5 essential insights to build a strong corporate reputation

In the last days I have had the opportunity to talk to some colleagues about the importance of corporate communications and the best way to build a strong reputation among our main stakeholders. I would say that there is not a unique recipe to do it; there are many factors that we have to take account when we face a communications project dealing with corporate reputation.

Since every company is a different world and has its own triggers, they have to create their own way that lead them to a good reputation strategy, nevertheless, there are some standard keys that can be applied to almost every company.

1. - An organization depends on other organizations to survive. Personally, I believe that managers have to understand that they are not alone as a company sailing in a quiet blue sea. It is indispensable to develop a good and strong relationship between them, looking after them and identifying the key players for the business.

2. - It is also important to generate corporate coherence. Maybe it is the hardest thing to get because not always our messages are related to our corporate behaviour. The lack of coherence generates lack of credibility and respect among our audiences.

3. - Internal Communications are essential. To create a powerful reputation it is necessary to begin with a good internal communications program. This program has to generate communications skills among managers, supervisors and workers. A good internal communications program has to create a sense of belonging among people so that they can tell the story as well.

4. - PR as an important part of our communications plan. Public Relations has the responsibility to support the management board in order to identify the main external audiences, choose the correct media, and publish the best messages to tell the story of the company. PR is more important than ever because of the Social Media growing, and this means that there are new challenges to deal with.

5. - Planification is the keyword of the reputation building. Every single step in communications must be previously planned, this means investigation and research, setting communications goals and implementations from the basis of the company to the top. Without planification we cannot create a solid and powerful corporate identity and reputation.

Finally, reputation is a matter of decision, a management decision in which the communications strategy is a indispensable key of success.

Keys of corporate communications in Andean Communities in Peru

Cosmovisión Andina by Alberto Miranda

One of the most complicated things to apply is a communications program in a different cultural environment, where there are other sort of values and beliefs, and the impact of our strategies could be less effective.

In the case of Andean cultures living in the Peruvian Highlands, we have to study carefully their most important values according to the way they understand the world in which rivers, hills, the sun, the moon and the rest of natural elements has a special place in their cosmovision.

Extractive industries and Andean communities

It is not an easy relation. Extractive industry such as mining sector comes up with occidental procedures and ways of working that are distant to the Andean working style and the way they “feel” the nature.

Andean people understand the world as a whole; this means that elements are closely related so if we produce a change in one of those elements, the whole environment can be altered as well.

Another important characteristic of this world, is that those elements are not only related but living. Elements, like the earth itself, are living entities able to feel and ready to react as a puma living in the mountains.

People who live in communities are part of the same family, but they are part of the nature too; I mean, part of the rivers, vegetation, mountains, etc.

Since nature elements are living, they have their own feelings and necessities; they dance, dream, suffer, and have human experiences.

Keys of communication

• Extractive companies must understand that they are making changes in a living world, so they need a “social permission” to work, which means being a member fully integrated of the Andean society.

• Communications must be face to face. Communities has their own social  structure and leadership. So the communications should maintain the same level, in which the most important managers can participate of the social meetings.

• Managers “must” participate in traditional celebrations and community parties. People living in Andean communities would love see the CEO of a mining company drinking some beer along to the leaders of the community.

• Collaboration and participation are important part of Andean structure. Extractive companies must understand they cannot be seen as powerful multinationals operating in this place, but as another member of this world, ready to collaborate with people.

• As good communication strategy must to take account that Andean audiences are orally developed, since that have to choose the correct media to transmit messages, and this, have to get the main characteristics of the Andean culture.

This is the only way to get an effective communication between people and nature, in which open communications is essential, as well as corporate coherence.

Who is J.J. Rendon?

J.J. Rendon

Taken from Livin in Peru written by Marco Sifuentes, and apdated by Jorge Riveros Cayo.

If you still don’t know who Juan José Rendón is, please take note: He is Venezuelan, introduces himself as an expert in “rumorology,” has been tagged as the “Caribbean Montesinos” but he sees himself as the protagonist of “Lie to Me.” He assures to have won 23 presidential campaigns but, in reality, who is counting? Oh… did I mention he has been hired by Luis Castañeda as his campaign marketing advisor?

Rendón is internationally reputed for being an expert in what is commonly known as dirty war. Part of his strategy is based on Internet; not on the obvious stuff (banners, social networks and Google positioning), but more on the subterranean side of the web. This was seen in the last Colombian campaign. While Antanas Mockus grew as a Facebook phenomenon, Santos’s team –advised by Rendón– moved into Internet at a different frequency.

In a column I published last year, I explained what were the virtues attributed to Rendón in that campaign: "disclosure of Mockus’ Parkinson disease in the web, disclosure –in webs as well as blogs– of the so-called links between Mockus and Hugo Chávez, creation of anonymous accounts against the Green Party and, in a gambit move, Santos, the candidate, opened an online 'Wall of Shame' where he gathered all the online dirty war against him and the other candidates, rejecting “practices against the 'candidate’s dignity' (but, cleverly, linking all these pages in order to increase hits and page rank)."

This strategy neutralized Mockus’ millions of fans in Facebook, that were so publicized. Having followers can be nice, but it doesn’t really help against a grand-scale dirty war.

In an interview published this week in El Comercio, Rendón conveniently treated the social networks like dirt, assuring that they don’t influence elections, and that self-promotion through Internet works in the United States or Germany, but not here.

In the meantime, the Egyptian government was forced to block initially Blackberry and Twitter connections, and eventually all the Internet in the country, as a pointless attempt to abate the violent demonstrations that were being organized through the social networks. Additionally, WikiLeaks filtered a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Egypt explaining the enormous influence of blogs in this country that discuss topics that are banned from public debate.

Egypt is not Germany or the United States –to quote Rendón’s examples– but even then, demonstrations organized through Internet in this country have generated the biggest crisis to the regime in the last 30 years.

According to Wolfram Alpha, Internet penetration in Peru is superior to Egypt’s (24.7 percent of Peruvians over 16.6 percent of Egyptians in 2008). The truth is that, when it comes to Internet (and Mockus probably learned the lesson) the size is not important, but the effectiveness of the message.

Nothing of this has to be explained to Rendón, who knows his business very well. As a matter of fact, this week a rumor was attributed to his authorship: an “attack” against Luis Castañeda. According to the ex mayor’s Twitter and Facebook account, somebody tried to crash the candidate’s car intentionally. Photos and documents were sent, the aggressor's capture was requested, you know, the whole package. They spread the rumor all day until, without any explanation at all, they forgot about it and deleted all traces of what they published. As you might suspect, there was never such an attack.

Not only Castañeda’s accounts spread the rumor, but also a bunch of phony Twitter accounts from, apparently, ordinary citizens that don’t exist and that are managed by “somebody” from the campaign team. The users @WonderChristie, @omarlito, @AndresFer10, @JimenaBarrios and @JorChot are some of the false identities that somebody at Solidaridad Nacional (Castañeda’s political movement) is using to attack other candidates and spread out shocking lies like the car incident.

The false car attack against Castañeda was a trial balloon. Very soon, Peruvian networks will be flooded with rumors that will make it to the headlines without you knowing how and where they came from. Although now we will know.

Luis Castañeda Lossio and J.J. Rendon