Executive Decision - March/April 2008 - (Page 50)

Leadership Obviously, corporate mavens have always tried to manage their public personae, but the pervasiveness of the Internet has made the task much harder because negative comments and verbal portrayals have a life beyond the local community. Anyone with a computer anywhere in the world can find out anything about you as a public person, and those same people can create statements online, in a personal blog that can cloud other’s opinions of you. If one little thing that is disparaging about you or your company gets tossed into the information infrastructure, “you have to imagine that it is floating into every single household,” says Michael Bayer, the chief client officer and senior managing director Nino Kader Founder with FD, a New York-based business and financial communications consultant. “It’s hard to get your head around that concept as it has never been the case in the history of mankind. Reputation management has never been more intense and more critical.” Today, almost all research begins with an online search engine. “Everybody is just turning to Google as their first point of reference on just about anything,” observes Nino Kader, who in 2006 created International Reputation Management, based in Washington, D.C., a unique public relations firm that solely focuses on ensuring clients are well represented on the Internet. Business, he says, is booming. There are a number of search engines on the Internet, but Google is the market leader and as such creates the biggest online impact. “Google has taken such a dominant position in the market that who Google says you are very quickly becomes the reality of how the market perceives you,” adds Mike Myatt, managing director and chief strategy officer for N2Growth, a Portland, Ore.-company that provides International Reputation Management Kathy Bloomgarden CEO reputation management services. Not only do scandals and debacles quickly become the fodder of Internet entries, but if bloggers get a hold of some idea about you and start running it around the Web, immediately thousands of negative pieces of information about you can be circulating around the Internet—none of it may even be true. “The first thing 80 percent of the population does when they want to find out something is they go straight to the Internet,” says Myatt. “So, how you show up on the Internet has a high impact on other’s initial decision about you.” The mistake a lot of companies and executives make is that they only hire someone to help with their reputation when they are already in trouble. Then it’s often Ruder Finn Inc. “A brand takes years to build, whereas a reputation can be destroyed over night.” too late to repair the damage. “A brand takes years to build, whereas a reputation can be destroyed over night,” says Bayer. 50 EXECUTIVE DECISION I execdecision.com http://execdecision.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Executive Decision - March/April 2008

Executive Decision - March/April 2008 Contents Index of Advertisers Contributing Editors From the Editor's Desk Publisher's Note You Be the Judge - Unionization Thought Leader - Pitney Bowes Management - Flying High for Long-Term Results Strategies - Sovereign Wealth Funds Cover Story - In Whom Do We Trust? The Movement for Greater Accountability & Disclosure Finance/Legal - The New Boycott Model Green At Work - Transforming for Sustainability Technology - Embracing Risk Leadership - Executive Reputation Management The Global Village - China Moves to Curb Prices Economic Profile - California Gold Rush Transformations - I Can See Clearly Now, The Brain Is Gone Marketing - Effectively Using Market Research The Bottom Line - Brands: A Shrinking Advantage or Shifting Advantage? Pulse - Pandemic: Not If But When SPECIAL SECTION - Living On the Green: Luxury Golf Destinations

Executive Decision - March/April 2008

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