Can You Hear Me
There was a time when corporate reputation was the exclusive preserve of the public affairs professional, with little involvement from the marketing department - but no more. Many companies now see reputation as a vital part of the overall `marketing mix', with the ability to increase the impact of marketing messages and consideration for their brands.
This is in part because people have become more knowledgeable and interested in the organisations that lie behind the brands they consume. Even in the global recession there is clear evidence that consumers still factor in CSR when purchasing a product or service.
Our research also indicates that advertising effectiveness, measured as advertising impact on the one hand and an organisation's rating on key product/service brand attributes on the other, is driven by the degree of trust that consumers assign to the organisations themselves. In other words, a company with a good reputation needs to spend less to break through to consumers with its marketing communications, and so has a higher "marketing efficiency". It's as if consumers screen out or dilute messages from organisations they have a question mark against in terms of corporate behaviour.
