Strategic Reputation Management by Amanda Coleman – book review

Amanda Coleman admits to having wrestled with the concept of reputation management throughout her career. ‘Is it really what good public relations is about or has the world moved on from the 1950s approach to promoting goods and services?’ she ponders in the opening pages of her new book Strategic Reputation Management. ‘And if PR is not about reputation management, what is it?’

Known to readers of this site as a regular contributor to Influence, Coleman is an authority in crisis management. She was head of corporate communications at Greater Manchester Police for almost two decades before founding her crisis comms consultancy in 2020. In this, her third book, Coleman relishes the opportunity to challenge many of the accepted views and definitions of reputation to explore what the term means today.

It’s a term that can be met with scepticism or fear of manipulation from those outside – ‘an attempt to present a positive image regardless of whether it matches the reality’.

She delves into the history of the subject – from Edward Bernays’ 1928 seminal book Propaganda to the growth of the internet less than a century later – before considering if the post-Covid, trust deficit era, the PR industry needs to change its approach to reputation management.

Challenges to reputation management

If communicators and leaders want everyone in an organisation to support its reputation, they will need to invest time and effort to help them recognise what that means and looks like. That means organisations identifying a range of measures to overcome the challenge of what’s meant by reputation in the first place.

Coleman’s experience of responding to huge crises (she led the police response to the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in 2017) and reputational attacks is evident through her command of language. She demonstrates how PR professionals can help clients work on their reputation long before there are negative headlines and a social media backlash to contend with. Cue: a helpful chapter on the challenges to effective reputation management.

The polarisation of brands

Topics are neatly broken down to provide insight into the journey that an organisation’s reputation could end up taking – good or bad. But the chapters also provide accessible boarding points for communication experts to jump in, learn and assess key issues, whether you’re trying to improve a reputation that’s under threat or attempting to rescue a bad reputation.

She considers how social media has contributed to the polarisation of brands as heroes or villains when problems emerge and how to identify a fatal or near-fatal blow to the business.

Many chapters end with compelling and contemporary case studies of organisations whose reputations were tarnished, including the CBI and P&O Ferries. Here Coleman gets to the heart of the issues. Rather than simply regurgitating a story that we think we already know she shares her expertise, explains why things went wrong and considers how situations could have been handled differently.

Purpose and value

She also shines a spotlight on brands that have developed positive reputations through purpose and values. When problems have emerged, they demonstrate a readiness to act, make the appropriate changes and show that they have learned from the incident.

Throughout the book are Coleman’s step by step guides to help communicators deal with the issues. Actions that PR professionals can take to boost a reputation, for example, include understanding the data, reviewing governance and stakeholder mapping, and creating a positive internal culture.

After all, if reputation management is about the whole of the business, brand or organisation then everyone needs to be aware of it and working to support it.

She considers the challenges – both internally and externally – to effective reputation management that arise when staff are disaffected, or when regulatory frameworks restrict what information is shared and when.

Rescuing a bad reputation

For communicators tasked with rescuing a business’s bad reputation, there’s advice on undertaking a severity assessment to understand the problems being faced and a checklist of 10 principles that are needed to turn a negative situation around.

Coleman doesn’t just outline potentially reputation damaging crisis situations but provides clear and valuable advice on how to deal with them.

There are of course those brands that can brush off challenges. Others are simply deemed toxic.

While toxic brands’ reputations can be turned around, those not wishing to attract constantly damaging media coverage might want to absorb Coleman’s chapter on ethics. Or unpack her toolkit for reputational management.

Strategic Reputation Management by Amanda Coleman will be published on Monday 3 November (Kogan Page, £29.99).