Customer Reviews

The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Alsop is a senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal and I have read many of his stories over the years. I am glad that someone of his caliber has addressed the issue of corporate reputaion at a time when big business ranks about equal to politicians in public perception. Even the mafia is thought to be less sleazy!!

Alsop starts with a basic, uncontestable premise: A corporation's reputation is one of its most valuable assets. This determines how much slack a cynical public will cut it when things start to go wrong. Other assets - such as those that show up on the balance sheet - are carefully measured, tracked and managed. Reputations are not. Not even by so-called excellently managed companies.

Next Alsop lays out various 'laws' to help a company manage its reputation. The first two just talk about how important it is and how important it is to measure it. Then he becomes much more interesting as he starts laying out what a company should do build and maintain a sterling reputation.

He stresses how important it is for a company to 'live' its values and ethics and why being defensive is actually offensive. These could be bromides. What gives them value are Alsop's anecdotes drawn from a lifetime of reporting on business. These well selected stories not only illustrate his points, they also show the reader how to implement his ideas in their own situation. And there are hundreds os such stories.

For example, Alsop talks about how being socially responsible can be an important component of a sterling reputation. And he relates how Timberland does it with a range of initiatives from monitoring labor practices at its contractors' overseas factories to giving its employess the opportunity to do community service on company time. And he doesn't stop there. He tells what dozens of other companies do from Johnson & Johnson to Paul Newman's food company.

These stories and examples are, by far, the best part of the book. This is where the value resides and it is not at all difficult to take each of these examples and suitably modify it to use in your situation.

An excellent book. My one quibble is a philosophical one. I think Alsop is too easy on companies like Altria - the former Phillip Morris. Does having an exemplary ethics code with lots of employee input compensate for the fact that its core product kills when used as intended? You make up your mind on that one. Alsop shows how Altria does a lot of things right in terms of global cultural sensitivity but I would simply not have used such an example.

"The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation" (18 Laws) draws an up-to-date roadmap for (1)establishing a good corporate reputation, (2)maintaining that reputation and (3)repairing a damaged corporate reputation. Starting with the premise that a good reputation is a corporation's most priceless asset, writer Ronald Alsop presents mini case-studies of "lessons learned" from the crises faced by companies and organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Philip Morris (Altria), and the Roman Catholic Church to explore the benefits of a good reputation, the consequences of a bad reputation and ways to protect good reputations and fix bad ones.

While sticking mostly to the main highways of stategy development and avoiding the gritty back roads of tactical decision making, 18 Laws provides important insights into key principles and strategies for building, maintaining, and fixing corporate reputations. Though it lacks turn-by-turn directions and employs clichés with surprising frequency, this well-researched, well-organized and clearly-written business book is a worthwhile addition to the personal, corporate or PR agency library. C-level executives and corporate communications professionals can benefit in perusing the 18 laws in preparation for the next inevitable corporate crisis or as a strategic reference manual for use as the crisis unfolds.

I found this book highly readable, balanced and full of useful information. It should become a textbook for people in the communications field and for senior executives.

The book is structured so well, with the best practices of companies clearly explained. The author is feisty in his assessment of reputation blunders and shortcomings, but he always turns them into instructive lessons.

Mr. Alsop vividly illustrates each law with detailed examples. I especially enjoyed learning about companies' tactics for dealing with Internet rumors, Merrill Lynch's crisis-management strategies, and the inside story of Philip Morris's name change.

There are also many rankings of companies with the best and worst reputations. And the author has written entertaining short pieces for some of the chapters about famous corporate apologies, the IBM Hall of Shame, and a corporate name change quiz.

Given the state of corporate America's reputation, this book should have a long shelf life.

The corporate scandals of the last several years have sparked a renewed interest in corporate reputation. Although business executives now realize that corporate reputation is a company's most fragile and valuable asset, few know how to manage it well. Veteran Wall Street Journal staff writer, Ronald Alsop, explains in his timely guide how to create, protect and repair reputations. Based on solid research, real-life examples, classic and recent case studies, the author describes the do's and don'ts of corporate reputation management. Each chapter constitutes a "law" of corporate reputation and what companies can do to observe those laws. For example, "Law 3" addresses how companies need to balance their many audiences and varying interests in order to maintain their reputation. In this chapter, Alsop provides smart advice on keeping priorities straight, staying on good terms with alumni, addressing regulators and paying attention to special interest groups. His use of recent examples such as P&G, Staples, DuPont and PSEG make the lessons even more powerful. The last section on repairing damaged reputations offers compelling and straightforward advice for the crisis-laden firm. This highly readable and thought-provoking book will appeal to anyone interested in establishing their good name, maintaining it and restoring it to its former luster once it has been tarnished.

From Martha Stewart to the NYSE, reputation crises have been screaming from the headlines. Will Disney recover its sterling reputation despite the handicap of its celebrity CEO? Did Martha Stewart's publicity tactics help or hurt her company's image? Why did Philip Morris morph into the Altria Group?

Making sense of it all is Ron Alsop, a senior writer and news editor at The Wall Street Journal. Ron has brought his years of experience as marketing columnist and editor of the Marketplace page to the subject of corporate reputations.

Backed up by data from Harris Interactive and other sources, Alsop's book recounts the rise and fall of reputations. He highlights successful strategies as well as spectacular failures. Companies from dozens of industries serve as examples. And Alsop offers specific suggestions for protecting your reputation, coping with the Internet, measuring your public image, and making employees effective ambassadors for a great business.

Alsop's new book promises to be a landmark work for PR professionals. The book is beautifully structured; the best practices of successful companies are easy to identify and apply. Quotes and interviews with decision-makers reinforce and amplify the lessons learned.

I've worked in corporate communications around the world for more than 20 years and I don't believe any other source provides as much useful information as Alsop's "18 Immutable Laws." Beyond its utility, it's also a darn good read.

Great reputations can be lost in a heartbeat. Ron Alsop's new book is the secret weapon business people need to emerge unscathed from the corporate reputation battlefield.

This book is worth reading just to get a sense of the way the American public views business today. The stories of businesses told in this book are one-sided and even irrational, but without a doubt, they reflect the way American business is seen by the public right now.

The problem with the book is that it offers very few ideas on how a business can successfully navigate today's minefield of public perception. As a reader hoping to come away with ideas on how to nurture the public's perception of my business, I instead finished the book feeling that businesses are largely at the mercy of dumb luck and circumstance when it comes to perception. Further, the author admits that businesses are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation when attempting to let the public know about any acts of goodwill.

This book is well-timed to take advantage of today's anti-business climate, but not of much help for those seeking to find their way through it.

Ronald Alsop's book is pretty much the product of what one would expect from an author with a background as a newspaper journalist. The book reads like a collection of articles on the subject. Corporate reputation-building is, of course, a very important subject these days. So one would benefit from some original thinking and deep analysis on the subject. Not much of that here, however. You could get the level of treatment the book offers from a perusal of newspaper and magazine articles over the past couple of years.

What's amazing is that none of Alsop's sources are disclosed. There is no bibliography, no footnotes disclosing where often highly specific results of corporate rankings and opinion polls should be backed up with authorities. What about the question of the reputation of an author, and his publisher, for solid research and scholarship?

This book couldn't be more timely and should be must reading for CEOs and their top managers. It's a highly readable book written by an experienced business journalist. The author brings the 18 lessons to life with examples of how a wide variety of companies from IBM to Lego to Altria/Philip Morris try to manage their reputations.

The book is a nice mix of companies with serious reputation trouble and others that nurture their good reputations with great care. You'll enjoy reading the author's frank assessment of companies with reputation problems like Martha Stewart Living and Disney, but you may learn the most from the reputation strategies of highly successful companies like Johnson & Johnson and FedEx. I was impressed that the author was tough but always fair. He doesn't mince words about problems at such companies as Merrill Lynch and Starbucks, but he evenhandedly presents the company's perspective and strategy.

"The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation" is a book you will want to read and re-read as challenges inevitably arise to your own company's reputation.

I love lists. I have 10 Steps of Crisis Communications and 5 Tenets of Crisis Management. When I'm asked why there are 10 of this or 5 of that, my answer is, "because I'm the author and I say so!"

Ronald J. Alsop is the author of The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation, which benefits from his years of experience as a news editor and senior writer at The Wall Street Journal. He knows that his fellow journalists like lists, and I suspect he gambled that an off-beat number like "18" would tweak his peers' attention. "Immutable," says my Merriam-Webster, means "not capable of or susceptible to change." I have to agree, in that Mr. Alsop has selected some of the most timeless truths of reputation management and backed them up with solid case histories. He also challenges the credibility of some very popular "best of" lists, such as "the best companies to work for" and "the most visionary companies."

One of his most important messages is how quickly circumstances can destroy reputations that took decades to develop. As with much of the book, this is not an idea new to any reader of this newsletter and other books on the market, but he has packaged it very nicely. It's the kind of publication you could give to your CEO or client and say "see, here's more proof that we have work to do."

Jonathan Bernstein
Author, Keeping the Wolves at Bay: A Media Training Manual Version 3.0
President, Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.
[...]

The corporate scandals of the last several years have sparked a renewed interest in corporate reputation. Although business executives now realize that corporate reputation is a company's most fragile and valuable asset, few know how to manage it well. Veteran Wall Street Journal staff writer, Ronald Alsop, explains in his timely guide how to create, protect and repair reputations. Based on solid research, real-life examples, classic and recent case studies, the author describes the do's and don'ts of corporate reputation management. Each chapter constitutes a "law" of corporate reputation and what companies can do to observe those laws. For example, "Law 3" addresses how companies need to balance their many audiences and varying interests in order to maintain their reputation. In this chapter, Alsop provides smart advice on keeping priorities straight, staying on good terms with alumni, addressing regulators and paying attention to special interest groups. His use of recent examples such as P&G, Staples, DuPont and PSEG make the lessons even more powerful. The last section on repairing damaged reputations offers compelling and straightforward advice for the crisis-laden firm. This highly readable and thought-provoking book will appeal to anyone interested in establishing their good name, maintaining it and restoring it to its former luster once it has been tarnished.