‘All reputation custodians should have a reputation repair playbook’

The e4mIndia PR and Corporate Communication Conference 2024 hosted an engaging panel discussion on “managing risk and reputation for highly regulated businesses”, where Deepak Jolly, Founder and Director - Consocia Advisory; Kanika Mathur, Senior Partner and Practice Leader, GTM Strategy, BOD Consulting; Dr. Samir Kapur, Director, Adfactors; Bhavna Singh, Vice President -Communications, Bharat Serums and Vaccines Limited and Sneha Seth Tandon, Communication Strategist shared their expertise and experience on the subject.

The session was chaired by e4m Editor Tasmayee Laha Roy.

Tandon began the discussion by talking about how every PR professional throughout the course of her or his journey is constantly trying to rebuild, re-look at newer ways of managing reputation and mitigating risk.

“There are multiple things that are part of this exercise and initiative that professionals need to look at. First, understand the environment that the brand is operating in. What are the political, regulatory, compliance, environment risks that can impact a brand? Secondly, what is your communication strategy and how is your communication strategy constantly being revamped to cater to these risks? The third is having a clear line of consistent messaging, which is also being constantly revamped, and also has a multi-stakeholder engagement where you're talking to all different divisions of the business to understand.”

“And then the fourth is staying very agile, having your group of influencers, media, custodians who are going to be your key opinion leaders, all mapped together so that you can align with them and devise a communication plan,” she added.

Singh discussed the importance of risk management and reputation consciousness for a highly regulated sector such as bio-pharma. She said, “When we acknowledge innovation we also acknowledge risks and while an organization such as ours creates and fosters a culture of innovation we also consciously or unconsciously foster a culture of reputation consciousness. While we at comms believe we are custodians it doesn't end with us, it extends to all of our stakeholders.”

“Our go-to strategy is very simple. It's to foster and augment trust among all our stakeholders because we believe that's the currency. I use currency with a lot of respect over here that the organization has when it comes to either building a brand or when it comes to facing a crisis.”

The session then moved on with Kapur discussing how to anticipate risks and create strategies based on early warning signs of such risks. He elaborated, “Reputation has a direct linkage to business. It's a part of the strategy. So it starts with what we call it as the early warning signs. Let's say, there is an FMCG client that got a warning sign because of the woke culture that we are living in. They had to change the brand name. A brand which is worth 3,500 crores had to go in for an entire brand name change because people called out the brand ambassador.”

“These are early warning symptoms that come in. And as professionals, purely from a comms perspective, our job is to tell the players that this is something that you need to be aware of. If you don't regulate yourself, then the government will come and regulate you.”

Sharing her opinions on the management of regulations, Mathur said, “It is very important to understand the channels and how they behave towards content and to manage the regulations around user-generated content, as an example, where people would come and visit and post. You have to make sure that deep fakes or even wrong information is mitigated.”

Jolly shared his experience from Covid, when all the malls had to be suddenly shut down and the Shopping Centre Association wanted to cut their losses short. They then had to come up with precautions and solutions to make it work. “Is the air conditioning good? Will air conditioning spread it? These are the things which communication people ought to be getting into when they are speaking to the public at large. And we did 30 stories on TV and that is how we got the malls and then multiplexes opened.”

There are multiple tools that are available for companies to navigate the risk of operating in a digital savvy world. “For social listening, there are tools like Brandwatch, Meltwater which do real-time analysis and monitoring of whatever are the conversations on social media,” Tandon opined, “There are a whole bunch of new AI ML tools which are constantly helping. Zomato, for instance, or any food delivery platform for that matter, to constantly access and know the feedback that's coming on their social platforms and quickly assess and respond to those. Over the years, these tools have refined and there's a lot more happening in this space.”

Singh shared her expertise on the parameters one should always keep monitoring as a reputation custodian. “Whether we come from agencies or from corporations, it's extremely critical to have a playbook. And we have an online reputation repair playbook, which has certain damage control measures that are put in place. You already have a set of disclaimers, or you have a set of responses, or you even have acknowledging mistakes, which brands also do online, if there is a mistake that's done.”

Kapur discussed the importance of sentiment analysis. “There are billions of conversations.
Should I get worried about all conversations, or should I look at a trend to be formed? And therefore, sentiment analysis comes into play. Is the bubble getting formed bigger and bigger, or is it getting busted? Those are the things that, as a PR agency, you have to look after. Media is no longer the only linear way left.”

Mathur, on the other hand, highlighted the importance of transparency while mitigating risks and managing reputation. “It is important to make sure that you have knowledge management, which if connected with AI, it's much faster. That’s one part of it. The other part of it is transparency within the organization. The honesty and the transparency with which you're working and which you have to operate and the culture that you have to build, a tool can't do it.” she said. “The honesty of the leadership, the transparency with which they operate, the way in which they listen to what each and every sort of employee is saying is important. Because more often than not, the employee knows what the problem is. But if he's shut up, then you're in trouble and the black swan events happen.”

Jolly concluded the session by sharing his insights on the usage of tools for risk management. “What is a tool meant for? A tool is meant for knowledge and replicability. How you can replicate that. I have joined companies where a risk assessment tool for 23 risks was available and yet the company had a lot of trouble because nobody owned it. The senior management has to realize that you either own it or you perish together.”