McKinsey & Company Agrees With Me

I was delighted to discover today that McKinsey & Company agrees with me about the reputation challenges facing companies globally and the new approaches needed to meet those challenges.

Okay, maybe I am not given credit anywhere in the McKinsey Quarterly article called Rebuilding corporate reputations (registration required). Yes, I know others have been saying the same thing for a number of years. And native humility prevents me from claiming anything more about my contribution to these discussions among public affairs specialists. But it was satisfying nonetheless to read that the consultants in McKinsey & Company's strategy practice ALSO agree there are three changes profoundly altering the reputation management landscape:

  "Those changes include the growing importance of Web-based participatory media, the increasing significance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other third parties, and declining trust in advertising."

Add to this the recognition in the report that traditional media relations strategies alone are simply inadequate to deal with dispersed opinion shaping never mind stakeholder expectations for participation, dialogue and transparency, and you have the skeleton of most of what many of us who advise companies on reputation management have been clamoring about for a number of years.

Perhaps now that McKinsey & Company has said it senior executives will be more disposed to our strategies.

Comments

[Paul Seaman]

Some of the remarks about PR's need to reform in McKinsey Quarterly journal (Rebuilding corporate reputations) are OK if hackneyed. But the wider thesis is very shaky. Here’s why:

http://paulseaman.eu/2009/06/mckinsey-spins-pr-badly-ouch/