Corporate Reputation

The Audi.360 has a dashboard, but it’s not a new car model. It’s their digital tool for managing their reputation, and it runs 24/7. Audi uses it to track not only their media coverage but also the reputations of their CEO, board members, and their main competitors, BMW and Mercedes Benz.

Judith Piesbergen, from Audi’s issues and reputation management team, detailed Audi’s process for monitoring its reputation worldwide while speaking at the Global Strategic Communication & Measurement Conference hosted by International Association of Business Communicators and Prime Research in New York on Thursday.

The company identified seven key factors that drive its reputation: including management, strategy, financial performance, products and services, social responsibility, appeal as an employer, and ecological responsibility. Audi also benchmarks these measures versus its two key competitors. With so many variables, Prime Research developed the 360 tool to manage the information flow, and it provides real-time information by country and time frame.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

McDonald’s is rolling out the McDonald’s Channel, a broadcast station, over the next few months across Central and Southern California, ultimately landing in 800 restaurants and reaching up to 20 million customers each month. Segments will include “The McDonald’s Achievers” profiling student athletes, and “Mighty Moms” focused on mothers with sports careers (?), as well as coverage of the company’s philanthropic efforts.

FishbowlNY has some show suggestions, including one we would actually watch, “Guess What? I’m Stupid” that chronicles the nutritional epiphanies of McDonald’s enthusiasts. Which brings us to a most amazing thing — that love/hate/toxic relationship that we have with McDonald’s. No matter how many different ways we’re warned, “If you eat this it will kill you,” people keep coming back for more. There was even a movie that showed that very thing happening to a human being. Yet the most packed dining area in every food court in every mall and every airport is beneath some golden arches.

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Well now. AIG subsidiary Chartis has launched a product this week called “ReputationGuard” that will offer services from Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli to account holders in case of a crisis situation. Policy prices vary, but a small company could shell out $10,000 in annual premiums.

Yes, we’re talking about the AIG that got all that bailout cash and became the object of intense scorn when the economy collapsed in ’08. AIG’s own crisis situation was so bad, this subsidiary changed its name from AIU Holdings to Chartis so it wouldn’t be associated with its parent company. And, according to a Harris Interactive study from earlier this year, its reputation is still pretty much in the toilet.

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The stuff American consumers love to hate are mostly things we use all the time.  BusinessInsider updated their Top 18 list today, and it’s what you’d expect with airlines and telecommunication companies dominating the list.  With Occupy Wall Street bringing even more attention to the companies that contributed to the economic meltdown, several banks made it too.

The list is based on survey data from the America Consumer Satisfaction Index. Due to a rating decline of 16 points this year, Pepco (Potomac Electric) took the booby prize.  It’s reported in the piece that Pepco customers experience 70 percent more outages that comparable big city utilities, and the lights stay out twice as long.  Take that Long Island Power Authority.

Having done some “social CRM” work myself, I can tell you it’s the nature of the beast with things you use every day, and suffer a customer service merry-go-round when they don’t work properly. The reason other airlines and banks haven’t made the list is partially due to a more thoughtful, more public approach to resolving problems.  However, despite the now-legendary @ComcastCares feed, Comcast still sits at the top at #4.  And Facebook (you get what you pay for) comes in at #9 due to privacy beefs.

The complete list is after the jump: Read more

The Federal Trade Commission announced today that Reebok has agreed to a $25 million settlement “to resolve charges that the company deceptively advertised” its EasyTone and RunTone shoes. David Vladek, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said in a news conference today that the company’s claims — that they strengthen and tone muscles better than other shoes — were not backed up by sufficient evidence.

Reebok stands by the shoes, saying that they don’t agree with the FTC’s charges. Nevertheless, the dent in Reebok’s reputation has already been made.

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Wal-Mart may have gotten the class-action gender discrimination lawsuit filed against it dismissed by the Supreme Court, but it has decided to invest in a little insurance; billions of dollars worth of insurance.

The retailer has announced a women’s initiative that will include the purchase of $20 billion worth of product from women-owned companies over the next five years, training for female workers around the world, and millions in grants to nonprofits.

“The Wal-Mart public-relations machine is spinning overtime on this,” a Wall Street Strategies analyst told Bloomberg.

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Michael Arrington is officially out at TechCrunch and Erick Schonfeld is in as editor. So says the AOL statement, available on AllThingsD, which also says Arrington’s departure was his decision, calls the TechCrunch acquisition “a success,” and teases more editorial changes in “the coming months.”

Even with that resolved (perhaps), there’s still the problem of making all of the brands beneath the AOL umbrella one cohesive, working unit.

“Since Tim Armstrong took over the struggling Internet company in 2009, AOL has acquired more than half a dozen companies in an effort to shake off its reputation as an Internet has-been and become an ad-supported destination for news and entertainment content on the Web,” the Wall Street Journal writes. It may shed that old reputation, but with the company’s internal problems making news, it’s new rep could be just as bad.

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If Seattle-based Amazon doesn’t get its way with the state of California, it may be taking its toys and going home.

Reuters and other news outlets reported late Thursday that the huge online retailer promised the California State Legislature it would open a warehouse in California and create 7,000 jobs if the state would hold off on demanding sales tax for two years. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that would have required Amazon to start collecting a 7.25 percent base tax on online purchases by today.

California organizations and some lawmakers are against the deal. Amazon has sweetened the pot by saying it would also stop pushing for a repeal of the sales tax law.

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Because this scandal needed more drama, someone assaulted Rupert Murdoch with a “pie” made out of shaving cream as he (and his son) spoke today before a Parliamentary committee today. Word from CNN is the assailant called Rupert a “greedy billionaire” before the hurling started. The hearing has since resumed with Rebekah Brooks speaking now and Rupert unharmed.

If you didn’t know it before, now it’s now abundantly clear that there’s palpable anger out there against News Corp. Before the hearing even began, The Wall Street Journal wrote, “At stake is both the reputation of a global empire—which has 51,000 employees and annual revenue of $32 billion—and the level of support that the Murdoch family, particularly Rupert and his son James, will have among investors.”

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News Corp.‘s PR response continues with the addition of Steven Rubenstein to the public relations effort. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rubenstein was brought on board in the middle of last week. He’s known for his work with celebrities like Robert De Niro and David Letterman, who he worked with after the talk show host had been blackmailed over adulterous relationships with co-workers. And Rubenstein already works with a News Corp. property, The New York Post.

It was announced last week that News Corp. had hired Edelman for help with the scandal. On The Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz also suspects that Matthew Freud, who’s married to Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, may also be providing PR advice, although, Freud has said he no longer works with the company.

The scandal continues to produce an unrelenting stream of shocking news impacting not just News Corp. itself, but also those who have any degree of association with the company.

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