David Park is the author of a change manifesto for corporate affairs managers, Reputation Renegades, which is a free, downloadable e-Book. Renegades addresses many issues, but chief amongst them is the fallacy that corporations have control of their reputation. In this guest post, he provides answers to three pivotal questions that shaped the resource.

Why did you use the opening line – ‘Does Your Corporate Reputation Have New Owners?’ –  for Reputation Renegades?

It was my personal wake-up call for corporate affairs. I thought:  if I was a crazily overworked corporate affairs exec, I’d like someone to draw this stuff to my attention.

It bubbled up from my own professional epiphanies over the past few years in seeing the influence of web-based communities grow: observing virtual tribes incrementally increase their impact on corporate reputation.

 So this influence is still seen as trivial by many corporations. The funny thing is that it was – and still is – bloody hard to define and target influencers in the ‘real’ world, let alone online.

Now that the e-Book has been published for about a month, I’m more satisfied that it wasn’t too far out-there. It’s had good feedback.

Pleasingly, I saw it reflected in the recent Boss magazine in the opening line to the article, ‘Brand We.’

It reads: “Forget brand management – it’s no longer in your hands. In the future, your customer community will control your brand.” For brand – read ‘corporate reputation.’ It headed a great story by Rachel Botsman about her new book ‘Collaborative Consumption’.

The pivotal message in Renegades is control. Corporations are all about keeping control: as they’ve done since corporations began.

But they aren’t. Control and ownership of brand/reputation is changing hands.

Just ask BP.

The issue is not that corporate affairs exec are sticking fingers in their ears and yelling ‘not listening.’

It’s that those who own and run corporations don’t feel the need yet for change: especially in response to invisible stakeholder groups hidden on the internet.

Let’s face it, corporations are quite odd entities. We retain expectations that they will behave in some humanised way. The sad fact is that they were never created with such empathy in mind. They are legal constructs: defensive enclaves with regulatory moats and thick walls of limited liability. Behind this fortress the aim is simply to meet profit targets.

But times change. “These fortresses are under siege,” as the bible, ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ says.

‘Renegades’ is divided into sections titled Ready, Aim, Fire. In ‘Fire’ you use the term ‘reputation’ as a 10 lettered mnemonic call-to-action. Tell me more about these three: –

1. Allies
   The tactic here is for corporate affairs to recruit in-house cadres: allies. While the C-suite and Board may not want change when it comes to comms, within the company there will be many who do. They will likely be passionate users of social media too. So create an army of partisans: quietly – up in the hills. Don’t try and do it all on your own. Magic some critical mass for in-house momentum to include, rather than exclude, when it comes to comms.
2. Tell tales
   Simply, this is about humanising. We love stories. Wherever you can, drop the use of polished corporate speak. (Take a lead from Don Watson’s ‘Bendable Learnings’ in this regard.) Allow internal corporate communications to be as natural as you can. Allow us, please, to tell our stories in our own words. Social media is not just about the web; it’s a state of mind that’s about warm, humane, empathic communications.
3. Trust.
   This big warm and fuzzy is often overlooked. The issue with most corporations, as the Edelman Trust Barometer shows, is that trust has evaporated. So the recommendation here is for corporate affairs execs to tackle this head-on. To purposefully (and probably awkwardly and painfully) ask difficult questions at meetings that seek ways to bring back trust. Not easy. But you have to start somewhere, so get it out on the table.

Corporate affairs has a tough job. They have to toe the corporate line because.. well .. they wrote it.

Reputation Renegades acknowledges this and details some tactics whereby enlightened professionals might consider bringing about change: hopefully without calls by the CEO for an inquisition or worse: the burning of a heretic.

What inspired you to write it?

At parkyoung over the past year we have studied the impact of the web on societal communications. During this review it struck me that corporations, which lead our society in so many important ways, were really dragging the chain in responding to the hyper-connected market.

The fact that most corporations remained unenlightened – and were comfortable about it – was a real epiphany for me. I was encouraged, however, that deep inside these big organisations there’s a growing number of enlightened ‘guerrilla’ PRs who are becoming ‘reputation renegades.’

The kick-start came when I attended one of Jen Frahm’s workshops featuring the guru David Meerman Scott.

I was really not that familiar with the e-Book medium at all. He was such a passionate advocate for them. I really took to the informality of e-Books: his especially.

At this business workshop, business colleague Yvonne Adele, nudged me and said: “Betcha you can’t write one in a month.”

It took six.

David Park

Author of corporate affairs manifesto Reputation Renegades, David Park (a.k.a. Parky) has over 20 years experience in corporate affairs in both in-house and consultancy roles. He entered PR via an urban planning background that gave him a strategic approach which he has applied to comms ever since. He describes his in-house career as very ‘beery’ with 11 years with Lion Nathan and over 5 with Foster’s. He runs Melbourne-based strategic communications advisory firm, parkyoung, with PR Warrior Trevor Young.

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