H2 Central CONFIDENTIAL

Agora Blog – Reputation Management in a

Mobile Culture

Client Representative: N/A

V1: May 12, 2015

EC&R: MD

Project Code: 000-07-008

Tel: 416.862.2800

Fax: 416.862.2900

36 Toronto Street, Suite 800

Toronto ON M5C 2C5

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Reputation Management in a Mobile Culture

A seismic media shift that places “digital printing presses” in everyone’s hands – wherever anyone is –

creates unprecedented communications challenges.

Before you finish reading this post, someone somewhere will have captured and transmitted a real or

perceived injustice or passionately advocated for a cause. If the message has traction, it may spread virally,

gaining momentum, credibility and attention. Depending on public interest, and whether the story has “legs,”

it may be validated by traditional media and reach a wider audience who become engaged publishers

themselves. A single contentious spark may lead to a global firestorm.

All of this may happen simultaneously while sender and receiver are in transit, connected by mobile devices.

Neither time nor space, nor language is a barrier. And when the narrative is negative and focuses on a

specific organization, everyone associated with it may be within the crosshairs of countless online snipers.

Welcome to the challenge of reputation management in the Twitter era.

As Andy Warhol trenchantly observed: “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The

much-repeated aphorism has proven prescient. However, social media have reduced time in the spotlight to

15 seconds, 1.5 seconds or sometimes just .15 seconds. And, intriguingly, Warhol only considered the

upside, “famous,” not its evil sibling: infamous.

In the distant past, those subject to harsh public criticism had fewer worries. Corrupt New York politician,

William M. Tweed, was indifferent to what was written about him. But he understood the impact of biting

cartoons by his nemesis, Thomas Nast: “Stop them damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers

say about me. My constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures!”

It did not go well for Tweed. Nast’s pictures hounded him while in power and identified him when on the lam.

Today, the endless stream of always-on multimedia from a hand-held near you can do much more. Not only

does everyone have access to digital publishing, they have it while on the run.

Social media tools accessible via mobile devices change the game for communications and by extension,

reputation management. They accelerate the diffusion of critical comment (that can lead to infamy) and

force organizations experiencing social displeasure to respond swiftly. However, those organizations may be

pleading their case to an information-fatigued audience consuming content between here and there that can

absorb only impressions, at best.

Presenting a defence exclusively by formally sharing information through traditional media conduits to

counter unfavourable perceptions cannot possibly be effective when audiences are fragmented by a

multiplicity of channels, forever distracted and constantly in motion.

In an original infographic and corresponding white paper, H2 Central explored the significance of a mobile

digital communications culture. What those vehicles did not investigate are the deep implications of this

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Tel: 416.862.2800

Fax: 416.862.2900

36 Toronto Street, Suite 800,

Toronto ON M5C 2C5

shift for reputation management. However, prudent organizations seeking to nurture their reputations must

consider mobile communications in their planning, strategy and issues response protocols.

Because in our peripatetic digital culture, reputation management isn’t what it used to be.

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