Public Relations Tips

Reputation is All About Big Business, Isn’t It?

Reputations can be fragile. Only last week one of my current students contacted me through my blog to ask whether Steve Jobs had done a Good Job with iPhone4′s technical difficulties. My immediate thought was a yes he had. But more importantly why? And how can we apply corporate lessons to our own smaller businesses?

Jobs is in charge of an innovative business which has brought us the Apple Mac, iPod and iPhone which have revolutionized the way we communicate. Before Apple, Microsoft made us all master DOS. So in our hearts and minds, we thank Apple for giving us icon led technology.

It is for this reason above anything that ensures Apple’s survival when occasionally it slips up with the iPhone’s reception difficulties, the virtually redundant Air and the shrugging reception to the iPad.

Many have pointed to Steve Jobs’ presentation skills as the major factor. These help of course. Jobs reacted well to the crisis in his fireside chat oh I was just going fishing but thought I would call in on you guys first approach, promising all customers a protective frame while acknowledging that there was a problem.

The physical cost to Apple was millions. But very few of us have stopped using iPhone as, at the very least, the gauge by which we buy Android, Blackberry and any other pretender to the Smart Device throne. Apart from a few joyous train spotters poking fun at Apple, the blog fest has died down and iPhone sales do not appear to have been affected.

Contrast this to the battering BP and Toyota received over a period of weeks, not to mention billions of pounds in share value, and we can clearly see three major factors emerging.

1) Branding: Apple’s corporate brand is strong. Arguably BP and Toyota’s were too. But no corporation is impregnable. It will take months, probably months to recover customer and shareholder confidence in BP and Toyota and their flagship brands.

2) Speed: But Apple reacted quickly to their error. BP tried to but failed. Toyota didn’t even try, inexplicably waiting days before releasing mixed messages to a worried customer base.

3) Face: Apple had Jobs to turn to while the other companies fielded two very bemused looking chiefs who had to go before confidence could begin to be restored. In BPs case, add the US President to the equation and “Houston we have a problem.”

Note in this article not one mention of PR or “spin doctoring.” Reputation is PR. Stakeholders want to be re-assured that their decision to buy into the product was a sound one. If a company can do that, press releases are simply gravy. If you’ve got ‘em on your side, keep ‘em there.

So what lessons can be transferred to our small businesses? In part two, we will look at some ideas as to how your brand reputations can be enhanced with only a few tweeks to your existing processes – whether you are selling a digital product or a physical one.

Keith Thompson MA CMIPR PG Cert is a Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at Liverpool John Moores University after having spent 20 years in professional practice as PR and a TV producer. He runs his own blog at http://effective-media.co.uk and you are welcome to download a press release template at http://www.effective-media.co.uk/index.php/2009/08/16/press-release-writing-template/