1、中文 4030 字，2200单词，1.2万英文字符 标题： Corporate brand reputation and brand crisis management 原文： For some years, the what, why, and how of recognising and addressing brand crisis particularly corporate/organisational brand crisis has occupied my research attention (note to reader: “corporate” and “org
2、anisational” are used interchangeably). Numerous corporate and non-profit entities have provided public clinical experiences of confronting serious reputational crises. Examples over recent decades include Exxon (the Valdez oil spill incident), Union Carbide (the Bhopal explosion), Perrier (benzene
3、traces), Tylenol (deaths from tainted pills), the US Catholic Church (priest sex abuse), Martha Stewart OmniMedia (executive misbehaviour), Arthur Andersen (accounting scandals), the International Olympic Committee (bribery issues), and many others. All faced threats to their brands from deteriorati
4、on in consumer and business customer approval and from decline in public trust. While some were more product brand-rooted (e.g. Tylenol), all found their corporate brand affected, and efforts to rescue the brand were undertaken at the corporate level (e.g. Johnson and Johnson for Tylenol, marketed b
5、y J&J's McNeil Laboratories Unit). Thus these incidents provide a rich source of insight into the corporate brand. They illustrate a key dimension of corporate-level marketing. “Can we as an institution, have meaningful, positive and profitable bilateral on-going relationships with customers
6、 and other stakeholder groups and communities?”. That was a central question of an organisation's corporate-level marketing orientation posed by John Balmer and myself in our treatment of an integrated approach to marketing at the institutional level (Balmer and Greyser, 2006). We held (among ot
7、her points) that corporate marketing is indeed a boardroom and CEO concern. In reflecting on corporate identity and reputation in times of brand crisis, one recognises the importance of corporate-wide orientation and the responsibility of the CEO and company-wide managers. Sources of reputational tr
8、ouble Let me offer an anatomy of the kinds of reasons brands can be in reputational crisis, how to know that the situation is serious, and what steps companies can try to take to prevent or if necessary to overcome such crises. Reputational troubles can come in many forms, from a wide variety of cau
9、ses and from many publics. Some have been sudden, such as when seven people died in a single day from tainted Tylenol capsules, when traces of benzene were found in bottles of Perrier and when an explosion in a Union Carbide facility in India killed many hundreds of people. Others were the result of
10、 problems that festered over longer periods, such as the priest sex abuse scandal affecting many Catholic archdioceses in the US, the accounting scandal that eventually ruined the once-respectable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, or the bribery scandal over selection of host cities that tarnished
11、 the reputation of the International Olympic Committee. Some of the protest or concern comes from advocacy groups with a cause, some from disaffected consumers/customers, some from governmental/regulatory entities, and some from the general public. Organisations must recognise the “what” of the issu
12、e generating the reputational threats, as well as “who” the involved public(s) is/are. Here is a categorisation of different causes of corporate brand crises, with some examples and some brief explanations: 1. Product failure Tylenol, Perrier, Firestone (tires implicated as the cause of many deaths
13、in car accidents), the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, Intel's Pentium chip (flawed calculations), Peanut Corp. of America (salmonella). 2. Social responsibility gap Nike (non-US labour and questionable working conditions). 3. Corporate misbehaviour Arthur Andersen, Enron, Exxon (oil spill in
14、Alaska), Merck (alleged suppression of early clinical drug trials of Vioxx), Siemens (corporate corruption in multinational fraud and bribery), Hewlett-Packard (Chairman indicted for spying on board members via questionable investigative means), IOC/SLOC (scandals regarding bid cities). 4. Executive
15、 misbehaviour Martha Stewart, Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco). 5. Poor business results Polaroid (failure to adapt technologically), Circuit City (giant retailer which let go many of its most knowledgeable store staff), and many others particularly in 2008. 6. Spokesperson misbehaviour and controversy Kobe
16、Bryant (star NBA athlete and endorser of brands who was accused of rape). 7. Death of symbol of company Wendy's (fast food chain) founder and TV spokesperson Dave Thomas, the “face of the brand”. 8. Loss of public support Louis XVI of France (guillotined and monarchy fell), Edward VIII of Englan
17、d (forced to abdicate the British throne)； both lost their ability to be seen by their people as “a symbol of nationhood,” central to the “monarchic corporate brand” (Balmer et al., 2006). 9. Controversial ownership Venezuela and CITGO in the USA (vigorously anti-US Venezuelan president). Assessing
18、the seriousness of the situation What made some of these crises life-threatening to the organisations involved was that they affected what I term “the essence of the brand”, i.e. the distinctive attribute/characteristic most closely associated with the brand's meaning and success. When this occu
19、rs a company's marketplace position and its brand meaning are seriously challenged. If the essence of the brand is not central to the situation, the problem is more likely to be overcome, albeit still troublesome. Here are four key areas, with some brief comments, that organisations should examine to analyze an emerging (or emerged) issue that may threaten its brand's reputation: 1. The brand elements: o Brand's marketplace situation, e.g. market share or corporate favourability (prior to crisis). The weaker the situation, the more dangerous the problem.
