PR is reputation management...isn't it?

An obvious starting point for a lecture on Reputation and Reputation Management is the CIPR's statement that:

Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour...

Well, yes... until you start thinking about how you might more precisely define "reputation". For a start, it is not fact. Philip Young does not have "a reputation for being a man" - that is a broadly accepted truth. He does not have a "reputation" of being a lecturer at the University but will have a reputation for his teaching. So reputation involves opinion, it is a qualitative assessment; I can't have a reputation for being tall or short, but I can (and no doubt do!) have a reputation for being interesting or boring, and probably both. 

 

Individual students will have opinions on my teaching and pooled opinions might become a reputation, and this might be held - and shared - by students who never expereinced my teaching. So far, so good, but how does this square with academic writing on PR as a reputation management? In Rethinking Public Relations 2nd Ed Kevin Moloney claims, helpfully, that "(reputation) is perception with judgment".

 

But just before this he suggests: “Corporate reputation is... The perception of an organisation or group by those other parties after their experience of it.”

 

Harder. Do you have to experience something to be aware of its reputation?  What if someone says to you "I went to the George & Dragon last night - what a great pub." Perhaps you had never even heard of the George & Dragon before this conversation, let alone experienced it - are you are now aware of its reputation? Or just of one person's opinion? If several unconnected people were to mention it favourably, would you begin to appreciate a positive reputation.

 

So we must see reputation as an aggregation of individual perceptions and judgments. But a different set of people could create an entirely differenmt reputation for the pub. And it is possible that neither 'reputation' accords with your own judgment, should you go on to visit the George yourself. 

 

Anne Gregory tells us:

"A good reputation is not something that is earned overnight. It has to be carefully and considerately cultivated. It is ... (e)arned over a period of time as understanding and support develops for an organisation.

"The development of reputation has to be meticulously undertaken with integrity and honesty and because reputation is a notion that exists in the perceiver’s mind (like image) this is a complex process...

So facts, images, even feelings can be put into the public space by a communications team. But reputation implies independence...it is what others believe (or are believed to believe).

Although intrinsically linked to an organisation, reputation exists apart from organisation.

PR's claim to the territory is linked to Gregory's assertion that reputation is "earned over a period of time as understanding and support develops for an organisation." Having made the fundamental - but far from certain - assumption that the oraganisation is of good intent and its products and services are equally good, Gregory is suggesting that PR's role is to help people to appreciate how splendid it is.

This understanding might be (or might not) be bolstered by the dissemination of facts about the organisations performance. But, as we have seen, reputation is "perception with judgment"; the way information informs assessment is crucial. 

PR is role is then seen as presenting and associating information in a way that is likely to be perceived as positive.

Which is very close to what is generally accepted to be "image".

But it is hard to see the CIPR going with this definition...

 "Public relations is about image - the result of what you say you do, how you say it, and what others say about you. Public relations is the discipline which looks after image, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour...  

Comments

[Richard Bailey]

You need have no worry at all about the reputation of Philip Young IMO.

Interesting lecture notes. You're right that 'PR-as-reputation-management' is just one of several competing paradigms, and one that's some way behind 'PR-as-relationship-management' in current academic thinking (Ledingham and Bruning, Phillips and Young etc).

Reputation is usually interpreted as corporate reputation, but also applies to brands and to individuals.

I still use your Stephen Davies as the best example of personal reputation management by a PR graduate, though he's been followed by many others.

[Philip]

Thanks, Richard!

As you say, David and I definitely go with prevailing opinion and favour "relationship management".... but there are quite a few problems with this framing, too.

Too often, corporate reputation actually means "what we say about ourselves" or even "what we can get aay with saying about ourselves".

The CIPR definition sounds good, and is reasonably memorable, but doesn't stand much scrutiny. Which, of course, some would say is a fairly robust criticism of PR....

[LondonPR]

I agree that PR is definitely reputation management, but with the increase of social network, this is becoming so much more of a struggle to maintain. Ethics behind reputation management and social networking are becoming more strained, a negative comment is left on a facebook wall or tweeted, is it ethical to delete?