By Tom Neri, Executive Vice President Vision Critical, New York

Bryant Park, an oasis in mid-town Manhattan was in full bloom and lush on a sunny mid-June morning and a perfect setting for executives to gather and address the current fragile state of corporate reputation. With this backdrop Vision Critical and its public affairs division Angus Reid Public Opinion launched ReputationPlus at a gala breakfast event at the Bryant Park Grill, attended by more than 60 corporate and agency researchers, consultants, media and Vision Critical executives.

The event was kicked off by Angus Reid, Vision Critical CEO, commenting on the state of Corporate America, the public mood and the maelstrom of issues affecting reputation. Dr. Reid noted that we are at a time of profound change, which gets the sociologist in him excited about understanding the dynamics and reaction of people to the events around them. Witnessing a heightened level of activism both on the left and on the right, he noted there also seems to be a new level of energy and enthusiasm among Americans. At the same time there is an evolution in media consumption and online social interactions. A tipping point like this is a great time for sociologists and researchers to create new products, which is how we came to envision and develop ReputationPlus.

Andrew Grenville, Chief Research Officer of Vision Critical, followed with the introduction of a new Citizen Activism segmentation developed for ReputationPlus. This segmentation focuses on Americans’ perceived knowledge about government and politics, and their propensity to speak out on issues. Andrew described the four segments that emerged, focusing on the 13% of Americans who are “Active Leaders”. They are the most knowledgeable, the most outspoken and potentially the most influential to a company’s reputation – typically of most interest to corporations and, therefore, worthy of further scrutiny.

Active Leaders are mostly registered voters who donate money to political and community causes and tend towards the extremes of the political spectrum. They are knowledgeable and opinionated and thus tend to be more judgmental of companies.

John Gilfeather, the well known veteran reputation guru who has been working with Vision Critical to develop ReputationPlus, delivered the key findings. The theme of the morning – Backlash Blues – captured themes of a) the blowback on major corporations from government bailouts, product recalls, and financial improprieties, b) the economic crisis and strong anti-government feelings and c) anger and suspicion of major corporations across all sectors. The way Gilfeather characterized it, “In forty years of studying corporate reputation, I have never seen this level of vitriol aimed at larger corporations. It is not just an erosion of positives, but also a rise in distinct negatives.”

But the ReputationPlus findings also show hope for redemption in corporate America. As Gilfeather pointed out, greater familiarity with a corporation generally gives rise to higher reputation ratings. Case in point: the average favorability across the 54 companies is 39%, while among those closely familiar with each company, favorability is 63%, which is quite a lift. Thus, companies are leaving a lot of reputation potential on the table through simple lack of communications and familiarity building.

We believe ReputationPlus is distinctive because it takes a head-on approach to the mindset and negative attitudes that exist toward our corporate and government institutions, which are out there, but typically ignored by most reputation studies. Our goal with this product is to measure and assess the negative associations, as well as positives, so companies can comprehend the depth of their fall in reputation after this difficult period. More important our goal is to help develop strategies to begin the healing process, through developing targeted messaging and understanding competitive advantages to leverage.

We know even the favorably perceived companies have taken a reputation hit during the economic crisis. In just one example, on average, 30% of Americans think that the 54 companies we studied “put profits ahead of what is good for the United States”. And while it is not news that almost half of Americans think that BP puts profits ahead of what is good for the country it is news that one out of five Americans feels this way about widely admired companies like Kraft and Johnson & Johnson.

One of the more interesting and controversial findings of the research is the role of traditional media and social media as disseminators of information about major corporations. We all know how important social media outlets are becoming as part of the fabric of public communication and interaction with people, brands and companies. However, the limited actual reach of social media across the whole population is rarely discussed.

We asked Americans if they had seen/read/heard news stories about the companies we studied in traditional media (newspapers, magazines, TV or radio), or via Twitter, Facebook and other social media. The results showed that 30% say they recalled news in the traditional media but only 9% of Americans received information about companies via social media. The clear implication is that communications seeking to reach a broad national audience need to employ both traditional media and social media. Even in the context of the Activist Leader segment—those most likely to be opinionated and share their thinking—the majority still rely on traditional media more often, albeit not nearly exclusively.

To summarize, we at Vision Critical and Angus Reid Public Opinion launched ReputationPlus to take a different and more direct assessment of corporate reputation in light of today’s realities; boiled down, we believe the product delivers five key benefits to our clients:

• Detailed analysis of your company’s reputation now warts and all. This is not a quick temperature taking. This is the full MRI.
• Market-based guidance for communications planning.
• Competitive advantage by looking for opportunities to outperform others in your industry.
• Accountability – being able to demonstrate that actions taken to improve reputation are working and, if not working, why.
• Consistent metrics – this methodology can be extended to other key stakeholder groups.

No study of this nature would be complete without some hierarchical reporting, and so, we did rank the 54 companies we studied based on their performance on the 23 attributes and traits included in the research. Here are the top and bottom five ranked corporations in our Reputation Plus benchmark:

1. Johnson & Johnson
2. Kraft
3. Disney
4. Campbell Soup
5. Home Depot


50. Exxon Mobil
51. Citigroup
52. Halliburton
53. Goldman Sachs
54. BP