• Bad branding
• Competitiveness and the City
• New look legal marketing in the UK
• Cloud needn't be a marketing nightmare
• Up, up and away
• Putting a value on corporate reputation
• Policing Bloggers
• I know my customers – perception or reality?
• Does the US media need a bailout?
• Online Annual Reports – a review of current activity among FTSE100 companies
• The Content Generation
• Typing out a change of personality
• Companies caught in the commission of journalism
• Reputation Rehab
• Cut out the jargon
• Sibos viewpoint - Thursday 17 September
• Regaining our seat at the table
• Sibos viewpoint - Wednesday 16 September
• Sibos viewpoint - Tuesday 15 September
• Sibos viewpoint - Monday 14 September
• Thought leadership is not for the risk averse or misaligned
• David Byrne - An impetus for change
• The Great Escape
• Frightening MBA advertising?
• The curse of the Were-Designer
• Banking on effective communication
• The corporate newsroom amid a web of excited utterance
• It’s not what you say it’s the way that you do it
• Slow down and think
• Spreading the word
• Silver linings?
• Design and Technology
• Papercut: How Companies Can Combat A Weakening Mass Media
• CNBC and Jim Cramer Underestimate the Influence and Reach of Social Media

It takes a long time to build a good corporate reputation but it can be seriously damaged in no time at all (just ask Gerald Ratner).

So what reputation is, how it is built and what companies do when things go belly-up is an extremely important part of PR strategy.

For some companies, reputation is simply about being seen as an organisation that people want to do business with.  But reputation is also about trust and consistent delivery of service.  The more reliable a company is and the more it does exactly what it says it’s going to do, the more its reputation grows.

The fragility of corporate reputation was brought to mind by the problems Eurostar experienced over the Christmas holiday.  Following the breakdown of five trains, passengers were trapped in the Channel Tunnel, many with little food or water. 
Eurostar faced a barrage of criticism and a slew of bad headlines for failing to pass on information to passengers and for taking so long to rescue those trapped.
Over the years, Eurostar has actually built a pretty good reputation.  Of course, the higher the benchmark is set, the further a reputation has to fall.

So did a well-rehearsed contingency plan fail? Or did a belief in the strength of its own reputation make Eurostar a little complacent?  Only the company can answer these questions. 

Perhaps a company more used to dealing with reputational issues on a regular basis would have better managed the situation

In Eurostar’s defence, Richard Brown, the company’s boss, issued a pretty clear mea culpa, taking personal responsibility for what happened and admitting that “a lot of things went wrong. Hands up, a lot of mistakes were made.”  He also recognised that the company has a long way to go to recover the confidence and trust of customers.

In all likelihood, the problems that Eurostar experienced were not so serious that the company won’t be able to restore its reputation during 2010. 

But there will be a cost.  It is expected that the company will have to pay out up to £10m in compensation to passengers. And as a company’s reputation is widely felt to be a key component of overall corporate market value, putting a final figure on the damage done to Eurostar’s reputation may take longer to discover.

Jeff Watt
jeff.watt@greentarget.net