that are of critical importance to customers, employees,
shareholders, and competitors, risk managers can gather important information
on possible risk and opportunity. Once critical issues have been identified,
the company needs to play an active role in the issue. This may take the form
of raising consumer or media awareness about advantages or disadvantages of
an issue. Through its positive actions, it is being positioned with key stakeholder
groups as a good and responsible corporate citizen with a positive reputation.
Positive reputation is a strong ally to protect market position, post bashing,
and litigation. Companies can guard against potential litigation by establishing
a history of actions that match messages. A strong reputation could potentially
make outlandish claims more difficult for key stakeholders to believe.
Listen to Employees, Customers, and Stakeholders
Monitor what is being said, both good and bad, on the Internet. This allows
a company to establish a proactive two-way dialogue with customers, employees,
and key stakeholders. Absent this proactive approach, a company could be exposed
to many types of unplanned visibility that includes a decline in market position,
litigation, customer service and sales misrepresentations, and poor employee
moral.
Here are some strategies that can help risk managers identify, monitor, and
preserve online reputation:
- Start with some of the well-known complaint sites:
-
Consumeraffairs.com—This site reviews not only products, but services
of various companies. It is very thorough, featuring "Good Guys" and
"Bad Guys" profiles; it provides links to various class-action litigations;
news on scams, alerts, and recalls. In addition, it provides current
news releases on consumer-related products. This site also provides
a monthly newsletter where visitors can register for updates.
- complaints.com—A
very well laid out site, easy to navigate, easy to see at a glance which
companies and products are being targeted. There is an alpha listing
for companies and products where complaints have been lodged. It provides
links to corporate Web sites, along with contact information, including
addresses, phone numbers, and principals' names and personal e-mail
addresses, where available. The primary focus of this site is consumer-related
products.
- Fedupwiththis.com—Similar to Complaints.com;
however, this site actually composes a complaint letter for visitors
in a fill-in-the-blank format.
- Bitchaboutit.com—This site covers the gambit of consumer products,
customer service, governmental affairs, and provides a net polling feature
for topics of contention.
- Subscribe to one of the new monitoring systems, such as Cyveillance,
E-Watch, CyberAlert, WebClipping, or NetCurrent. Using several in combination
will return a number of references. Remember that each of the monitoring
companies have various capabilities. Several have strengths in newsgroups
and others are stronger in online news organizations. These references will
provide threads of discussion, which will lead visitors to specific complaint
sites. Visit these sites and review what is being said.
- Don't just monitor standard news outlets. Important employee, shareholder,
customer, and activist information can be obtained from newsgroups, bulletin
boards, and chat rooms. Identify the activists. The search software will
allow visitors to see individual names with contact information.
- Summarize this information in the form of a matrix that identifies the
date, the individual posting the information, the origin of the posting
and whether it was positive, neutral, or negative. Weigh this information
into an executive summary that assigns a value to a threat or opportunity.
- Evaluate the matrix against your scale for inconsistencies and message
action misalignments.
Conclusion
Everyday corporate teams worry and sweat, reacting to situations where they
have to marshal corporate reputation damage control. However, much can be done
proactively, by way of the Internet to monitor, enhance and protect corporate
reputation. A systematic program for listening and responding to the cyberbuzz
can test your assumptions about your corporation's reputation, and open up new
opportunities to create meaningful dialogue with key stakeholders.
Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are
not necessarily held by the author’s employer or IRMI. This article does not purport
to provide legal, accounting, or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice
is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant, or other qualified adviser.