Why reputational risk should put PR at the strategic decision-making table
When organisations face a reputational challenge, crisis communications professionals are often asked to step in, handle the enquiries, write the statements, draft social media responses, and reassure stakeholders.
Sometimes these situations are anticipated, sometimes they are completely unexpected, and sometimes they are self-inflicted. It is the job of a specialist PR practitioner to provide advice and guidance in all crisis comms scenarios. However, in all but those that arise completely unexpectedly, an important opportunity is often missed.
Involve PR professionals early
For all the emphasis placed on reputation, communications professionals are still too frequently brought into the conversation after a major decision has been made, rather than during the decision-making process itself. This misses a valuable opportunity. Their value is not simply in managing fallout but identifying potential fallout before it happens.
Legal, finance, operations, executives, marketing, sales; these teams are consulted on risk, cost, delivery, routes to market and more. However, the people responsible for protecting an organisation's reputation are often left out until after the fact. The PR team is informed the week before a product ships; told the day before a regulatory ruling is published; find out about the rebrand after it's finalised.
PR professionals offer more than a clean-up service. An experienced PR consultant can offer insight that can be worth its weight in gold. Recent headlines offer no shortage of examples.
Cautionary tale No.1 - Meta & Ray-Ban
Ray-Ban has spent almost a century building a brand associated with style, fashion, cultural relevance, and quality. You couldn't go to a music festival without seeing their signature sunglasses adorning the faces of thousands of music fans - as well as the musicians themselves. I, myself, bought my first pair of Ray-Bans in 2009 for a roadtrip around the US and those same aviator specs still serve me well today, 17 years later.
However, Ray-Ban's recent partnership with Facebook owner Meta was not well received in all quarters, to put it mildly. From a commercial perspective, the partnership makes sense; combining one of the world's most recognisable eyewear brands with one of the world's most powerful technology companies. But it didn't take long for some consumers and commentators to re-label their so-called "smart glasses" to "pervert glasses", raising concerns around privacy and covert recording.
The question from a PR perspective is: could that reaction have been anticipated? A communications professional sitting around the boardroom table is unlikely to have focused on the technology itself. Instead, they may have asked a different question: how might this be perceived by people outside the organisation?
Cautionary tale No.2 - Jaguar's rebrand
Change is often not well received - especially in the case of beloved brands. However,
businesses have every right to evolve, and in a lot of cases they evolve or die. Markets change, consumer expectations change and, if they don't address those changes, they risk becoming irrelevant. Sales start to dwindle, redundancies follow, factories close, and the business begins to circle the drain.
Major strategic shifts inevitably come with risk, however, particularly when they involve established brands with loyal audiences and decades of heritage behind them, such as Jaguar. The reaction to Jaguar's new (and highly publicised) direction demonstrated just how quickly public opinion can form and how difficult it can be to regain control of the narrative once it does.
Was sufficient thought given to how different stakeholder groups would interpret and respond to those changes? Communications professionals are trained to think about perception, not just intention, and that perspective can be invaluable when organisations are considering bold moves.
Cautionary tale No.3 - Oasis reunion tour & dynamic pricing
The same could be said of the controversy surrounding dynamic pricing for Oasis reunion tickets. Commercially, the logic may have been clear. Demand vastly exceeded supply and that is understandable given the band is one of the UK's biggest music success stories of the last 30 years (and there have been many). I saw them perform at the City of Manchester Stadium in 2005 so I can understand the clamour to see them live again.
Consumers, however, saw things differently when the reunion tour ticket sale went live and dynamic pricing quickly pushed the cost to headline grabbing levels. The story quickly became less about a hugely anticipated tour and more about ticket prices and customer frustration.
Could PR professionals have prevented the backlash entirely? Probably not. But few communications professionals would have been surprised by it either. Could they have helped decision-makers understand how customers, journalists and wider audiences might react before launch? Almost certainly.
Once again: Involve PR professionals early
These are just three high profile examples of why communications should not be viewed as a function that simply explains decisions after they happen. Similar situations arise day-in, day-out for organisations of all sizes, in all industries, where the PR team or consultant is briefed only after a crisis starts to form (or is already fully ablaze).
The best PR professionals act as strategic advisers, they challenge assumptions, pressure-test ideas, and look at decisions through the eyes of customers, employees, investors, regulators and journalists. Most importantly, they ask questions that others may not. Why? It is, of course, what we're trained to do. But, in my experience, it's also in our nature. Many of the best PR professionals are former journalists and they are a notoriously cynical bunch - a trait that lends itself well to seeing the potential pitfalls in almost any situation.
Involving an experienced PR consultant from the outset may not always change the outcome (afterall, organisations will not always heed their warnings) but it is far safer to ask the difficult questions early and get an idea of what tomorrow's headline might be. Better to get a full picture before the decision is made, before the potential backlash begins.
Every organisation understands legal risk, financial risk and operational risk. Reputational risk should be treated no differently.
