Can managing seven layers of reputation help marketers build better reputations?

In this interview the CIM spoke to Brian Doidge, CIM South West chair about the seven layers of reputation and how these layers can help marketers build on reputational credits.

How can marketers create a positive reputation?
As professional marketers we all have a set of moral principles, which govern our behaviour and the way we generally conduct ourselves, both professionally and privately. This usually acts as the very platform upon which our reputation is constructed. As professionals, we inevitably take great pride in having the qualities that society would readily connect, with those who are clearly both competent and committed.

What practical steps can you give marketers wanting to build and protect their reputation?
Ensuring that what we do is manifestly legal, decent and honest has been a core aspect of our collective conscious for decades. The six-layer model below, will help to frame our activities, but it should also challenge our own perceptions of the relative importance of the individual components of our reputation.

The seven layers of reputation management:

• Approach: Conducting ourselves in a way that best matches that which would be generally accepted as professional, is a basic prerequisite for getting into the conversation at all. Treating people with respect, fulfilling our obligations and avoiding conflicts of interest for example, will all add value.  Empathy, honesty, truthfulness and being trustworthy, along with a supportive disposition, will add value too.  Being adaptable and alert also help. Put people at the heart of what you do and before too long people will tend to put you there too.

• Attainment: Asking if we have achieved something of significance is always going to turn out to be a very sobering question. Is there actually something that we have worked very hard to achieve, particularly a qualification, which we feel is an obvious cause for deserved celebration? It could however, turn out to be, that this is the very accomplishment, which will also act as the platform that we initially build our reputation upon. CIM has a smart and flexible range of qualifications from level three through to level seven that can assist you in this endeavour, if you need to meet your attainment needs. Our Graduate Gateway universities and new recognition programme ensure that more people studying marketing and related disciplines can guarantee their course or qualification meets CIM’s respected industry standards. Businesses can also use the recognition programme to upskill staff and ensure internal training aligns to industry best-in-class.

• Achievement: Qualities like having a willingness to go the extra mile, demonstrating resilience and being able to operate in an inevitably ambiguous environment for example, will help. However, it is your readiness to volunteer and to stretch and challenge yourself that will be the basis for obtaining these reputational credits.

• Acknowledgement: Do we accept that the best way to gain recognition, is to be recognised, by someone who is recognised? Testimonials and endorsements are a long-standing feature of business, of course. However, knowing how to use this, to provide the acceptance of our positive reputation, will be key too.

• Affiliation: We seem to readily accept the concept of guilty by association but seem to miss the point that we can also turn this principle on its head. Who are the other professionals that you are networking with and what is their status? Is your relationship with them a source of great pride and something that adds to your own standing? Or is it something of a reputational risk? Is it a risk that you are comfortable with? How are you monitoring and enhancing this layer of reputation? Growing your professional network is important and can clearly add value to your reputational credits.

• Announcement: Asking marketing professionals not to carry out promotional activity, will always have a low likelihood of proceeding without fuss. So, it is important that we ensure that you have a clear message, which warrants publicity. Try not to follow the crowd and instead come up with your own thoughts and opinions.

• Antidote: Once you become aware of any reputational impurity manifesting, knowing how to respond, will become a critical factor. An obvious objective here, will be to ensure that you retain the reputational credits that you have worked tirelessly to bank. If you did get something wrong, apologise and make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

We all have a reputation, people often construct it subconsciously on our behalf.  We can influence it, we can consider it but in the end we will need to work on it too. Can look like a big ask, but do you have a reasonable alternative? We would be delighted to hear from you.