Building and Protecting Corporate Reputation

On Dec. 6^th afternoon, the eighth Citi-Fudan University Banking Course started in Room 204, Starr Building as usual. The Head of Corporation Affairs of Citi China Mr. Stephen Thomas was invited to give today’s lecture.

The topic of this lecture is Building and Protecting Corporate Reputation. At the first beginning Mr. Thomas introduced himself, and then the lecture started by the question “What is reputation”. It is much deeper than a particular logo or slogan or advertising campaign, and a strong reputation represents a promise that is a critical bond between and organization and its key customers. Mr. Thomas mentioned. A strong reputation supports and organization’s business objective. The importance of reputation is “If you lose dollars for the firm I will be understanding. If you lose reputations for the firm I will be ruthless.”

From the global environment view, the most trust industry is technology industry and then automotive, and the third is Telecommunications. And Fortune most admired companies in 2011 is Apple, Google, Berkshire Hathaway and Southwestern Airlines. He also list the best Chinese brands is China Mobile, Bank of China and that kind of large banks.

Mr. Thomas introduced the drivers of reputation, as he said it contains products and services, financial performance, talent innovation customers, social responsibility and changing nature of communications. Target audiences are increasingly by better informed more sophisticated and empowered. News is delivered 24/7 by global and vertically integrated organizations, and the news cycle never stops-operates. After that Mr. Thomas recommended the role of corporate affairs and Citi’s Mission and principles. Citi in China is expanding and deepening their network introducing new innovations to the market, expanding scope of business. Some key messages are growing and investing in china, helping Chinese companies and institutions, delivering innovation and best service to consumers and so on

From media relations view, Citi’s approaches to media relations are listening, relationship building, educating, interviews, events, press releases, thought leadership, message consistency and pushback. It shows that social media is becoming the mainstream.

In another way, with employees as brand ambassadors reputation is built from within, enlist employees to serve as brand ambassadors by creating a stronger bond through pride in the company. Citi china’s approaches to employee engagement are ensure constant flow of positive stories, reinforcing the progress of Citi china, foster understanding and support for mission statement.

Corporate citizenship is also an very important part of this topic. Mr. Thomas said “make a responsible and constructive impact in china through daily business activities and also out corporate citizenship program designed to support china’s development need in areas aligned to their own strengths” is Citi’s target. Their foundation funded program contains Current program and future direction. He set the program example of Sustainable Bamboo Enterprise to explain it.

Employee volunteerism, sponsorships and events: contribute to brand building, facilitate stronger client relationships, reflect values with which an organization wants to associate.

At the end of the speech, Mr. Thomas gave four important closing thoughts, they are:

-Don’t leave reputation matters to the PR people, it is a core responsibility of every executive;

-Reputation matters-without proper engagement with key stakeholders, business is not sustainable;

-Protecting reputation is equally important to building it, and harder;

-It is not about image actions are as important as words.

Written by: 周闽 2011 Asia MBA
Fudan MBA Program
Dec.6^th, 2011