PortlandQuarterlyIssue 09: Spring 2013

Reputation Management in the Digital Age

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A strategic communications consultancy for the digital age.

We help major brands, governments, campaign organisations andhigh-profile individuals tell their story clearly and successfully.

We are trusted by corporate, public and not-for-profit clients to advise on strategic communications, public affairs and digital engagement.

But where we excel is bringing all these disciplines together for truly integrated campaigns.

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Reputation Management in the Digital Age

Tim AllanThe convergence between communications disciplines is increasing exponentially year-on-year — requiring organisations to bring together their corporate communications, consumer PR and branding, regulatory engagement and digital campaigns if their message is to be heard most clearly and effectively.

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# The Hashtag Hijack

Jamie Silverstein

Twitter hash-tags can work for or against a campaign — but organisations can take practical steps to increase the likelihood of success.

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The Social Age

Mark Flanagan

By giving people the ability to continually hold businesses and leaders to account, social media increasingly intersects corporate communications and consumer marketing campaigns — putting a company’s behaviour at the heart of its commercial success.

Portland’s Mark Flanagan explores how companies can prepare for a social media crisis and develop the skills needed to handle one.

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Reputation Management on an Olympian Scale

Dan TimmsAs one of the largest communications challenges of the decade, the London 2012 Games exemplifies how effective structures, coordinated messaging, thorough testing — and heaps of ambition — come together to deliver extraordinary results.

Dan Timms, former Head of Communications for London 2012, explores how almost ten years of planning ensured the team were well placed to ride out the G4S security storm, while also delivering one of the nation's most successful brand campaigns.

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Contents

The Court of Public Opinion

Idil OymanParties involved in a legal dispute are often subjected to increased public scrutiny, — which can impact reputations and the bottom line.

Portland asked three top City lawyers (Philip Clifford, Partner at Latham & Watkins LLP; Alex Gerbi, Partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP; and Shane Gleghorn, Partner at TaylorWessing) to share their thoughts on how this affects their clients, and the advice they would offer.

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The Communicator in Chief

Charles McLeanA memoriam to General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander of coalition forces during the first Gulf War, and accomplished military communications strategist.

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Communicating on a Global Stage

Justin Kerr-StevensFor multi-national organisations, global events can make or break a communications campaign.

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Building Media Relationships

Dana Gloger

The power of journalists to make and break brands makes it vital to develop strong, effective and targeted relationships.

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The New Breed of “Brand Journalist”

George Pascoe-WatsonWhile newspaper circulations decline, many individual journalists now hold more influence than ever — using Twitter and personal blogs to enjoy a greater reach and diversity of audience than their newspapers can offer.

Portland’s GPW considers the implications for reputation management, and how social-media-savvy MPs are applying the same techniques to political campaigning.

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The Select Committee Challenge

Lara Newman

Giving evidence to a Select Committee can be a nerve-racking experience: probably the most direct examination of an individual's ability to represent themselves and their organisation, an inquiry should be seen as a test of preparation more than anything else.

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Tim Allan

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The convergence between communications disciplines is increasing exponentially year-on-year — requiring organisations to bring together their corporate communications, consumer PR and branding, regulatory engagement and digital campaigns if their message is to be heard most clearly and effectively.

Tim Allan is Portland's Managing Director.

Only a few years ago, the dividing lines between the different PR disciplines in the corporate world were

fairly sharply drawn.

On one side was financial PR which enabled Chief Executives and CFOs to talk to shareholders, analysts and the financial journalists. Getting the communication of company strategy right could have a significant impact on the confidence the capital markets had in the executive team, especially during a transaction. PR proved its value and the industry professionalised with the best financial agencies commanding premium fees for a premium service.

On the other side was consumer PR, usually reporting to the marketing director. The task was to help boost product sales by promoting brands through the editorial side of media. Its success meant that, over time, consumer PR captured a larger share of marketing budgets with creativity and content, on the agency side, that rivalled the best advertising.

But this easy taxonomy of the PR world no longer applies. Powerful forces are transforming the landscape and breaking down divisions. Even the most fervent advocates of shareholder capitalism now accept that any communication campaign that focuses solely on the capital markets will fail because it does not cover some of the key drivers of company valuation.

Many different audiences now communicate about businesses in a way which impacts on their operations, their profitability and their value.

Companies need to equip themselves to talk to a much wider group of audiences and to be aware of the interplay between them. Their needs are more about reputation management than traditional financial PR targeted at a small number of journalists and analysts.

This is a seismic industry shift. Business leaders now seek out communication consultancies that understand finance but can help them communicate to a wider range of audiences on issues which affect their reputation.

At the same time, consumers now want to know much more about the companies behind their favourite brands. The communications revolution allows them to find this information instantly, to share their opinions and run campaigns in support or against companies through their laptop or smartphone.

So consumer PR also now has to include high quality reputation management. That is why chief marketing officers are turning to agencies that understand brands but can offer broader support.

Public affairs is another area of the industry in flux. Services are moving away from direct lobbying towards a broader reputation management approach. The companies that are most successful in winning arguments with politicians will be those that can get their case across directly and indirectly by mobilising consumers and other interested parties, on and off line.

The final change is that communication campaigns are increasingly global. Brands can be damaged in one country because of their actions in another. Effective global communication campaigns no longer require an endless network of offices, but they do need the involvement of people with expertise and knowledge of a wide range of local media markets. Agencies with the right expertise can win business all over the world, wherever they are based.

At Portland we are hugely excited by these changes. Our work often cuts across traditional boundaries of financial PR, consumer PR and public affairs. We find that many large corporations, which previously relied on traditional financial and consumer PR are realising they need help which goes beyond these narrow disciplines. So they are turning to agencies like Portland which can provide the integrated support they need to manage their reputation in the digital and global age.

This edition of the quarterly contains several articles that showcase our work in this area.

We hope you enjoy it.

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By giving people the ability to continually hold businesses and leaders

to account, social media increasingly intersects corporate communications and consumer marketing campaigns — putting a company’s behaviour at the heart of its

commercial success.

Portland’s Mark Flanagan explores how companies can prepare for a social

media crisis and develop the skills needed to handle one.

Mark Flanagan is Portland's Partner for digital communications. Prior to joining Portland, he was Downing Street's Head of Strategic Communications, working for both the Labour and Coalition Governments.

THESOCIAL AGE

Mark Flanagan

There used to be saying, often misattributed to Mark Twain, which went “never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the

barrel and paper by the ton.” It is a lesson which many politicians who have launched an all-out war against the print media only to be forced into humiliating retreat, have regretted ignoring.

In a world in which newspaper sales have crashed and we get our news from many different sources, the traditional media is not as important or fearsome as it once was. But its role as watchdog is being rapidly taken by a new, more democratic beast which can be even harder for leaders, whether political or business, to keep in check. Indeed the 2013 version of the old adage might be “never pick a fight with a man or woman with more than twenty thousand Twitter followers”.

The internet and social media have, for the first time, given the ordinary citizen the chance and tools to hold leaders to account, to punish them and even remove those who behave in the wrong way.

Just how quickly the world has changed can be gauged from the fact that more people now believe that citizen-consumers can make an impact on the world than government/politicians or corporations do. 1

This has placed new demands on leaders and their organisations. Not long ago CEOs could ration their public appearances — making occasional and highly choreographed interventions around set-piece moments. Now modern leaders find themselves under permanent scrutiny and under pressure constantly to communicate and explain their decisions.

Last year saw some of the biggest corporate names in the world learn this the hard way. News International, Starbucks, the banks and the BBC were just some of the organisations to find themselves under consumer attack.

The damage is real and impacts on business. In the heat of the tax scandal, Starbucks’ Buzz score, which measures the negative and positive comments consumers have heard about a brand, plummeted from 0 to -25.2 Faced with the prospect of a consumer backlash, it’s no wonder that the coffee giant quickly decided to pay more tax here in the UK even if the way they were behaving was perfectly legal.

This is ‘the age of damage’, according to David Jones, the author of “Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business Is Better Business”. As he says “corporate social responsibility has now been taken out of the silo and put in the P&L statement by social media. We are entering an era in which businesses that are not socially responsible will suffer. And those that are will do better.”

What's happening is the convergence of corporate reputation and consumer behaviour. If your customers suffer a bad experience, their stories can be shared and amplified online and easily picked up the mainstream media, policy-makers and regulators. And, in turn, if you are seen to behave poorly as a corporate entity, people now have the ability to connect and create mass movements against you. Indeed, there is growing evidence that many consumers are routinely checking who is behind a product before buying.

This has significant implications for the way organisations operate. Traditionally, brand and corporate reputation were seen as two different beasts. Marketing held sway over the brand budget, and the C-suite controlled corporate reputation with often little evidence of a common strategy.

This no longer works. In a socially connected world, companies must take brand marketing and corporate affairs out of their silos and deploy them jointly in pursuit of common objectives.

When O2's mobile network went down last year, the public affairs, press office, marketing and customer service teams all came together to form a centralised war room— to ensure a quick response and common messaging. The CEO (@

ronandunneo2) took to Twitter to engage directly with customers. He helped explain the company’s position and limit the reputational damage.

But companies should not wait until the crisis breaks before getting plans in place and their structures aligned.

To help in this process, Portland has recently developed a social media simulation — Simulo — at which attendees learn to handle a mock crisis situation. It is a real roll-up-your-sleeves war-gaming exercise that aims to stress test your existing crisis planning in a contained and secure environment.

We work to make it as realistic as possible, building digital and social media platforms using your brand but on a private network. The aim of the exercise is to test capabilities, surface gaps in plans, and build leaders’ abilities to make decisions in real time when a social media crisis breaks.

This is a handy way of gauging how prepared an organisation is. But it should also make organisations understand that they shouldn’t wait until a reputation crisis to protect the most valuable intangible asset on the balance sheet.

Companies should always be in ‘crisis’ mode even in the good times. This means much closer working between brand and corporate teams and, most importantly, a better understanding of how to survive and win in this fast-moving, socially connected world.

Simulo is available as a one-off exercise or as part of a broader media training plan. For more information, please contact mark.flanagan@portland-communications.com.

Sources:

1. http://www.slideshare.net/HavasWorldwide/havas-worldwide-prosumer-report-communities-and-citizenship

2. http://www.brandindex.com/article/starbucks-suffers-more-nike

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Jamie Silverstein

The opportunity for engagement and interaction that Twitter presents in just 140 characters is

unprecedented. Its primary method of delivery, the humble mobile, has made it ubiquitous.

In the past 12 months, we have seen the Pope join Twitter and gain over 1.4 million followers. 123 heads of state and 100% of US senators use the platform. Portland’s research on Global Politics on Twitter, How The Middle East Tweets and How Africa Tweets has provided us with some insightful data about Twitter use around the globe. It is where the influencers gather to engage or simply to monitor the conversation.

For organisations whether governments, corporates or the not-for-profit sector, Twitter has opened up a whole new world. The barriers of the traditional media have been removed and a direct and personal interaction is possible with each and every citizen, customer or member.

Those of you on Twitter know there are certain conventions to follow. The RT means retweet, CC is copy to and the #tag indicates a conversation theme and allows people to follow that conversation. Campaigners often create a #hashtag so that they can own a conversation about a topic in order for it to trend and to track it.

But the #tag can work for and against campaigning organisations. Adversaries have found ways of

making themselves known with the “#taghijack” which allows a Twitter user or group of users to protest or air their criticisms.

Over the last year, we have seen strategic and often costly social media campaigns provide opportunities for critics to engage in brand bashing. Here are a few examples:

Research In Motion’s sponsored Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve 2011 show and billboard in New York's Times Square for its “Let's #BeBold in 2012” campaign. While the firm claims to have received more than 35,000 “appropriate” responses, brandjackers were able to crowd out any positive reactions with wry tweets about the company. One representative tweet, by @benihime33 read, “@blackberry You are boldly running your company into the ground #BeBold.”

The last year also saw the political class embrace #tags as a means to engage constituents around key issues. During the fiscal debate, President Obama urged citizens to use the #tag #my2k to tell their representatives how they would spend their estimated $2,200 in saved taxes if Congress agreed to extend tax cuts for the middle class. But the Heritage Foundation purchased the promoted tweet — a paid for media option on Twitter where advertisers pay for a theme or a keyword — for the term. The results was that any Twitter user who saw the #my2k #tag also saw the conservative group’s ad at

the top of his or her page — in this case, a link to a blog post titled, ‘4 reasons why Warren Buffett is wrong on tax hikes!’

Starbucks also suffered a deeply embarrassing #tag hijack. Shortly after it was disclosed that the coffee firm was paying hardly any tax in the UK, the company rolled out its #sharethecheer promoted tweets to a less-than enthused Twitterverse with messages displayed on a big screen at the Natural History Museum in London. According to the Daily Telegraph, they forgot to moderate tweets which meant that ‘one tweet called Starbucks ‘tax dodging MoFos,’ while another opted for a more blunt message: ‘Hey Starbucks, PAY YOUR ******* TAX.’”

While these incidents illustrate the potential perils of social media campaigns, they should not put off organisations from harnessing the great opportunities to learn and to engage that social platforms afford. After all, 29% of Twitter’s active 100 million users follow a brand and 64% are more likely to buy from a brand they are following.

Sacrificing control of messages is an inherent risk that any brand must face when it chooses to go social. But there are steps that organisations can take in planning and executing their live campaigns to manage and reduce the risk of experiencing negative feedback and increase the likelihood of success.

# THE HASHTAGHIJACK

Twitter hash-tags can work for or against a campaign — but organisations can take practical steps to increase the likelihood of success.

Monitor: Knowing who is saying what about your organisation is not simply a strategy effective for pre-empting crises, it is a method of learning more about what your target audience wants from you. Pepsi-owned Gatorade recently established a social marketing Mission Control center in its Chicago headquarters to track online sentiment, as well as the trajectory of conversation on Gatorade and its product launches across the Internet.

The command centre is a room with six large monitors that feature real-time visualisations of the online activities of its sponsored athletes and social network users who engage with the company. It meant that when Gatorade launched the 'Gatorade has Evolved' campaign, featuring a song by artist David Banner, they were able to have a full-length version of the track ready to distribute to its Facebook and Twitter followers who expressed interest in it within 24 hours. Since establishing the centre, the company has managed to “increase engagement with its product education (mostly video) by 250% and reduce its exit rate from 25% to 9%.” Similar centres have been set up by Nestle, Red Cross and Dell.

Engage: While the 140-character confine of this social media platform does not lend itself easily to expressions of profound emotion, the platform is extraordinarily useful for relaying light messages and snappy one-liners. Brands that have traditionally relied on vague and open-ended mottos must operate more deftly in such an environment. Instead of allowing the consumer to lead the conversation by asking

him or her to imbue a #tag like #sharethecheer with meaning, brands are most successful on Twitter when they direct users’ creativity or competitive energy towards a defined purpose.

Virgin America, for example, used Promoted Tweets as the sole means of announcing the airline’s expansion into Toronto, offering a 50%-off promotion for the first 500 travelers who booked flights from two California airports. The online competition was so successful that tickets sold out in three hours and Virgin America recorded its fifth-highest sales day in the airline’s history on the day its Promoted Tweets went live.

In the UK, clothing retailer Uniqlo applied another variation of the social media competition, creating a Twitter page called the “Lucky Counter,” which featured ten clothing items. The more people who tweeted about each piece of merchandise, the cheaper it became on Uniqlo’s website.

Respond: Even the most carefully thought out campaign and #tag use can backfire so it is important to maintain contingency plans that can be readily deployed to react to negative feedback. Best practice requires exploiting Twitter not just as a communications and marketing, but also a customer service tool.

When McDonalds introduced its #McDStories campaign to humanise the brand with personal stories about farmers early last year, the #tag was seized by critics who used it to hurt the brand. McDonalds’ social media director Rick Wion is credited with

responding promptly by switching to #MeetTheFarmers; negative conversation subsided within minutes after the switch.

So what do these examples tell us? The risk averse will look at what’s gone wrong and continue to steer clear of engagement platforms like Twitter. The brave will see the huge opportunities and potential rewards and venture out and campaign in new ways.

But the lesson is that mapping-out every aspect of monitoring, engagement, integration, and response can increase protection against negativity. This means not only having a plan but testing it through simulation. The difference between a failed Twitter campaign and a winning Twitter campaign doesn’t lie in what comes after the #tag, it’s in what comes before it — the planning.

Jamie Silverstein is a Researcher in Portland's New York office, where he provides research and analysis on strategic communications campaigns for clients including The Rockefeller Foundation and the United Nations.

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When the G4S security staffing story broke in the days leading up to London 2012, many must have felt

that the doubters had called it right all along.

For years, they had been saying that London was not fit to host this kind of event. The venues would never be built on time. Public transport networks would collapse and the airports would not be able to cope. The government was incapable of overseeing such a complex project.

When you considered the scale of the challenge, it was easy to understand why.

Against the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in a generation, and with the Dome and Wembley still fresh in the memory, we needed to deliver Europe’s largest construction project on time and on budget. Then, in one of the world’s busiest economic capitals, we had to stage an event which was equivalent to holding a G20 summit, Wimbledon, and the FA Cup final on the same day, every day for three weeks.

On the one hand, it was a priceless opportunity to showcase the capabilities of UK plc and promote brand Britain to the world. On the other, it was one of the biggest challenges that the country had ever undertaken — a reputational management operation on an Olympian scale.

As the Opening Ceremony approached, with around 40,000 journalists already in town and no sport yet to distract them, it was inevitable that media scrutiny would reach its peak.

Previous hosts had warned that this was the period that could make or break a Games. For Beijing, it was concerns around air pollution and human rights that threatened to overshadow the Olympics. Two years later, stories about crime and security dominated the news agenda in the approach to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

When the G4S story broke, a number of factors proved crucial to our response:

Unity of purpose: Right from the start, all partners involved in delivering the Games — from

Government and LOCOG, to the GLA and London’s transport and security chiefs — recognised the importance of working as one. It didn’t matter whether you were building the venues, running the transport, securing the borders, or staging the sport, as far as the outside world was concerned we were all just 'London 2012'. Any failure would reflect badly on us all, and collective success was the best means of securing individual triumph.

The right structures: Our priority was simple: remove the barriers to effective collective communication. The structure we put in place allowed communications directors from every organisation involved to be on call together at a moment’s notice, meaning a quick and coordinated response to any issue that arose. By the time the athletes were parading through London, more than 120 of these calls had taken place.

A centralised media operation: The Government’s crisis communications model had previously only ever been activated for a few days at a time. Now the challenge was to stand it up for a whole summer. Winning buy-in from ministers, No 10 and communications leads at an early stage allowed us to pool resources across government and bring together press, digital and strategic communications teams in a centralised operation over an 18-week period.

A coordinated message: It was vital that all ministers and spokespeople could speak about London 2012 with a single voice. This meant agreeing clear messages around every aspect of the Games — from construction, transport and security, to sporting benefits, social impact and economic legacy. Each morning we produced a common script, designed to set the tone for communications that day and allow our spokespeople to respond with confidence to the news agenda.

A trusted online presence: When a single tweet about transport problems or airport delays had the potential to trigger an avalanche of criticism, it was vital that we could rely on a strong digital and social media presence. This meant making sure that it was trusted by journalists and the public alike well ahead of the Games. In the end

the government’s digital approach brought 4.5 million followers across all its channels.

Testing, Testing, Testing: The year before the Games was dedicated to testing the agreed structures and plans to destruction. By the final, full-scale live exercise in spring 2012, around 5,000 people across the project were taking part. Cabinet ministers tackled scenarios ranging from ash clouds to lost athletes, drawing on the input of everyone from the Met Office to the Metropolitan Police.

I remember Chris Holmes, our most successful Paralympic swimmer, talking about his preparations for the Barcelona Games. He said that knowing he had put in something like 80,000 lengths of training for each individual stroke of his final made him confident that he could cope with whatever the race would bring.

The years we had spent pinpointing potential areas of risk for the project and putting contingency plans in place meant that, when the G4S storm hit, we were well placed to ride it out.

But there was one other element that was essential to overall success: ambition.

In such a harsh economic climate, it would perhaps have been understandable if our ambition had been reined in. But something that our Sydney counterparts said had always stuck in our minds: “Don’t look back and wish you had done more.”

With eighteen months to go, the government rolled out its biggest ever promotional drive: the ‘GREAT’ campaign. Targeted at growth markets worldwide, it was specifically designed to showcase the UK and boost trade, investment and tourism off the back of the Games. So by the time the Queen was parachuting into the Olympic Stadium, millions of people across the globe had already begun to see Britain in a new light.

Hosting a safe event and emerging with our reputation intact was necessary for success, but it would never fully define it. Instead an ambitious long-term plan helped turn one of the country’s biggest ever challenges into one of its greatest triumphs.

Dan Timms is an Associate Director at Portland, prior to which he was the UK Government’s Head of Communications for the London 2012 Olympics.

Dan TimmsAs one of the largest communications challenges of the decade, the London 2012 Games exemplifies how effective structures, coordinated messaging, thorough testing — and heaps of ambition — come together to deliver extraordinary results.

Dan Timms, former Head of Communications for London 2012, explores how almost ten years of planning ensured the team were well placed to ride out the G4S security storm, while also delivering one of the nation's most successful brand campaigns.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT ON AN OLYMPIANSCALE

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Justin Kerr-Stevens

COMMUNICATING ON A GLOBAL STAGE

For multi-national organisations, global events can make or break a communications campaign.

Justin Kerr-Stevens is an Account Director in Portland's International Advisory team. He has extensive experience in government communications and country branding, including projects for the UK and Australian governments.

Two days after the volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa the New York Times carried a five line article on the volcano. A

telegraph line, recently connected to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies enabled the news to be transferred via successive relay stations until it arrived in New York.

Most people think that the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa was the largest volcanic eruption in the 19th Century; they would be wrong. That honour goes to the Mount Tambora eruption almost 70 years earlier.

The difference in perception is partly due to how the events were communicated: aside from the effect on global climate the Tambora eruption went largely unnoticed, many people only hearing of it two years later when Sir Henry Stamford Raffles the former Governor of Java published his diaries of his time.

Contrast this with the impact of the 2011 Japanese Tsunami. Within twelve hours of the event Twitter was recording up to 1200 tsunami related tweets per minute in Tokyo; there had been 500 edits to the Japanese Tsunami Wikipedia page, 7000 records entered into Google’s person finder app and over 16,000 videos posted to YouTube.

Communications around these three natural disasters offer lessons for anybody considering how to manage their brand's reputation in a digital age.

Technological development has scaled to a point that we face instant feedback loops coupled with a low cost of entry — making anyone with a mobile phone and internet access a potential commentator on the next positive or, increasingly, negative event to hit your company.

As the global reach of smartphones and near universal Wi-Fi access become almost a given, traditional reputation management tactics will need to be applied to increasingly agile environments where speed of

response is key, yet the quality of response cannot be compromised.

Warren Buffett said that a reputation takes a lifetime to build and only five minutes to destroy — in today’s social media environments five minutes could often be considered a lifetime. Reputation managers need to consider what they would do in a short window to protect their companies’ reputation and capitalise on an opportunity that could be critical to brand positioning and market share.

They need to start thinking well before that five minute clock starts ticking. Planning for a crisis is the most crucial and often overlooked step in reputation management — it is now even more critical given every business is visible to global audiences. The three basic rules of reputation and crisis management remain unchanged: knowing where you want to end up after the event; making sure you understand your target audience; and deploying supporting strategies and tactics to reach your objective.

Whilst most people would scoff at the concept of the luxury of time when managing a crisis or reputational disaster, it is increasingly the one thing that cannot be changed and can be relied on to diminish in traditional campaigns.

Well thought out, brilliantly executed through-the-line campaigns can still achieve strategic results, but they are also competing against agile, real-time marketing and brand management that quickly responds to events, crises and opportunities in ways that were a distant dream several years ago.

Where Sir Henry had two years to craft his definitive account, today’s narratives are continually contested in traditional media and in the digital space. It is more important than ever that organisations are equipped with

the right channels and competent teams empowered to make quick decisions and respond.

When the lights went out at this year’s Super Bowl one company seized on the issue as an opportunity. Oreo immediately rallied its entire communications staff to achieve a single objective: find the opportunity to enhance Oreo’s reputation and capitalise on it online for a fraction of the cost a traditional 30/60 second spot.

By the time the lights came back on in New Orleans, the team at Oreo had deployed a new ad that was being distributed across multiple digital channels. Thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook shared the new advertisement, turning the Superbowl audience into Oreo’s broadcasters. Oreo was widely praised for ‘nailing the Superbowl’: using real time creative techniques that most traditional marketers hadn’t even considered.

International reputation management demands active and on-going engagement with customers, constituents, peers, supporters and critics. It also requires an awareness of current events that can be used to actively manage and promote your online reputation and interact with your audiences. This responsibility cannot just rest with the intern managing your Twitter channel; it needs be the job of every communications team member and be instilled within the culture of your wider organisation. Oreo is not the first to pioneer real-time responsiveness but they may well be 2013’s current leader.

As communication increasingly moves towards real-time activity it will be increasingly important for staff to be enabled and empowered to respond quickly to breaking events. Without the right teams working together in an organisation chances are you will miss an opportunity to enhance your international reputation — worse still you could make contribute to a crisis instead of solving one.

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George Pascoe-Watson

THE NEW BREEDOF “BRAND JOURNALIST”

While newspaper circulations decline, many individual journalists now hold more influence than ever — using Twitter and personal blogs to enjoy a greater reach and diversity of audience than their newspapers can offer.

Portland’s GPW considers the 'gilt-edged' opportunity these personal brands offer, and how social-media-savvy MPs are applying the same techniques to political campaigning.

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The newspaper industry may be dying – but the phoenix rising from its ashes is the new breed of “brand journalist”.

Political reporters like Paul Waugh, Editor of Politics Home, and Ben Brogan, now deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph, were the first to spot the gilt-edged opportunity offered by Twitter and blogging.

And they’ve put jet boosters under their careers by turning themselves into brands in their own right.

Other journalists like Caitlin Moran of The Times have followed suit. They have their own followers in addition to those who read the newspapers for whom they work.

In Moran’s case, she now boasts 375,000 Twitter followers, almost as many as the entire daily circulation of her newspaper The Times, officially 384,000 readers.

Savvy MPs have taken a leaf out of their book and have been quick to realise they can build an army of supporters by blogging and Tweeting.

Tory backbencher Rob Halfon has made huge impact on fuel duty by running a one-man blogging and Twitter campaign.

Labour’s Tom Harris and Tom Watson are other notables to have carved out brands.

And, of course, who could forget Louise Mensch — now no longer an MP — but who has a staggering 76,000 followers.

Their numbers are growing, but these MPs have realised they don’t need ministerial office to make an impact on legislation, regulation or social affairs.

There’s another benefit, too.

Sick and tired of unfair attacks about being a lazy politician, wining and dining in Westminster?

Simply Tweet the details of your daily diary to followers and you neutralise your critics at a stroke. It’s hard to condemn an MP when you get the boring — but often exhausting — details of their daily routine.

This new breed of brand journalist

and brand MP is a crucial audience for the corporate and NGO world to understand and to work with.

Professional communicators shouldn’t turn their backs on the traditional written or broadcast media.

If anything, we should step up our engagement as the marketing and advertising budgets are clipped.

But brand journalists, in particular, are a powerful bunch with enormous reach to a wide variety of audiences.

They can move fast. They can be irreverent. They can be flippant or deadly serious. They can get their — or your — message out unfiltered.

At this point, I should admit that I was a late developer.

I never once Tweeted in my days as political editor of The Sun. I didn’t blog. Indeed, the culture of most political journalists at the time was to mock those who were early adopters.

But it was Waugh, at the time the deputy political editor of the Evening Standard in London, and Brogan, the political editor of the Daily Mail, who were amongst the first to see the chances.

They embraced the example set by bloggers like Guido Fawkes when the rest of us saw them as a thorn in the side of conventional journalism.

Their numbers grew and grew and they spewed out rumour, claim and counter claim at a million miles an hour. All had to be checked out, diverting we newspaper folk from our own duties.

Short-sightedly, we didn’t see them as allies, as sources, rather we saw them as a burden.

But Waugh and Brogan spotted the opportunity. They wrote frequent blogs, laced with well-sourced and accurate gossip.

Most of us knew the material but judged it not strong enough to make stories in our publications.

But suddenly there was a vehicle for the nitty gritty and they tapped

into an appetite amongst politicians, other journalists and the world of public affairs specialists.

Waugh, now says: “I could see the way newspapers were heading and loved the speed and agility of blogging for the Evening Standard so much that it felt natural to go online fulltime.

“I'm a frenetic news junkie at the best of times but as a producer and not just a consumer of news, the internet is a no-brainer for its reach to a crucial younger audience and its speed.

"As for Twitter, I certainly got on board early on because I knew it would be big precisely because of its convenience and concision. In the early days, it wasn't clear just how big its reach would be but as time as gone on, the UK has proved a huge market.

"What makes Twitter blogging so unique is the personal approach, the individual voice.

“People like to feel they are having a conversation rather than hearing a corporate message. Which is why the journalist-as-brand has taken off in a huge way in recent years.

"Often the best corporate use of a Twitter feed has to have this key personal feel. The NorthernLine and SouthWestTrains for example often have a named individual Tweeting responses to customer queries and it works.

“But online readers can sniff out inauthenticity within nanoseconds, which is why a buttoned-up corporate approach doesn't work."

Brand journalists are operating in every sector these days. Brand MPs are flexing policy muscle in a way never before seen.

These are the ways IT is changing how we communicate

George Pascoe-Watson is a Partner at Portland, prior to which he was Political Editor of The Sun.

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As a journalist, I saw my fair share of media relations disasters. Having always worked in open plan offices,

the worst of these would quickly work their way around the team, with plenty of ridiculing and jokes to follow.

That could be embarrassing enough for the unfortunate soul who had made the faux-pas. But it was nothing compared to the instant and often global publicity that even the smallest of mistakes will now receive, thanks to social media and blogs.

While some might think that the digital revolution had diminished journalists’ influence, it has, in fact, done quite the opposite.

Almost every journalist now uses digital platforms and most have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers. That includes a company’s target audience, customers and potential investors. One negative comment from them can bring a company’s reputation crashing down in seconds. Journalists are opinion formers. Readers care what they have to say and readers are ultimately customers. The potential influence on a business’ reputation is therefore enormous and not to be underestimated. They can, and do, make and break brands. If the consumer affairs editor on a national newspaper, for example, rubbishes your client, they have instantly tarnished their standing.

And the digital world, however fleeting it may seem, is in fact rather long-lasting. Anything put on Twitter, Facebook or a blog remains on the web and could come up in any online searches that a potential customer or investor makes of the brand at a later date.

And it is almost always the small things that will cause most reputational damage. Companies will spend months along with millions of pounds on big communications projects. But, all this can be ruined in an instant by one tiny mistake, such as addressing an email to the

wrong journalist — something that happens far more than you might imagine. Such examples by big brands are plentiful. Just a couple of nuggets of PR errors from my time as a journalist include a global brand sending out a press release on a supposedly breakthrough new product that was going to revolutionise skincare – but failing to put the name of the product or brand in the release; to a large car manufacturer offering an exclusive story — which then appeared in a rival paper the day before we were due to publish.

Most journalists are overworked and time-pressed — and they don’t suffer fools gladly.

And given that ‘exposing bad practice’ is a cornerstone of journalism, most cannot resist the chance to name and shame anyone who has slipped up. And be in no doubt — they will name the individual PR, the agency and the company they were working for.

The smallest mistake can turn the PR into the story — which is always a communications disaster. It will damage the client’s reputation as well as that of the individual who sold the story in. And of course, the initial story will be lost.

The journalistic network is small and tight. It means that when a reporter broadcasts mistakes, their colleagues will read this too and will often get involved in the debate. Before you know it, a whole host of influential national media journalists are criticising the company and its reputation is decimated.

So how is this minefield best avoided? Well, primarily, through not making such errors.

The importance of building up strong relationships and trust with journalists is essential. This means that mistakes are less likely to happen. And, if you do slip-up, they will likely be more forgiving if they already have a strong relationship with you.

Targeting the right person is also key. Round robin emails rarely get coverage. Journalists can spot them a mile off and if they know a story has gone out widely, they won’t be inclined to cover it. And blanket emailing 400 journalists leaves you wide open to making a mistake – you only need one email to have the wrong name on it and the company and PR person will almost certainly be named and shamed online.

Instead, target the most appropriate writer for the story and tell them why you have chosen them. This far diminishes the possibility of making small mistakes which could have huge consequences, and it builds up and strengthens relationships.

But, slip ups will happen from time to time and in these cases, reacting quickly is essential.

A wall of silence is the worst possible reaction. If a journalist has tweeted about a faux-pas, then they are likely to tweet again if you acknowledge the mistake and right the wrong fast. This is the best possible publicity after a mistake. However daunting it may seem in such situations, it is essential to engage with them online.

It is also vital to learn how the key journalists for your clients use digital platforms. Make sure you follow them on social networking sites and read their blogs. Be aware of how they use tools such as Twitter and Facebook and the type of posts they put up. This is now as important as following what they do in the publications they write for.

Good reputations take years to build up and cement, but they can be completely shattered in an instant. The digital revolution has exacerbated this hugely. The influence of journalists has therefore never been greater, making it more important than ever to manage a client’s online reputation by engaging with and nurturing strong links with reporters. They are, more often than not, the link between businesses and their customers and the public’s main source of information about them.

Dana Gloger

BUILDING MEDIA RELATIONSHIPS

The power of journalists to make and break brands makes it vital to develop strong, effective and targeted relationships.

Dana Gloger is a Senior Account Manager at Portland, where she advises clients on best practise in managing the press and broadcast media.

Prior to joining Portland, Dana was Consumer Affairs Editor at the Mail on Sunday, a post she also previously held at the Daily Express.

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Lara Newman

THE SELECT COMMITTEE CHALLENGE

Giving evidence to a Select Committee can be a nerve-racking experience: probably the most direct examination of an individual's ability to represent themselves and their organisation, an inquiry should be seen as a test of preparation more than anything else.

Lara Newman is an Account Executive at Portland, where she provides political communications support for clients including AB InBev and Google.

In July 2011, near the beginning of my career in public affairs, I found myself just feet away from one of those events which seeps into the public

consciousness. I was sent along to cover the appearance of Rupert and James Murdoch before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee as they were questioned about phone-hacking.

The elder Murdoch spoke about this being the humblest day of his life. It did not need the intervention of the demonstrator with the custard pie to make him seem old and frail (although the only question I get asked was how close I was to the protest and his wife’s ferocious counter-attack). As journalists wrote at the time, the session was rather like getting a peep at the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

The Murdochs’ appearance was a perfect example of how even the most powerful can be made to look small in the committee room. A bad appearance can cause irreparable damage to the reputation of corporates and individuals.

Although routinely described in the press as ‘an influential group of MPs’, the average select committee used to be confined to worthy comments on government strategy and the occasional cross-examination of a minister. Today, they are quasi courtrooms in which MPs can hold just about anyone to account.

This growth in profile is, in part, down to changes to the committee system. Making the position of Chair elected has allowed an MP to carve a role, voice and career for themselves. Chairs looking for re-election will also make sure their work gets noticed.

This has also meant that membership of the Committees has become more attractive to MPs. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s investigation to hacking made both Tom Watson and Louise Mensch much more visible figures in Parliament.

While most witnesses are probably hoping to escape without any media attention, Committee members increasingly take a very different approach. They want to make the most of their chance in the media spotlight, deliberately taking a more confrontational approach or working on a line of questioning or sound-bites which they hope will see them featured on TV news bulletins or in the newspapers.

As the list of committee victims over the past couple of years indicates, many organisations and individuals are have yet to adapt to this new enviromment. Some still arrive ill-prepared or seem not to take it as seriously as they should. Sadly for them, the media have not been so slow, and know the evidence sessions are nowadays as newsworthy as the final report.

In 2011, Andy Hayman, once Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, was described by members of the Home Affairs Select Committee as “more Clouseau than Columbo”. Hayman became angry when asked

whether he had ever accepted a bribe from a journalist. The session, unsurprisingly, received great media attention, with journalists calling for Hayman to be given a sitcom following his “preposterous gurning and imbecile catchphrases”.

At the end of last year, sparks flew in the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee session with BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten who came into verbal disagreement with Tory MP Philip Davies. Patten’s tetchy reaction to questions over his day-to-day activity — “Do you want to know my toilet habits?” — provided a soundbite for the press and let them paint him as a man not in control of matters.

While no amount of preparation can guarantee a relaxed, uneventful hearing, when we at Portland work with prospective committee witnesses, we stress some simple rules. Be clear what you are trying to say, don’t lose your temper, don’t grandstand, and make sure you know what you are talking about. And if nobody ever talks about your appearance again, you have probably done a good job.

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THE COURTOF PUBLIC

OPINION

PHILIP CLIFFORD PARTNER — LATHAM & WATKINS, LLP

How has your advice to major corporations changed since the rise of social media and other digital platforms which quickly move news and information?

In a 'hyper-connected' world, news, views and information — good and bad — travel fast and far, raising a myriad of potential reputational and legal considerations. From the legal perspective, business leaders and boards are increasingly focused on a range of mitigation strategies, including the need to monitor for the abuse of social media platforms and to guard against risks to confidentiality and data privacy. When problems do arise they can give rise to complex jurisdictional issues and practical difficulties in enforcement, so prevention is often far better than cure.

Do you think the press attention to a case influences the outcome of a case or otherwise impacts it?

Public opinion can be a powerful force and is often used as a means to apply pressure outside the legal process. History is the best judge as to the enduring impact of publicity, however, it is sound business practice to coordinate the legal and public relations strategy

as part of managing a company's risk and exposure. Publicity is a strong factor shaping the opinion of stakeholders - no more so than when the company is in the spotlight and engaged in litigation.

The post-financial crisis dissection of the financial services industry has brought a surge of litigation around internal investigations, corporate fraud and regulatory matters. How important is the court of public opinion to banking industry clients?

Regardless of sector, businesses facing criminal investigations or regulatory proceedings should consider the risk of reputational damage as well as the potential sanctions. Unfavourable publicity that damages a reputation or brand can be extremely difficult to reverse, even if the subject is ultimately cleared.

ALEX GERBI PARTNER — QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN, LLP

You have been involved in one of the biggest disputes to come before the High Court. In your experience, was the legal approach impacted by considerations for the personal and corporate reputation of the parties?

I cannot comment on specific cases, but generally in my experience

while the substantive issues and legal arguments are obviously the priority for legal teams, one of the jobs of the lawyer, particularly in very high profile cases, is to be sensitive to the client’s reputation and how the presentation of the case may play out in the public arena. The effective management of such reputational issues can also be a high priority for the client.

There has been significant criticism of the rise of foreign litigation in the English court. What is the future of foreign litigation in the English courts, particularly with the rise of international legal centres like Singapore?

The English courts have historically been and remain a very popular choice for the resolution of disputes involving one or more foreign persons or entities. On the one hand, these cases take up valuable time of the English courts, which are publicly funded. On the other hand, such cases bring a lot of valuable business to the UK and also help to raise the profile of the UK as a global business centre.

Our practice at Quinn Emanuel concerns many disputes with a foreign element and I do not foresee that foreign parties will be less likely to want to litigate their disputes before the English courts. That said, arbitration as an alternative 22

Parties involved in a legal dispute are often subjected to increased public scrutiny — which can impact reputations and the bottom line. Portland's Idil Oyman asked three top City lawyers to share their thoughts on how this affects their clients, and the advice they would offer:

Philip Clifford, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLPAlex Gerbi, Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP Shane Gleghorn, Partner, Taylor Wessing

form of dispute resolution continues to grow in prominence and also forms a major part of our practice. The London Court of International Arbitration is increasingly a favoured choice for foreign businesses.

As a result of public pressure, do you think law firms will be under greater pressure to be more selective in representing poorly regarded entities or individuals?

Law firms in the UK must meet stringent professional requirements in taking on any new client and firms are naturally conscious of their own reputation. At the same time, it is a precursor of open justice that all parties should be entitled to be legally represented and should have suitably qualified counsel available to them. A bad reputation should not of itself rule out a party from having access to justice and suitable legal representation. Each firm has to decide where it draws the line.

Do you feel the media play a valuable role when reporting on a legal dispute?

It is a cornerstone of a properly functioning justice system that it is transparent and accessible to the public, and the media plays a key role in that, provided that the reporting is handled responsibly and in line with the professional standards demanded of our press corps.

SHANE GLEGHORN PARTNER — TAYLOR WESSING

How has your advice to high-net worth individuals changed since the rise of fast moving information through online platforms like Twitter?

There are two factors relating to social media that increasingly impact our work: speed and anonymity.

First, the speed of delivery of legal advice has to match the astonishing speed at which information travels online. Helping high-net worth individuals stop the spread of misinformation requires a corresponding speed of response. Legal teams should accept that online platforms have more freedom than traditional media to spread information, but our clients can expect us to help ensure misinformation will be corrected on these platforms. In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that users of social media are just as responsible for publishing unlawful material as the traditional and mainstream media. So it seems likely that there will be libel actions relating to social media being brought by high-net worth individuals.

Allied to this is the importance of dealing with anonymous criticism on online platforms. The so-called Norwich Pharmacal order has become an increasingly used tactic to seek information from internet intermediaries in order to bring proceedings against anonymous internet critics; for example for defamation, breach of privacy or copyright infringement. In short, in order to protect their reputations, high-net worth individuals require legal teams who can cross borders and drive through anonymity barriers to ensure that misinformation is not spread.

In 2012, the English High Court saw high-profile cases attract immense media attention to the individuals

and companies. How important do you think public profile is to the outcome of the case?

It is difficult to measure, but in high profile court cases media coverage can have a dramatic impact. This means that protecting the client's public profile requires a subtle approach which is mindful that, generally speaking, English civil commercial cases (like the Abramovich matter) do not involve a jury as decision maker. The direct influence of a positive public profile is reduced when the decision maker is a judge — they will consider evidence and legal submissions to determine the case.

That said, negative publicity can cause damage to an individual's or company's reputation that can be deployed against them by a clever advocate. For example, although, of course, honesty and transparency in public communications is vital, it is likely to be unhelpful for a client to try to boost their public profile by making an apology which contains admissions that end up being used against them in the court room. Similarly, it is unhelpful for a litigant to make an over-reaching criticism of their opponent that ends up being played back to them in court. Therefore, while it might be said that public profile is unlikely, in itself, to determine the outcome of a large commercial action in England, the parties simply cannot take the risk of ignoring the impact of negative publicity.

Idil Oyman is an Associate Partner, and leads Portland's Disputes Unit.

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Charles McLean

THE COMMUNICATOR IN CHIEF

A memoriam to General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander of coalition forces during the first Gulf War, and accomplished military communications strategist.

Charles McLean heads Portland's New York office.

Charles McLeanG

eneral Norman Schwarzkopf’s death late last year brought to mind my time covering his command of Coalition

forces as a reporter for NBC News during what we now think of as the “first” Gulf War.

Schwarzkopf will be remembered for his brilliance as a military Commander-in-Chief during that conflict, but his skills as a communications strategist are probably not as widely known. A few words here to set the record straight.

Before the commencement of ground operations against Iraqi forces in Kuwait there were a number of air and sea operations that made news. One of these was a firefight in a town called Khafji, just over the Iraqi border in Saudi Arabia.

As I remember the sequence of events, Coalition troops who had taken up positions in the town were ambushed by Iraqi troops in a cross-border raid, but the Iraqi advances were then reversed when the allies counter-attacked and re-took the town. It was the first real ground battle of the war, and the casualties included a number of US and Saudi soldiers. With the whole world watching developments in the Middle East, it was big news, and the US military command in Riyadh scheduled a press briefing with General Schwarzkopf for the following day.

At about the same time as the Battle of Khafji, a Coalition air assault on an Iraqi oil storage facility had succeeded in destroying a strategic target, but had also, inadvertently, created an oil spill that was fouling a several-square-mile patch of the Persian Gulf. An American newspaper had picked up the oil spill story and claimed that the US Navy had been asked to help manage the

spill but had refused. Khafji would certainly be Topic A at the press briefing, but the oil spill story would probably also get a mention.

The night before the General’s press conference, I got a phone call in my hotel room from Schwarzkopf’s press attaché, Ron Wildermuth.

“The General would be very grateful if you’d ask a specific question at tomorrow’s briefing” he said.

I had to figure that he’d already tried and failed to get other, more honorable journalists to ask the General’s planted question, so I (briefly) searched my conscience.

“OK” I said. “What does he want me to ask?”

“The General would like you to ask him whether the US Navy refused a request to help with the oil spill” Wildermuth said.

“No problem” I said.

At the press conference the next day, Schwarzkopf put on an impressive performance. He added new details to what had previously been reported about the Battle of Khafji, and he brought the press corps up to date on the air war.

“I’ve got time for a few questions,” he said, and pointed (too quickly, I thought) at me.

“General” I said, “As you know, there have been media reports that the US Navy refused a request to assist with cleanup of that oil spill that took place recently in the Gulf. Any comment?”

Schwarzkopf looked at me as if this was the craziest idea he’d ever heard. Then he rocked back on his heels and said, “That’s the most ridiculous piece of bovine scatology I’ve ever heard in my life!”

He’d found a polite way of saying “bullshit,” and he got a good laugh from the press and his fellow officers. He then went on to correct the record of events in the Gulf, and moved on to other questions.

I thought about our brief exchange afterwards and I realised that I’d been just a small piece in a neat little bit of military communications strategy. Schwarzkopf was angry about a report that criticised — and in his view, misrepresented — the actions of a naval vessel under his command, and he wanted to correct the record. He knew that most, maybe all of the questions he’d be asked at the briefing would be about Khafji — the big story of the day — but he wanted to make sure he’d be able to make his point about the Navy and the oil spill.

So he got his press attaché to find a stooge to ask a question about the incident so he would be sure to get his answer on the record. But then he must have thought, “What if I answer the question, but my answer gets cut?” At which point he came up with a clever soundbite he knew we couldn’t resist.

Schwarzkopf’s communications strategy worked perfectly: all three networks used the “bovine scatology” clip that night (NBC led with it), and CNN played it on the hour for most of the day. Mission Accomplished.

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