Some 2,300 years ago, Publilius Syrus (a writer of Latin) penned that “A good reputation is more valuable than money.” About 2,000 years later, Ben Franklin said “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” Recently, billionaire and investment guru Warren Buffet said essentially the same thing… “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” For thousands of years, wise people have understood the importance of reputation. Reputation is a fundamental instrument of social order, based upon distributed, spontaneous social control. A person’s reputation reflects the overriding opinion held by others about him, and a company’s reputation reflects the opinion held by most about the business or its products and services. Once tarnished by bad behavior, a damaged reputation can have a profound impact on success and career.
It used to be that a person with a bad reputation would need to change professions, relocate or use an alias to overcome the stigma. In time, however, he could count on memories fading and offenses being forgotten. Today, thanks to social media and the World Wide Web, it is much harder to bury, outrun or outlive a bad reputation. Online news articles. Blogs. Public records. Video recordings. Digital photographs. Personal misdeeds and corporate wrongdoings are thoroughly documented — and available for anyone to see online 24/7 — forever. Frowned-on behaviors live on in search engines in perpetuity, especially in the U.S. When deserved, most people agree that a wrongdoer deserves the challenges that result from a bad reputation. But what happens when a genuinely respectable person’s reputation is tarnished by association, mistake or through no fault of his own? What happens if a business’ reputation or brand is tainted unjustly or unfairly? Is it possible to redeem a tarnished reputation that has been dragged through the digital mud? How does one redeem a reputation on the World Wide Web?
Some Reputations Cannot Be Redeemed.
A bad online reputation can be anathema. Such disgrace can follow a person or company for a very long time on the Internet. With the widespread use of social networks, the 24-hour news cycle, and pervasive technology (smartphones, tablets, laptops), it’s increasingly difficult to manage what people know, and more importantly, what they think about any given person or company.
The most inane event can derail a person’s reputation, even a long-standing one.
The same can happen to a business’ brand. The name “Enron” is now synonymous for fraud on the behalf of large corporations. It will probably remain in the public lexicon as a bad five-letter word, long after most people forget that the word was once attached to an enormous Houston-based energy company. Like individual reputations, there are some things a brand cannot overcome. Enron sold off its last business in 2006 and is now defunct.
Online Reputation Redemption is Possible…
But most reputation problems don’t end careers or businesses. Even some pretty big reputation fiascos can and have been overcome. Consider the reputation debacle of Dell Computers nearly a decade ago. In 2005, a journalist named Jeff Jarvis started a blog in which he painstakingly documented his ongoing customer service troubles with a lemon laptop he had purchased from Dell. At the time, Dell indeed had serious customer support issues. As a growing global business, Dell simply was not tuned into customer needs nor had the processes in place to genuinely empathize or act on the hardships being experienced by their customers. Using just his blog, Jarvis touched on a sore spot with many. Tired of being ignored, brushed off, and frustrated with overseas customer support call centers, embittered customers from many companies and industries cheered for Jarvis. Then, Dell’s mess turned into a nightmare when the New York Times picked up the story followed by Business Week. Seemingly overnight, Dell was square in the middle of a PR disaster. Stock prices plummeted. One unhappy customer derailed Dell’s reputation. Yet, a decade later, Dell Computers bounced back from its reputation catastrophe. It didn’t happen overnight. It took time, effort and patience. At least now, a Google search of the name Dell does not produce any listings related to the blog on the first few pages of the search results.
There are countless other reputation debacles that have turned around in time. Consider BP. In April 2010, an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and flooded the Gulf of Mexico with oil. The public watched video footage of oil-rimed beaches, oil-soaked sea life and greasy birds. They heard and read about the thousands of businesspeople and families whose livelihood was hurt by the spill. Even though initially the company badly botched their handling of the debacle, BP has since made great strides to redeem its reputation. Still, even now, a Google search of the name BP brings up three in-depth articles related to the Gulf oil spill on page one of Google. Clearly their work is not done, but then it’s only been four years since the disaster and the cleanup is not finished either. It will take a great deal more time, effort and patience for BP’s reputation to be redeemed, at least in the digital world.
Consider also the Tylenol cyanide poisoning incident. In September 1982, several people in the Chicago area died after consuming Extra-Strength Tylenol that was laced with cyanide. A person was eventually arrested for trying to extort money from the company, but an actual perpetrator was never convicted of the poisonings. However, as a result of the incident, Tylenol revolutionized safety standards, making tamper-proof caps standard. Some 30 years later, Tylenol remains a trusted brand. Clearly, the public can forgive and even forget reputation problems, and probably many younger people don’t even know about the Tylenol’s cyanide incident. Today, a Google search of the name Tylenol doesn’t generate any listings referencing the incident. That said, a search for Tylenol and poison or cyanide immediately generate many listings about the unsolved cases from over three decades ago… articles published long before the World Wide Web was even created in 1989 and well before the Google domain was registered in 1997.
Just like companies, individuals too can suffer reputation disasters. In fact, celebrities, sports legends, and politicians alike have endured reputation meltdowns after their behavior make headlines. But even people and companies who suffered devastating blows to their reputation have been able to bounce back in time. Time itself is one of the cures for a bad online reputation. Since search engines reward freshness, just allowing new stories to bury old ones is one of the best ways to start redeeming an online reputation… assuming that the reputation problem does not persist and continue to generate fresh digital content.
Next week, we will look at host of proactive steps a person or company can take that can help restore a damaged reputation in the digital realm.
Quote of the Week
“A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.” Joseph Hall
© 2014, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.
