Reputation Defending: be ready to protect the Brand Reputation…

The advent of internet with its website, blog, forum, socials, has completely changed the way we publicly communicate and share opinions.

Here an example with a website that deals with phones, where everyone can convey his feeling and opinion, through public comments. In this way promoting or failing a product by altering the feelings of others, undermining the potential purchase…As you can figure out, this can be done in the context of the right. In this case, we have a dissatisfied customer that expresses his legitimate ideas about a product that he does not like. Unfortunately this can happen also in the context of premeditation.

Now let’s imagine that a Company would pay some influencers (hence “influencer marketing”), to bury the negative reviews and comments to a competitor considered a “dangerous competitor” on the market.
Does it seem impossible? Absolutely not: it is one of the most common practices from the late 90’s, by the advent of technical forums and thematic portals.

There has been a long time, almost 15 years, when there were no rules or laws to protect the image and online reputation. That means that what was happening online, in the case described above, was completely in a “no man’s land”. No respect, no control.

How much worse, this was the ideal situation for spreading sites promoting false news. Fake news are a reality, and we should all work together to fight back this plague.

The only possible way, when it is about news, it is check the origin of the news.

A good practice is to check if over that website there are names of journalists or writers, if these guys are existing people. Another practice is to check if the website is a registered magazine or not.

It is obvious that this is not a practice within the reach of the average web user. For this reason these sites have often achieved their goals, which are mainly to make sure that many innocent users spontaneously share the fake news in their channels.

 

Fake news have used in many occasion to try to damage Brand Image of unfortunate: from political parties, to public figures, to private business..

Meanwhile, the laws on the protection of the image online, which concern cyber security and cyber crimes, have been evolved a lot.
It is good that those who practice these improprieties marketing actions, look well from keeping on!

Let me be clear: today the unfair practice of the negative reviews calculated (paid), if proven, is 100% punishable by law under a clear attempt to damage Company or individual image in the most of the countries. Also the “personal opinion” if expressed using words that attack the Company image (vulgarity, insinuations etc). can be persecuted as a cyber crime of defamation.

If you look for information about plans about online reputation management, fell free to contact me.

In order to provide always the best advice and the best solutions, I work very close to Legal experts about online reputation and Intellectual property. An IT Security expert is always part of my strategic team when it is time to work on a Brand strategy.
I think super positive. But the Plan B about online defence is always black on white….

Brand Image and Brand Reputation: why brand image has become so important to increase the sales and as added value of any business.

BRAND IMAGE, represents the set of feelings that the image of your business, raises at the eyes of the consumer.

A sort of collection of information that identify you to the user’s eyes and that our brain processes and gives us in form of sensations, such as: “beautiful”, “nice”, “that’s what I look for”, “I do not care”…
To simplify the concept I make an example: the mark of “FERRARI” raises ideas of power, elegance, the car of the pipe dream. The mark of “FIAT” certainly guarantees a good car and arouses feelings less fanciful but practical.

Each consumer choice is dictated primarily by the sight sensations received by the image of the product, or by the way it is promoted. Therefore it is crucial for a company, make it immediately attractive and competitive thanks to a proper study of its brand image.

Even if the word brand means in itself logo or mark, Brand Image is not absolutely only a “concept” or something “esoteric” merely represented by a beautiful logo…

Brand image It is a very important set of business elements and sensations that takes form through various communication and marketing tools and activities and – last but not least – the general Brand Reputation.
If the business has not a strong reputation, building a powerful Brand Image will be almost impossible or simply useless!

Therefore, Brand Image in the widest meaning of it, comes from a strategic combination of Brand Identity (tools) and Brand Reputation (opinions and sensations already expressed by users and sector media).

Brand Reputation: much before to start to work about visual proposal or marketing strategies, we should take a very close look at it!

We should never forget about the Brand Reputation. It should be the first thing that we check out about a business before to start to work on Brand Image..

Before to create design projects or before to think about the digital content strategy we should investigate by researching the answers of so many questions: Does this business own a strong Brand Reputation? In which areas? On the basis of what? What does the user/consumer think about the service or products released by this business? What do think the employees and manpower working for them? Do the existing online and offline opinions  represent the real target of the Company? This consumers target, was already reached or not yet? And so on…

If you think about it for a moment, in everything that we buy during our day living, we realize that we trust certain brands, we always do the shopping in the same supermarket, food taken individually are precisely the same brand etc.. The examples also extend to material goods: auto, moto, appliances. How many of you use only MAC or PC? And so on…

This is the effect of Brand Image on consumers. It would have to say that we are “victims” (as consumers) of the Brands. But in term of marketing success, this is precisely what a Company must obtain from a massive and effective modern marketing campaign (digital marketing and conventional marketing where needed).

At a certain point, the marketing campaign will end, but the Brand Image will stay!
The consumer should be loyal and continuously stimulated.
He should feel satisfied after giving confidence to purchase a product.

Sure The BRAND IMAGE must represent all the good that is in the Company name.

All best marketing experts agree to say that the Era of fake clicks and fake images is gone. The buyer is stimulated to buy from a made up of sensations. Many little things that are closely related to positive emotional stimuli.

This is why the Brand Image has become so important to the sale.

In the purchase journey, the decision of buying is given by psychic factors, which the marketer working for the brand should be able to positively stimulated with right information and communication techniques well targeted.

The speed of information exchange is very high and compared to the whole world, there are no longer any barriers that enclose a single product in its own country.
The Modern Companies that want to record a real increase of their revenues, should be adequately available with their brand and product online.
We realize that it is a radical change for businesses that have a significant historic built on direct relationships, handshakes and face-to-face relationships. But without these above operations, and this new awareness, those businesses are bound to a closed market without real possibilities of expansion…

The new frontier of electronic commerce, offers the opportunity to make known a brand around the world. It would be a shame and a waste of potential, do not take advantage of this important communication tool.