Tony Blair’s autobiography, ‘A Journey‘ has had a Facebook campaign on to banish it into the ‘Crime’ shelves of bookshops. Eggs and shoes flung at Blair in Dublin all continue to show that on home-ground his popularity remains low and no amount of candid thoughts on people are going to get him out of having gone to war with Iraq.

The interesting thing here is how politicians are enjoying their celebrity status and like a celebrity memoir would do Blair wants to distance himself from Gordon Brown and even goes on to call his successor a few names. Spice is nice, so throw in a bit of gossip about the Royals and you have a best-seller from which he will not take a penny, no sirree!

Nowadays after national politics all former heads of state look forward to an international career. Well… they know all the leaders everywhere and look forward to continue keeping their career in the limelight. And nothing like a tell-all memoir to settle some old scores and re-launch yourself into active public life.

While celebrity memoirs are usually taken with a pinch of salt, PMs’ and Presidents’ autobiographies are studied at length and Tony Blair seems to have achieved BROWN(ie) points (pun intended) for his candidness even though he seems to have kept to his views on Iraq and Bush.

From a reputation management angle Tony Blair’s ‘A Journey’ may well be a start to more candid autobiographies from heads of states; celebrity candidness cleverly merged with legacy management and even a few pot-shots at some old rivals may soon be the norm.  In fact a memoir is a nothing but double winner for both reputation management and PR, really!

Reputation management services might be something new, but in such a short span of time it has proven its mettle and has got recognition globally. From politician, sports personalities, celebrities, companies to doctors have all embraced it as yet another aspect or PR. It can’t be denied that many companies and brands are benefited with the effective tools of reputation management. No matter its a small business or a Fortune 500 company, reputation management service is meant for all.

It is debated that, the results of these reputation management services comes gradually and not in a haste. Well, to bring your reputation up is a systematic process needs patience, as this is a sensitive area. To promote a brand or key phrase and to optimize it correctly asks for time, and to further push down the negative results and at the same time bringing up positive contents needs a concrete strategy and proper allocation. Meanwhile the use of a pro-active SEO campaign is a smart way to bring up your brand image and reputation in search engines.

Many companies argue that, its really pain staking to sit and watch all negatives about the business, even after resorting to these reputation management services, but they have to understand the sensitivity of the issue. Reputation management campaign works as a process and it slowly weaves a positive image for your brand, making sure the credibility of your brand or company is never lost.

How it works :

After analysing the position of the company online, with the help of the articles, web pages, blogs and  pictures, the reputation management plan is designed.  After judging your present status online and by knowing how people perceive you, the repair works of your online reputation starts off.

As we all know ‘Google’ does an index of new pages fast, so by publishing blogs, web pages and articles about your company we can bring the positive side of your business. As your page gets cached by Google, you can work more stringently to rank those pages on the top searches. It can take a minimum of six months to get the results, but at the end of the day you are satisfied with what Google is coming up with about your company or brand . You have more control of your reputation and that makes all the difference!

Usually in case of celebs such reputation disasters occurs when misconducts or anger tarnishes their social image. Being vulnerable, a single false move can bring down the reputation drastically.
Behaviour and social conduct has a lot meaning and value when it comes to celebrities. Always in the limelight, these so called stars are social figures and their acts are watched by millions. Any bad conduct from their end can be axing their own feet. In many instance it has seen that, how celebrity image has fallen down by their misconducts or offensive acts. Whether it’s by being rude to the media or by having a foul mouth, violent behaviour in public is simply disgraceful.

Some of the offensive acts by the celebrities:

• Lindsay Lohan was recently charged with carrying “contraband” found in her wrecked car.
• Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving on a suspended license.
• Mel Gibson verbally abusing and slapping his girl friend.

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University said “Celebrities behaving badly is certainly not an uncommon thing to find throughout history and it is certainly not going to fade away.”

To maintain and protect your reputation today is far difficult than the hardships you faced to gain that fame, as the adage goes, “With great power comes great responsibilities”. In the same way, it asks for great responsibility to sustain that fame and glory.

However, if you are looking to rectify your flaws, then we at Reputation Management For.com suggests, a concrete PR strategy and reputation management plan, which will help you to repair your lost image and resurrect from the damages. Reputation management even helps you to manage and enrich your reputation, and also helps to keep track of the status of your reputation. Celebrities and social figures are recommended to shield there reputation with a systematic reputation management plan, especially at a time when social networking has given people the space to air their views easily.

Top 21 google search results for Mel Gibson

A glance at the chart and its plain that there are more negative contents and news about the star, with nothing much positive to report on Gibson these days.

BP has been dealing with this PR nightmare for long now and the latest effort has been in allowing writers to the area to convey to the world their side of the story. The company had placed a ban on journalists to the area and now seems to make amends with this new step. But then, no one seems to be buying it. Allowing their own PR guys disguised as journalists to provide interviews and other stories with a slant is really not going to help.

However, the papers are full of BP’s daily costs at handling the problem and is said to be at a total of $2.65bn (£1.76bn) and the problem has been raised at the  G20 Summit in Canada by both Obama and Cameron. They’ve agreed on wanting to keep BP stable while maintaining the pressure on them to clean up the problem. This means they’ve agreed to let BP continue their work in the Gulf of Mexico and BP shares has seen a slight increase in the market.

However, getting a BP sponsorship may not be something you need to agree on according to this BBC article…

More than 170 creative artists have put their names to a letter attacking Tate Britain for accepting BP sponsorship.

The BP logo, the letter in The Guardian says, “represents a stain on the Tate’s international reputation”.

So, clearly being associated with BP in any way may not be a good idea for now.

Now onto other associated problems of the oil spill…  Americans who love seafood are a paranoid lot, if tourists are to be believed. You can see them tucking into shrimp and fish with a purpose on their holidays in Europe and Asia. Shrimp is the No. 1 seafood in the US and Louisiana tops in US shrimp output, so the Gulf oil spill has put a thick cloud over the future of the shrimp industry here. Feasting on seafood abroad maybe a good idea, indeed!

Let’s not forget that despite all efforts oil continues to spill by the gallons, the Google crisis page with the ticker is a chilling reminder. For now, we have the satire of fake accounts to see us through the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis and BP has to continue to endure the smart aleck jibes and carry on with their work and, of course, put on hold any endorsements plans they may have.

Related posts:

• BP’s pay per click campaign to fix brand reputation
• BP = Beyond Petroleum = Big Pollution
• BP’s Oil Cam PR Fiasco
• BP’s Waiver Form Own Goal

Why should Bhopal impact Dow who only bought Union Carbide fifteen years after the disaster at Bhopal? They can rightly claim no involvement with the disaster. The counter argument is that Dow bought everything including the reputational risk of Union Carbide at the same time. Has it come back to bite them. This question is especially pertinent in the light of the Mexico Oil Spill: if Amoco was to buy BP would they also suffer from ongoing reputation risk in the years ahead?

Dow has a number of worries: the damage claims of its subsidiary Dow Corning’s silicone breast implants;  and now the world’s worst ever industrial catastrophe, the Bhopal (India) Gas Tragedy.  It’s enough to worry any CEO, let alone brand director.

Vouching the fact came the recent reputation rating analysis undertaken by Reputation Management For.com which highlighted how the company used to refurbish its image to some repute among its clients and employees. The study also suggested the need for a crisis management with a strong PR to regain the credibility among the masses.

Being  driven by so much anger and frustration of the masses, Dow needs to show responsibility and compensate for all the negligence and communicate to those affected. This will send out a strong message that Dow, is a concerned company. The company even needs to take a strong stand by coming out and presenting its side rather than staying aloof, or else the day is not far when this largest chemical producer would be more known as a killer company, even as their reputation takes a beating.

Dead celebrities and their estates continue to amass wealth and media space. Maryln Monroe, Elvis and Jim Morrison are all  great examples of this. However, Mark Twain does it all in a well-planned, calculated  manner. A century later we’re all thinking of what he might have said that he thought his reputation may have been affected?

Well for his foresight and PR skills this post is a salutation. He sure knew how to get back into the news.

Whatever Mark Twain felt may have ruined his reputation may not seem much today, but, with reference to his times we can expect to gossip about him and he probably would have enjoyed it. The Independent article had historians saying this about Twain…

“He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He’s also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.”

So clearly lots of interest building up, plus the 400-page section on his liaison with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon who later became his secretary is sure to be intriguing.

Shock-value may not be there, but, oh, won’t the tongues wag again about the man who was known to have loved his celebrity status.

You may find it odd, but its true that external factors affect your business, it can be either a negative effect or a positive one. Corporate reputation management helps you to have a control over your business.

Studies suggest that only 9% of companies in the Fortune 100 list have control over their respective business or brands. This was based on the top ten listing shown on the first page of search engines and on how many of those top searches were owned by the said company.

Corporate reputation management rolls out a strategic plan to establish a control over the search results shown on the first page and even makes sure that the contents shown are all positive. It is very important to have a control over your business to maintain that positive online reputation. But it was also noticed that many big companies including the Fortune 100′s have negative comments about their products in the top page of Google. Beware! This will dampen the value of your brand in the long run, if not dealt properly.

Many business houses remain ignorant about the importance of online reputation management and bad press. But there are firms that deal with the company’s reputation and provide concrete SEO based reputation management solutions to overcome their reputation crisis and restore the lost sheen.

Related Posts :

• How ignorance can damage your online reputation
• SEO – A part of Reputation Management
• Brand Reputation Management is imperative

A small flaw committed online can cost you a lot, there’s always a danger in conversations you make about your company online, every word you put up can create a ruckus for your business online. Study suggests that big reputation blunders are done on these social media sites, where people ruin their company’s image by making comments which raises a question on the credibility of their brand.

Another factors are emails and forums where you discuss and seek public opinions about your business issues, unknowingly putting yourselves in a state of judgement. The message is loud and clear,  you have an issue at hand and your company’s reputation is at stake.

These common yet essential factors do play a decisive role in making or breaking your companies online reputation. Be careful what you discuss and post online viz-a-viz about your company. An ignorant statement can take your hard earned online reputation to no returns.