Each month in ‘Reputationz’ I highlight what I consider to be 3 reputation winners and 3 reputation losers for the month.

They can be people, companies or even abstract ideas. Some are fairly obvious. Others are off-beat or quirky. You may or may not agree! The lists are purely my opinion.

Check out the lists for June 2010 below and feel free to leave a comment or email me with nominations for the July issue.

Reputation Winners June 2010:

• The creative genius responsible for bringing to life the most compelling, and simply beautiful, ‘always wear your seatbelt’ ad ever. An absolute ‘must-see’.
• DNZ evidence for proving the world’s longest serving prisoner for a rape conviction had been wrongly convicted almost 30 years ago. 
• Tauranga Perspex for developing a removable perspex shield to enhance the safety of both cab-drivers and their passengers exposed to theft, attack and abuse.

Reputation Losers June 2010:

• TV2 for running an advert during the semi-final show of American Idol that clearly showed which contestants got through to the final before the semi-final had concluded.
• Australia’s ‘Big Four’ banks for allegedly overcharging millions of customers around A$5 billion worth of penalty fees.
• Oil giant BP for the billion dollar disaster continuing in the Gulf of Mexico and business-threatening loss of shareholder confidence.

To view Reputationz online click here and to receive your own copy each month, opt-in here.

There are many ways to create, and maintain, a winning reputation, some of which are specific to an industry, or even a business or individual. However, the seven ‘Reputation Branding Essentials’ below apply across the board and can help you develop and maintain a reputation that will open doors rather than slam them shut!

1. Keep abreast of changing values and expectations
People’s expectations are constantly changing. What they value in you, and your products or services, today may not be what they value tomorrow. Read and research widely and actively engage with those you want to create lasting relationships with regularly to stay in tune with them.

2.  Aim for ‘win/win’ outcomes from every interaction
Focus on nurturing a long-term relationship rather than a short term gain. For example, if you know another provider may have a better solution than you, recommend them. The level of trust your client or customer will have in you will go up and your reputation will be enhanced immensely.

3.  Make it easy for people to recommend you
When someone recommends you, they are putting their reputation on the line. Make people feel good about dealing with you and you’ll enhance your chances of being recommended. Deliver on your promises and focus on building high-trust, high-value relationships. Acting with integrity will also help you be recommended more often.

4.  Never ‘bad-mouth’ or be disparaging about others
Bad-mouthing your competitors or others is a major reputation loser. No-one likes a gossip. News travels fast, especially online and people will think “if they say those things about them, what might they be saying about me?” If you don’t have anything good to say, it’s better to say nothing at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Very occasionally companies or organisations provide excellent examples of how to create a competitive edge simply by being who they are. The email below – a genuine email sent to a genuine customer, who then sent it to me – is one such example. (Personal details have been changed.)

Being friendly without being overly familiar, and allowing your personality to shine through, is almost always a reputation winner!  Congratulations to 1-day for a memorable, ‘feel-good’ response to an every-day event.

From: David at 1-day
Sent: Thursday, 6 May 2010 7:29 a.m.
To: Richard
Subject: Invoice from 1-day for PSP game

Dear Richard

Thanks for your order with 1-Day! Invoice # ABCDEFG.

Your product has been painstakingly removed from our shelves, the dust wiped free, and carefully placed inside its packaging. It has gone through a number of checks and all with contamination free sterilised gloves.

A hush echoed through the 100 staff as the final tape locked down the packaging. We all linked arms and swayed in time (except for Luke who was swinging his hips in the opposite direction to everyone else) and sung the 1-day version of ‘I’m leaving… On a jet plane’. Real tears were shed by some of us, who are still coming to terms with the fact the product has left the building for good.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever wanted to stand out from the crowd and create a competitive edge no doubt a well-meaning advisor may have said ‘be different!’ Whilst this may be useful advice for some, in terms of reputation branding, it’s not necessarily a smart strategy to follow.

Novelty and innovation can set you apart, attract attention and make you memorable – for a time. The downside of this is that being different and straying too far from the accepted norm can raise doubts in the minds of those you most want to influence.

Being different is risky. Being distinctive, on the other hand, can make you memorable for all the right reasons, help differentiate yourself from your competitors and enhance your competitive edge if whatever it is that makes you distinctive is viewed positively. If the distinction is not viewed positively, it can leave you being perceived as odd, strange or risky. Inappropriate differentiation can raise doubts that can be hard to overcome.

So how can you create a positively distinctive edge without being riskily different? Read the rest of this entry »

Children’s clothing retailer Pumpkin Patch and Air New Zealand have both announced they intend to extend their markets by venturing into what could be considered ‘cheaper’ products and services.

Pumpkin Patch is set to launch a ‘discount’ brand of its own and Air New Zealand has announced it will be teaming up with ‘budget’ carrier Virgin Blue to extend its trans-Tasman and routes across Australia. 

It begs the question – why would either provider of ‘premium’ products and services consider tarnishing their brands by moving into the ‘budget’ market? Will they cannibalise their existing customer base and find their more up-market sales suffer?

In my opinion, no. The beauty of brands is that they exist in their own right when managed effectively. Just look at car companies. They’re experts at providing vehicles that meet almost every price-point and user need, from ‘bottom-end’ cheapies to luxury vehicles, highly successfully.

Read the rest of this entry »

Should you ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’?  From a reputation perspective, if not an eco-perspective, the answer, in my opinion, is yes.

You might think people may have had enough of whatever it is you provide, but what’s more important is not that that they’ve tried, or heard, it before, but that it remains relevant to them.

For us as service providers, too, the temptation to develop or provide ‘new’ stuff can be extremely tempting. We think clients and customers may tire of our offerings and want something that’s ‘new’ and ‘improved’.

And we may grow tired ourselves of offering the same things day in and day out. However, clients don’t necessarily want ‘new’ stuff. What they want is relevant stuff.

As a product or service provider, your job is to remind your clients and customers just how relevant whatever it is you provide continues to be them. The core of your key messages probably won’t change. Nor will the benefits, or uses, of whatever you provide. What will change is how you frame your offering to make it relevant to them right now.

So if you’re trying to think up ‘new’ ways of doing things, think too about how you can re-frame, re-package and re-communicate what you already provide so that it remains relevant and valuable to your clients and customers. It’s a reputation-winning strategy.

Whatever you offer may need tweaking, but it probably won’t need abandoning altogether.

Think creatively and remind yourself, and your clients, of what’s great about your offering by linking it to current trends and positioning it as a ‘must have now’. After all, an anagram of ‘Relevance Rules’ is ‘Revenues Recall’.

Two stories caught my eye this week regarding companies making claims they apparently haven’t been able to keep.

The first is Telecom who’s reached a settlement with the Commerce Commission following its admission it misled around 130,000 broadband customers regarding pricing plans. Apparently it overcharged customers more than $9.5 million between 1999 and 2006 when dial-up customers switched to broadband.

Although Telecom has refunded almost all these customers, since 2003 it has apparently received warnings, settlements or convictions relating to the Fair Trading Act at least eight times. Read the rest of this entry »

Each month, in my Reputationz newsletter, I highlight three ‘Reputation Winners’ and three ‘Reputation Losers’.

One of the reputation winners featured in the November 09 issue were the ‘musical stairs’ installed at a Swedish underground (subway) station. Click here to watch the YouTube footage.

The stairs were designed to encourage travellers to take the stairs, rather than the escalator, and have fun in the process. And it worked, with 66% more people than normal chose to use the stairs rather than the escalator. Judging by the smiles on the faces of many of those emerging from the subway, they certainly delivered on the fun quotient too. Read the rest of this entry »