Newsletter
Dear readers,
In early June, citizens across the EU voted for a new European parliament. The overall turnout clearly demonstrated that the role played by their representatives and by EU institutions is still not clear to the wider public. Companies and entire industries, by contrast, have long recognised the importance of Brussels’s decision-making powers. In our interview, the head of Pleon Brussels, Peter Lochbihler, explains how exactly public affairs works in Brussels and the role reputation plays in the battle for influence in political decision-making processes.
Influence was also the subject of a reputation experiment conducted in 2008 by the FU Berlin, the final results of which are now available. You can read more about how corporate messaging affects corporate reputation under ECRS News.
We hope you enjoy reading this issue, and wish you a glorious summer!
Reputation Agenda: Trends & Topics
The international media agenda Q1 2009
Within the first four months of 2009, the international media agenda has been strongly influenced by the global financial and economic crisis. Only in January did an accumulation of communications on Gaza conflict and on Obama’s inauguration slightly push back reporting on the crisis.
As in the previous four months, public communications in the first third of 2009 was dominated by the global financial and economic crisis: no fewer than 9 of the 20 largest communications events were linked to the crisis (ranks 1, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18). After a concentration on the finance markets during the escalation phase at the end of last year, broader economic developments and the auto industry are now attracting more media attention. Unsurprisingly, the emphasis in reporting on the crisis shifted depending on the degree of direct impact: the New York Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tend to deal with economic developments in the USA and in Germany (including the Opel crisis) respectively. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, by contrast, places considerable weight on the corporate crisis at UBS and international pressure on Swiss banking secrecy (ranks 5, 10, 15).
The interplay between public affairs and reputation management
Interview with Peter Lochbihler, Business Director at the Pleon Brussels office and European Practice Leader Public Affairs at Pleon.
ECRS: A new European parliament has just been elected. How important, in fact, are the European elections and upcoming changes in personnel at the Parliament and Commission for reputation strategies in a European context?
Peter Lochbihler: Personal networks are central to the success of public affairs activities as part of a reputation strategy at European level. Changes in political personnel therefore have to be recognised ahead of time and utilised. The European elections in 2009 have seen a particularly high turnover in the European Parliament: about half the members in Brussels are new, for some countries it’s three-quarters. There is a big chance here to gain these new players as advocates for our own interests and issues. How one manages to do this – those are the matters on which we support and advise our clients.
ECRS: What exactly is public affairs?
P.L.: One can think of public affairs as the dialogue between an organisation and politics and other stakeholders. It ranges from positioning a company generally in relation to political target groups through to lobbying in a specific legislative process. Particularly as regards public affairs work in Brussels, it is often a question of actively shaping legislative and regulatory initiatives from the European Commission. For, 70% of all laws affecting companies are enacted at EU level and merely implemented at national level.
“Bad news is good news”
At this year’s conference of the "Deutsches Netzwerk für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik" (German Network for Business and Corporate Ethics; DNWE), CSR experts discussed the credibility and effectiveness of CSR activities. One central thesis was: CSR is often not only barely credible, but can also harm reputations.
Professor Kurt Imhof (founding member of ECRS and director of the fög at the University of Zurich) set the tone and course of the conference with his opening talk. According to Imhof, the reputation of companies today is much less stable than it once was, due to an increasingly prevalent “commercial cultivation of outrage”; and it is hard to improve corporate reputation with CSR. The axiom still holds: “Bad news is good news”. Media tend not to report on “good deeds”, but on scandals. According to Imhof, since the ‘dual system’ was introduced in Germany (that is, private broadcasters operating alongside public broadcasters), media no longer are geared towards raising political and social awareness but towards the media consumer. The rate of scandal, accordingly, has risen noticeably, since scandals generate the most attention and yield the greatest profits.
ECRS News
The effect of messages on reputation and investor behaviour. A reputation experiment focussing on the energy industry sector.
Every communications manager knows the dilemma: On the one hand, it is widely agreed that companies should communicate to the outside world in a consistent, uniform way. On the other hand, every stakeholder group has different expectations and thus reads messages differently. The challenge of ‘messaging’ – that is, systematically designing and positioning corporate messages – is therefore huge. Also, there has not yet been any relationship conclusively proven between corporate messages on the one hand and reputational perceptions or stakeholder behaviour on the other. To investigate precisely this relationship, a reputation experiment was conducted in 2008 by Professor Klewes at the Free University Berlin. It looked at the case of three leading energy providers, and asked the following:
Coming soon: Reputation Capital – Building and Maintaining Trust in the 21st Century
The upcoming book “Reputation Capital – Building and Maintaining Trust in the 21st Century”, edited by ECRS advisor Prof. Dr. Joachim Klewes and ECRS board member Robert Wreschniok, offers – for the first time – exact strategies and management rules for investing in, earning and keeping safeguarding reputation capital safe in today’s unpredictable and complex markets. It presents enlightening insights from a wide variety of key industries, including the automotive, chemical, finance, food, luxury, energy and pharmaceutical sectors. A team of international authors opens up a controversial debate on the positive and negative aspects of reputation in the 21st Century, and challenges conventional approaches to reputation management, for example with regard to CEO positioning, CSR, corporate communications or social media. Reputation Capital is a practical guidebook with a firm foundation in the latest research from leading universities around the world; an indispensable tool for people in charge when it comes to managing reputation. It is to be published in autumn 2009.
Events
ECRS Symposium 2009
This year, we would again like to discuss current developments and exciting case studies in reputation management at the 4th ECRS Symposium. The international gathering will take place in Germany in early November, 2009. The 2009 conference will focus especially on the practical implementation of reputation strategies. Experts from large corporations, consultancies and the academic field will present various strategies for building up and capitalising on reputation capital, and demonstrate these using concrete case studies and workshops.
A detailed invitation with the location of the conference will be sent to you shortly. You can also find more details in our next newsletter and on this website.
As always, participation is limited. However, you are now welcome to register in advance by writing an e-mail to info@reputation-centre.org and asking for an early registration.