企业品牌的声誉和品牌危机管理-学位论文.doc

标题：Corporate brand reputation and brand crisis management
原文：For some years, the what, why, and how of recognising and addressing brand crisis – particularly corporate/organisational brand crisis – has occupied my research attention (note to reader: “corporate” and “organisational” are used interchangeably). Numerous corporate and non-profit entities have provided public clinical experiences of confronting serious reputational crises. Examples over recent decades include Exxon (the Valdez oil spill incident), Union Carbide (the Bhopal explosion), Perrier (benzene traces), Tylenol (deaths from tainted pills), the US Catholic Church (priest sex abuse), Martha Stewart OmniMedia (executive misbehaviour), Arthur Andersen (accounting scandals), the International Olympic Committee (bribery issues), and many others. All faced threats to their brands from deterioration in consumer and business customer approval and from decline in public trust.
While some were more product brand-rooted (e.g. Tylenol), all found their corporate brand affected, and efforts to rescue the brand were undertaken at the corporate level (e.g. Johnson and Johnson for Tylenol, marketed by J&J's McNeil Laboratories Unit). Thus these incidents provide a rich source of insight into the corporate brand. They illustrate a key dimension of corporate-level marketing.
“Can we as an institution, have meaningful, positive and profitable bilateral on-going relationships with customers and other stakeholder groups and communities?”. That was a central question of an organisation's corporate-level marketing orientation posed by John Balmer and myself in our treatment of an integrated approach to marketing at the institutional level (Balmer and Greyser, 2006).
We held (among other points) that corporate marketing is indeed a boardroom and CEO concern. In reflecting on corporate identity and reputation in times of brand crisis, one recognises the importance of corporate-wide orientation and the responsibility of the CEO and company-wide managers.
Sources of reputational trouble
Let me offer an anatomy of the kinds of reasons brands can be in reputational crisis, how to know that the situation is serious, and what steps companies can try to take to prevent or if necessary to overcome such crises.
Reputational troubles can come in many forms, from a wide variety of causes and from many publics. Some have been sudden, such as when seven people died in a single day from tainted Tylenol capsules, when traces of benzene were found in bottles of Perrier and when an explosion in a Union Carbide facility in India killed many hundreds of people. Others were the result of problems that festered over longer periods, such as the priest sex abuse scandal affecting many Catholic archdioceses in the US, the accounting scandal that eventually ruined the once-respectable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, or the bribery scandal over selection of host cities that tarnished the reputation of the International Olympic Committee. Some of the protest or concern comes from advocacy groups with a cause, some from disaffected consumers/customers, some from governmental/regulatory entities, and some from the general public.
Organisations must recognise the “what” of the issue generating the reputational threats, as well as “who” the involved public(s) is/are.
Here is a categorisation of different causes of corporate brand crises, with some examples and some brief explanations:
1. Product failure – Tylenol, Perrier, Firestone (tires implicated as the cause of many deaths in car accidents), the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, Intel's Pentium chip (flawed calculations), Peanut Corp. of America (salmonella).
2. Social responsibility gap – Nike (non-US labour and questionable working conditions).
3. Corporate misbehaviour – Arthur Andersen, Enron, Exxon (oil spill in Alaska), Merck (alleged suppression of early clinical drug trials of Vioxx), Siemens (corporate corruption in multinational fraud and bribery), Hewlett-Packard (Chairman indicted for spying on board members via questionable investigative means), IOC/SLOC (scandals regarding bid cities).
4. Executive misbehaviour – Martha Stewart, Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco).
5. Poor business results – Polaroid (failure to adapt technologically), Circuit City (giant retailer which let go many of its most knowledgeable store staff), and many others particularly in 2008.
6. Spokesperson misbehaviour and controversy – Kobe Bryant (star NBA athlete and endorser of brands who was accused of rape).
7. Death of symbol of company – Wendy's (fast food chain) founder and TV spokesperson Dave Thomas, the “face of the brand”.
8. Loss of public support – Louis XVI of France (guillotined and monarchy fell), Edward VIII of England (forced to abdicate the British throne); both lost their ability to be seen by their people as “a symbol of nationhood,” central to the “monarchic corporate brand” (Balmer et al., 2006).
9. Controversial ownership – Venezuela and CITGO in the USA (vigorously anti-US Venezuelan president).
Assessing the seriousness of the situation
What made some of these crises life-threatening to the organisations involved was that they affected what I term “the essence of the brand”, i.e. the distinctive attribute/characteristic most closely associated with the brand's meaning and success. When this occurs a company's marketplace position and its brand meaning are seriously challenged. If the essence of the brand is not central to the situation, the problem is more likely to be overcome, albeit still troublesome.
Here are four key areas, with some brief comments, that organisations should examine to analyze an emerging (or emerged) issue that may threaten its brand's reputation:
1. The brand elements:
o Brand's marketplace situation, e.g. market share or corporate favourability (prior to crisis). The weaker the situation, the more dangerous the problem.
o Brand strengths/weaknesses. The more differentiated (vs other entities), the better it is for the affected company, unless a key differentiation is the subject at issue (see “integrity of athletic competition” below).
o Essence of the brand's meaning (see examples below).
2. The crisis situation:
o Seriousness of situation at outset. If the problem prospectively affects many consumers or some severely, e.g. salmonella in food leading to deaths, the seriousness is higher.
o Its threat to brand's position/meaning (see text examples in “consequences” below).
3. Company initiatives:
o Impact on brand and problem situation of company behaviour/actions, especially communications; this can be examined at the planning stage as “likely” impact.
4. Results (after initiatives and/or passage of time):
o Effectiveness of initiatives in terms of recovery/relaunch, restoring brand meaning, and favourability or market share.
Action in brand reputational crises
What can and should companies/organisations do when threatened by brand crises? Where does communications fit in? My principal recommendation relates to situations of “bad news about the company and the news is really true”.
In the face of crisis, especially when it is rooted in a problem that is or will become visible, I believe an organisation should admit the truth, even if embarrassing. Also, it should forthrightly try to address the problem, even if it involves changing corporate behaviour. And it should support the initiative with credible communications. These are the best (but still bumpy) roads to possible brand rehabilitation or rescue.. Communications alone cannot do the job
Substance – i.e. behaviour – is central (e.g. the quick recall of Tylenol from distribution) to an effective defensive program. An allied communications effort can be important and helpful. However, the message must avoid serving as a “reminder campaign”, especially if the underlying problem/allegation is not widely known by relevant publics.
Credible communications were an issue for Wal-mart in its early 2005 corporate communications campaign “Wal-Mart is working for everyone”. The message was a response to critics of its wages and benefits for its workers and its impacts on the communities where its stores are located. Some observers (including myself) raised the question of how this message could be effective when the company was being widely criticised (with extensive media coverage) for reportedly closing a store where employees were trying to organise a union and when the company was being sued (again with substantial media coverage) for discrimination against women employees. In my view the company effort at communications and this specific message/theme were not likely to be effective.
Sometimes even any communications can be questionable. CITGO found itself in a reputational brouhaha in the US in late 2006 when Venezuela's president attacked President Bush at the UN (CITGO's parent is a Venezuelan petroleum company). A major retail gas station operator ended its relationship with CITGO as a supplier, allegedly connected to the widely publicized political attack. Although only a modest proportion of Americans were said to know of the ownership linkage, CITGO decided to undertake a communications campaign, “CITGO sets the record straight”, emphasizing the company's corporate good citizenship and role as a major US employer. Soon thereafter the company returned to its ongoing image-building campaign. Some experts agreed with the effort; some thought the response communications should have continued, and some said non-advertising communications should have been used. However, others argued that the campaign fueled more public awareness of the underlying problem, and should not have been undertaken (New York Times, November 1, 2006). The situation subsequently settled down as Americans looked at gasoline as a product, rather than at its ownership.
As I have suggested, forthright corporate action often is the most sensible route. Merck, the third-largest US pharmaceutical manufacturer, suffered an attack on its reputation because of its actions regarding Vioxx, a pain medication. It was revealed that several years before the company withdrew Vioxx (2004), its internal documents raised questions about risks of strokes and heart attacks associated with the drug. Obviously this was a serious situation for the company's reputation especially since the company was defending thousands of lawsuits over injuries and deaths, claimed by patients or surviving family members to be attributable to the drug. Three years after the withdrawal, having won many but having lost some of the cases, Merck made a $4.85 billion settlement on some 45,000 cases (Boston Globe, November 9, 2007) Merck's action was expensive, but allowed the firm to move on without a huge residual financial cloud. Merck's behaviour helped address a serious threat.
An unusual corporate action in the face of criticism was taken by the major accounting firm KPMG in 2005. Under attack by the US Government for the creation and sale of tax shelters claimed to have cost the Treasury billions of tax dollars, KPMG admitted “unlawful conduct.” What was said to lie behind the move was the company's fear of criminal indictment, which in the case of Arthur Andersen had been a major step leading to its demise (New York Times, 2005).
If the organisation truly believes that bad news about it is false, there is an opportunity to correct the misimpression. However, the communications (e.g. corporate statements) must be supported by evidence and have a clear ring of credibility. When Audi was confronted with “sudden unintended acceleration” problems, its initial responses attributed the blame to driver error. This became a matter of considerable public debate, well covered by media. Later, despite considerable internal engineering investigation, Audi was generally considered never able to pinpoint the actual cause of the problem. It took new engineering (e.g. automatic gearshift locks now widely employed in the industry) and the passage of several years of much lower sales for the brand (whose name is on all models) to mount a comeback.
Two other situations exist beyond “the bad news is true” and “the bad news is clearly false”, namely “the good news is true” and “the good news is actually false”. My advice in the first situation is to feel good and work hard to maintain whatever actions have yielded what relevant publics consider good news. Communications can be helpful to the corporate cause if the information is supported by external credible research, such as “voted best company to work for”. This of course puts the onus on an organisation to maintain the distinction. In the second case (“good news is actually false”), a corporation needs to fix the reality quickly (especially if on a relevant reputational dimension such as a safety issue) and hope it can keep a low profile until the situation is remedied.
As part of an organisational planning exercise, one might ask these questions about the organisation's brand:
1. What do you think is the essence of your corporate brand's meaning to consumers, to the trade, to other key stakeholders?
2. What could cause your brand to undergo a brand crisis?
3. How seriously would this affect the brand's reputation? How? Why?
Lessons learned
From my experiences and study of many crisis situations, let me offer four lessons in very abbreviated form:
1. Let us start with a look in the mirror. Understand your organisation's identity as others see it – not what the company says it wants to be. The latter is important, but perceptions are central. Know the brand's meaning to key stakeholders, and what could threaten its core. And monitor public approval and support of the company under different scenarios of trouble –, e.g. a strike, an environmental problem, etc. In short, understand the organisation's brand essence and what could seriously threaten it.
2. Potential reputational problems are legion. They come in many forms, and from many publics (stakeholders). But not all affect the essence of the brand. In all instances, the organisation must understand what and whom it is defending against.
3. In the event of brand reputational crisis, focus on forthrightness in communications, and on truly substantive credible responses in behaviour. These are the most likely avenues to rescue a brand in crisis. They may restore trust, although that is not guaranteed. The most important actions in a reputational crisis, however, can be the ones taken over time to build a “reputational reservoir”, a strong foundation for the corporate reputation. In some crises, a company can draw down on that reservoir.
4. Remember that because a corporate brand is as wide as the organisation, the CEO is the ultimate guardian of the corporation's reputation.

出处：Stephen A. Greyser. Corporate brand reputation and brand crisis management [J] Management Decision .2009.47(4), PP.