February 2004

Company Reputation & the CEO

By Lou Hoffman

A positive company reputation fits right in there with motherhood, apple pie and broadband networks. Everyone agrees it’s a good thing.

Yet, many technology companies – whether they are trying to reach consumers or business buyers – continue to feel their superior products or services should carry the day when it comes to reputation. Big mistake!

Don’t get me wrong. Of course, the customer’s experience with your products or services contributes to your reputation.

But the human element also plays a role in shaping reputations. That’s why it’s critical that the CEO assume the lead role in putting a face on the company. After all, this is the person charged with leading the troops and delivering bottom-line performance. In short, the buck stops with the CEO.

Right about now you might be thinking “what about our No. 2 guy?” Maybe your CEO is a modest chap who likes to share the glory. Maybe your CEO isn’t nearly as charismatic as a senior vice president or simple doesn’t have the time for this role.

Regardless of the reason, forget about making a substitute. It won’t work (unless your company’s name starts with “m” and ends with a “soft” spot). Whether you’re talking about Warren Buffet, General Patton or Vince Lombardi, the perception of leadership comes from a single individual. To borrow lingo from the golf course, your targeted public constituencies expect to see and hear from “da man.” Unfortunately, “da second man” doesn’t quite have the same ring.

Put in a different context, CEO access is just the ante to garner attention from heavyweight media targets like CNN, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. Even the trades elevate stories on the strength of CEO interaction.

With that said, effectively deploying a CEO in a PR program starts with clear expectations. Some CEOs think it’s their constitutional right behind liberty and the right to bear arms to get coverage in the media. If the CEO figures his or her mug will grace the cover of BusinessWeek, your effort is doomed from the beginning.

Instead, you need to spell out recommendations in black-and-white terms to your CEO on how he or she will participate, the process to create content, time commitment, and most important of all, anticipated outcome or measurement. By defining the anticipated outcome, you calibrate the CEO’s expectations to align with reality.

Here, it’s important to benchmark where you’ve been and how CEO’s participation will improve awareness – and even preference if you’ve got the data – for the company name. For example, if you secured two profiles in mainstream business publications the past 12 months, maybe you’d like to double the number to a feature every quarter. A second example might tie to driving more traffic to your Web site.

With helping your CEO prepare, it’s important to work with his or her baseline personality. While technology has come a long way, I’ve yet to witness a successful personality transplant. If your CEO is charisma challenged, that’s ok.

Leadership comes in all types of packages. It’s more important that your CEO be genuine (note that I didn’t say just “come across as genuine”) and communicate with credibility.

Yes, many CEOs come from an engineering orientation and need coaching on articulating the big picture while avoiding tech jargon. Again, the idea is to work within the confines of his or her personality.

On the credibility front, there’s nothing worse than a CEO cowering under the proverbial desk at the first sign of bad news. If anything, the occasion of bad news is the time for the CEO to move front and center, not hide. It not only provides a great opportunity to exert leadership, but helps the CEO build credibility with Wall Street, market analysts and reporters so these same folks pay attention when good news arrives.

In a crisis, it’s even more important for the CEO to command the stage. Looking at the Pentium bug fiasco a few years back, the media backlash did not subside under Mr. Grove himself said his mea culpa and come forth with a consumer-friendly solution.

Although it was not a crisis, a great example of leadership under adverse circumstances is in the Fortune Magazine interview (March 29, 1999) with HP CEO Lew Platt. (In the spirit of disclosure, we work with HP, but not on this particular activity.)

The interview took place right after HP had been split into two companies. The reporter asked Platt if he had any doubts about the breakup of the company.

The classic CEO response to this question would have been “No, we analyzed the market, and it’s clear that this is the right direction.” But such a response would have lost credibility with the reporter and readers who already know there’s always a “gray area” in any mammoth undertaking such as splitting a $39.5 billion company.

Instead Platt replied: “I don’t have any doubts. If I have any, it’s just that it’s a hard job to pull apart a company like HP … There’s also an emotional side to all this. HP has always been defined as a certain kind of company with certain products and businesses. Getting used to something new has an emotional side.”

Perfect response because it’s genuine.

While the Fortune interview was obviously orchestrated with a Q&A in mind, it’s just as important to help your CEO build relationships with reporters over time. This means setting up meetings strictly for background purposes as opposed to driving short-term coverage.

We invited Peter Hillan, executive business editor for the San Jose Mercury News to the Agency a couple of weeks ago. Someone asked for his No. 1 gripe related to public relations. Hillan responded that the Merc’s reporters only hear form PR folks when they need short-term gratification, i.e., “cover this news announcement.”

He added that setting up get-to-know-you sessions with a company’s CEO and the appropriate reporter or reporters is the right way to build knowledge and context from the editorial reporting side.

I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the administrative assistants who support CEOs. Don’t treat them like speed bumps on the way to a parking space at the mall. They control the big cheeses’ schedules, and that makes them a critical success factor.

If you take a few minutes to explain how the CEO fits into the PR game plan, you’ll be amazed at how quickly they become allies … and how the CEO’s time magically frees for PR.

Lou Hoffman is president of The Hoffman Agency, a PR company focused in the tech sector with offices in the United States, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and the UK. E-mail him at lhoffman@hoffman.com.

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