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Schultz, 1999). The second reason is the
requirement to protect and nurture strategic
business units and their associated brands to
enable them to grow. Strategic business units,
as indicated by planning grid matrices
(McCarthy and Perrault, 1994) are the powerful
building blocks of corporations. They are
powerful corporate assets, the brands they
manage are powerful corporate assets too
(Brand Finance, 2000). SBUs and their brands
need a powerful business backing them.
Business leaders everywhere see a positive
corporate image as an absolute prerequisite
for achieving strategic business objectives
Kitchen and Schultz (2001b) described the
chief executive officer as ‘holding the handle
of the corporate umbrella’. This means that
the CEO is not only the chief instigator of all
communication activity; he/she is also the
person responsible for personifying such
information. CEOs such as Bill Gates, Anita
Roddick, Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Dave
Thomas, and Lee Iacocca help create and sustain
a positive corporate image that has resonance
for stakeholders, including the
all-important triumvirate of customers,
investors and employees. Zorn (2001) points
out that such ‘leaders’ represent not only their
own companies, but also sets of values and
positions on prominent social issues: ‘Effective
leaders – particularly in highly visible positions
– must be skilled communicators.’ He
goes on to say: ‘A handsome or pretty face will
only go so far these days. It is not enough to
make a few cogent remarks from time to time.
These must be related to the core values associated
with the corporation and what it stands
for in society’ (Zorn, 2001: 27). In today’s
global marketplace, CEOs are necessarily cast
in the role of influential corporate reputation
influencers. They do not stand alone, but have
a wide range of corporate communication
resources and personnel to assist them. But
they themselves must communicate personally,
effectively, and well. This is an absolute
must.
Given the two related strands – increased
accountability and CEO communication –
corporate reputation becomes an essential
component of national, international, and
global success. Failure to communicate, or
worse – miscommunication, can do much to
damage corporate reputation and simultaneously
brand sales, market share, and share
values. It is too important a subject to leave to
chance. But, there is still a third principle
which companies ignore at their peril.
Principle three: the power of
internet communication
By year-end 2003 it was estimated that there
were six hundred million users of the internet
globally. Notably, these users were statistically
spread as one would expect in a global economy
with the United States at 36 per cent;
Japan at 11 per cent, Germany 6 per cent, and
the United Kingdom at 5 per cent. Kitchen
and Laurence (2003) state: ‘the increasing
power of global media, consumer and shareholder
power, and the shifting public role of
corporations underpin the new dynamic
agenda for building and maintaining corporate
reputation. But there is a place (“space”
might be a better word) where these issues
have come to a head faster and with greater
impact – the Internet’.
The internet has the capacity to facilitate or
damage corporate reputation. Of the millions
of sites accessible and available, many are
geared to detailing and reporting the activities
of specific corporations and industries. Unlike
other more traditional media, information can
span the internet almost instantaneously with
almost no effort. Company boundaries, once
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors