How Good PR Can Help Fix a Damaged Brand
Flourish PR
Good PR is a great way to help a company improve its reputation, whether through demonstrating its commitment to good causes, outlining an ethical way of doing business, or highlighting awards won for good customer service.
All that can help make a good reputation better, but that is when PR is relatively straight forward. It wouldn’t need the best PR agency in Buckinghamshire to help a firm with any kind of decent communications and web presence convert the equivalent of an open goal in football.
Where PR expertise is really needed is when a firm has a serious need to improve its reputation. This could arise because of a scandal, a well-publicised incident of disastrous customer service, an event that casts doubt on the competency of the firm, or the mishandling of a controversial issue. In such cases, major repair work will be needed.
Firms in such a situation may feel despair when things go wrong, but this feeling must be translated into a determination to do something about it. With the right strategy, this is eminently possible.
This will require honesty and humility to admit your mistakes, apologise where appropriate and then outline not just that you will do better, but how.
However - and this is vital - the strategy going forward cannot be one of keeping your head down and waiting for everything to blow over. Instead, you must be open about what you are going to do to resolve what went wrong and prevent repeats, and remain very visible.
Indeed, adopting a high profile rather than a low one can help you do a lot more to fix your image problems. By highlighting good news and positive changes you are making, you can rely on glad tidings today instead of waiting for yesterday’s bad news to fade from the memory.
It is also crucial to think about the long term , including ways in which you can become a leader in resolving the kind of issues that may have caused your reputational damage in the past.
Above all, brand values really matter. A crisis can give you an opportunity to reassess your values, as well as examining whether your problems have arisen from drifting away from the values you originally adopted.
Of course, the higher your values look, the more you will need good PR, especially if something goes wrong. For example, in the UK the Co-operative Bank had a strong reputation because of its ethical investment policy, but in the 2010s this was damaged because the bank took over Britannia Building Society without sufficient due diligence and almost went bust as a result.
That is a reminder that PR is not just about talking a good game. It cannot cover up failing elsewhere in your business. It is there to highlight the good news.
Once you have a strategy in place to up your game, you can and should tell the world about it. Then, with the right work to resolve your problems and good PR, your reputation can not only be restored, but become better than it ever was.
The Brand Rehab Playbook: How to Repair a Damaged Brand | Hanlon Creative
4 Steps to Rebuilding Your Damaged Brand in Crisis (vimarketingandbranding.com)
Co-operative Bank downfall blamed on Britannia takeover (yahoo.com)
