http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog C-Level PR Counsel Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:32:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The popularity of the iPhone has actually resulted in an ongoing reputation problem for AT&T – that of having an unreliable network that often drops calls.  The typical response I’ve seen in this situation is to listen to the complaint and promise, with an outline plan, to fix ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/12/10/can-reputation-be-improved-ahead-of-customer-service-how-att-is-trying/ A few days ago I called an office supply store looking for a specific item.  After dealing with multiple, transfers, wait times, mumbling personnel, lack of “please” and “thank you” and zero apologies after explaining that I’d been on hold a while, I gave up.  Of course, I then ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/10/28/customer-service-may-have-the-highest-impact-on-brand-reputation/ Every company makes mistakes.   How those mistakes are handled can shape a company’s reputation.  See Jeff Bezos and the great Amazon Kindle 1984 deletion or the Jet Blue stuck on a runway apology for serious big company examples.    But a mistake and apology can make a customer feel better about ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/07/31/how-to-improve-your-reputation-by-screwing-up-and-apologizing/ Companies issuing statements about mistakes often pull punches and blame unseen forces.  The result are apologies that do little to protect, let alone build reputation.  Then there’s Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.  He (and his PR team) shows how to address a major mistake in a way that can actually strengthen ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/07/24/amazons-jeff-bezos-shows-how-to-apologize/ Nielsen’s new global consumer survey provides interesting food for though into what people “trust” in terms of information sources.  For example, from a PR point of view its notable that keyword ads on search engines are lower down on the trust level.  But they can still work well ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/07/13/nielsen-finds-brand-content-high-on-the-trust-scale/ I recently gave a presentation a the Bulldog Reporter’s Measurement Summit on how to show PR’s contribution to the business’ bottom line to the C-suite.  Here were some key points (the presentation that served as the backdrop is below). Do you want to be seen as ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/07/06/presenting-pr-results/ Researchers at Hebrew University put together some interesting data showing how local social networking can be (article is here). The research looked at 100,000 Facebook users as well as the location 4,500 e-mail messages received.  As noted by the chart below, the more local the sender-receiver, the higher the ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/07/05/is-online-social-networking-as-local-as-offline-social-networking/ Today’s New York Times article, “Spinning the  Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley” is a terrific read on publicizing to the Silicon Valley crowd, but only that.  There were several points in the article where I would remind people that it’s simply one example of how to match an audience to ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/07/05/ny-times-on-pr-may-be-right-for-silicon-valley-but-not-necessarily-anyone-else/ Paul Holmes makes some painfully important points about a McKinsey Quarterly analysis on corporate reputation that goes to the very heart about why the PR function often does not get a seat at the table. McKinsey makes some key points about what companies need to do on the reputation ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/06/11/the-heart-of-the-problem-pr-is-about-action-not-communications/ Core to communications is getting information out to the public.  Traditionally (as in, pre-Web 1.0), that was the domain of professional news organizations.  However, with the growth of UGC content in blogs, Twitter, podcasts and other Web-centric properties, you might often hear the argument that news organizations are losing control ... http://www.fortexgroup.com/blog/2009/06/02/news-sites-continue-to-dominate-online-reading-but-search-is-strong/