Who is responsible for protecting a company's online reputation?
Posted by Elias Vamvakas on Wed, Jul 15, 2009
I was having dinner the other night with a close friend and we were discussing all of the exciting things that were going on at BrandProtect. He was really intrigued, recognizing the threat of internet crime and the potential abuse of social media discussions where exploding and a major reason for concern to corporations whose brand and reputation was of significant value.
He said, "I love the business, and can see the growth potential. Who do you sell it to?"
"Well", I said, "that's always a challenge in newly born industry. Usually it's either someone from the legal department, or the chief risk officer of a financial institution or someone from marketing, IR, PR, IT, or HR. Sometimes it's the CFO or the CEO but that's usually in response to a crisis. Bottom line, most companies are not exactly sure who is responsible for protecting the company's reputation. At the end of the day the responsibility falls to the CEO.
To which my friend wisely said "Well yes the responsibility is always the CEO's; but for major assets of a corporation or drivers to profit they have key players in place. The CFO looks after the finances; the head of marketing looks after the company's marketing strategy, similarly, with Sales, Operations R&D and so on. All are ultimately the CEO's responsibility, but there is key management in place to oversee and manage the asset. Since most companies would agree that their most important asset is their brand shouldn't there be someone completely responsible for overseeing and protecting the company's reputation?"
We both concluded that there is a need in corporate America for a new position. Chief Reputation Officer or Chief Brand Officer may be just a title and in fact it can be an additional responsibility to one of the more well defined and accepted disciplines (legal, marketing IR etc.) but bottom line, someone has to have the role and the authority to form cross functional teams to manage issues both proactively and have a plan in place to deal with any kind of crisis"
The ability to eliminate threats to a company's reputation immediately is critical. Allowing unmanaged issues to "tip" is disastrous to a company's reputation, future, valuation and to an executive's longevity.
Just look at the recent social media disasters to Domino's Pizza, Stella Beer, United Airlines etc.
Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on this subject.