In this Founding Fuel Live, a panel consisting of a seasoned CEO and a global communication chief dissect the evolving nature of corporate reputation in an era dominated by digital platforms, AI, and social media-driven crises. The discussion was triggered by recent high-profile corporate fiascos like the one at L&T, but expanded into a broader exploration of crisis management, trust-building, and stakeholder engagement.
The stellar panel included (also read the Spotlight hyperlinked against each of them, for insights on the lessons and wisdom they carry close)
- Sabia Schwarzer - Global communications strategist with Allianz. Merck in Europe and now at IPH in NYC. Led global communications, brand, corporate affairs and sustainability in highly regulated environments. (Read the Spotlight on Sabia)
- Aditya Ghosh - Former president of IndiGo Airlines, now founder at Homage, co-founder at Akasa Air and board member at OYO and Green Cell Mobility. (Read the Spotlight on Aditya)
- Vijay Bhat - The anchor of this session. He is a leadership coach and advertising stalwart with decades of experience in corporate strategy, brand management, crisis management, and reputation-building. (Read the Spotlight on Vijay)
18 Takeaways from the Discussion
(Read Time: 7 minutes)
Public perception and corporate reputation in a digital world
- Digital platforms can build and destroy reputation because of the speed of transmission and because controlling the narrative is harder.
1. Distinguish signal from noise; proactively engage with your frontline colleagues
“I've never done a customer survey in my life. But I've done hundreds of employee surveys and thousands of interactions with colleagues.” - Aditya Ghosh
“One of David Ogilvie's famous quotes is that [leaders should have] big ears rather than big mouths.” - Vijay Bhat
- You need to start talking with and listening very carefully to frontline colleagues. Before a crisis bubbles up all the way to the CEO, and risks the reputation of the business, there are early warning signals from customers, vendors, business partners, and external stakeholders such as policymakers and regulators.
- If there’s a competitive crisis, that you are fast becoming irrelevant in the life of the consumer, chances are your feet on the street are beginning to see your competition already working actively, being able to close deals better than you, and so on.
2. The human touch matters in managing public perceptions and de-escalating a grievance.
“It's become so much easier to complain in a public forum. The key to managing that is being very fast and engaging on a personal level.” - Sabia Schwarzer
- These days a lot of bots are involved, and most people can tell if it's standardized answers, and that frustrates them if they’re really aggrieved about something.
- Very quickly take the conversation offline—that really helps to de-escalate.
3. Have a complaint fact-check and crisis management SOP in place
“In the age of misinformation and criminal activity [on social media], it's extremely important to know who are the people to call at Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, who can shut off things and control it. Who are the officials in your city who are involved in [policing] cybercrime.” - Sabia Schwarzer
- A dramatic case at Allianz involved a woman accusing an official of paedophilia. They checked the evidence, called the cybercrime unit. It turned out to be a Nigerian ring, using manipulated pictures to extort money from corporations.
- You have to act extremely fast to take the manipulated pictures off the net ASAP.
“Just because I have big ears and I'm going to listen to everything and start believing in it, it can lead to a lot of misinformation, rumour mongering…
I do not give any credence to anonymous emails. I had to spend many years convincing my colleagues to write to me from their official email ID and that they will not be treated unfairly. Anonymous can be anybody—it could be someone sitting in a competitor's office.” - Aditya Ghosh
The generational gap between CEOs/CXOs, and employees and consumers who are digital natives
4. Have circular conversations—a discourse—that one can learn from, rather than trying to convince someone that your opinion is superior.
“Today, reputation and brands are co-created by customers and employees… Let go of the big C word—Control…
You are not sending a message—there’s no hierarchy of messages. My message is not more important than yours. It's a circular one. And you learn from it. So, you're listening, and you are learning instead of [shutting down] a different opinion….
An active conflict would be actually great. Because you're engaging with the other person's opinion, earnestly.” - Sabia Schwarzer
- You can shout as loud as you can with many dollars behind it, and hope that it lands. Your reputation has never been your own. It is what others think about you.
- Try to understand where the other party stands.
- Learn to relate to each other. Start by listening.
5. Be open to the way people are communicating with you. Leadership needs to talk and listen in the same mode and tonality that the information has come in.
“People are telling us things, but we are saying no, I want you to fill this survey, I want you to send me this email. I will have a once a quarter skip level meeting with you, and I want you to tell me then, don't tell me now.” - Aditya Ghosh
6. You can influence the narrative by telling people who you are and what you are trying to do
“[IndiGo was the first airline to ask customers to collect trash.] We also said why. And we told every colleague why. And how it helps to keep the aircraft clean and reduce turn time… There is a way to nudge that behaviour.” - Aditya Ghosh
Building trust and authenticity in a world of curated online personas
7. You don't communicate authenticity; you show it through your actions.
“It starts with courage. That means you put the difficult questions surrounding your organisation that you haven’t solved, and that you are grappling with out there….
It's about owning the tension and the unsolved problem. And having people participate in it versus saying I've got this figured out, and I'm going to whip everybody into shape…. You would be surprised how many of your stakeholders would come to your help” - Sabia Schwarzer
- What we see in the corporate world is perfect corporations with happy employees, happy customers, and everything is going well. People inside the organisation know, and customers know that that's not entirely true.
- When you name an issue or a problem that you're trying to solve, it shows a lot of self-confidence.
- Example: The return to office policy. Why not say what you're worried about as a CEO? You can say, I'm worried about the competition, that we need to up our productivity.
- You are not saying I have a solution. Because then people will disagree with you, maybe, or say, you're old school.
- Leaders who were transparent, authentic, but most importantly empathetic, are the ones who led their teams and their businesses through this unprecedented crisis [the Covid pandemic].
8. Reliability or consistency is one of the pillars great brands are built on.
“Reliability is the world’s best loyalty program.” – Aditya Ghosh
- As time goes by, people will see that what you are saying, what you're doing is who you really are.
- If your product or service is not authentic, it does not address a need of the consumer, then no amount of advertising and marketing can help you sustain success.
9. Put the bad news out there first.
“Every year I would do this kind of State of the Union address to all my colleagues. That's the only time that I would get nervous. Because I knew that if I exaggerated by one inch, or hid something by one cm, somebody in the audience would know that’s not true, he’s lying. And your reputation will go off like that….
In a consumer facing business like the airline or hotels business, we get it wrong every once in a while. And we get it really badly wrong when we lie to our customers.” - Aditya Ghosh
10. Have the humility to say I don’t know.
“I was once co-facilitating a McKinsey leadership programme. There was a session where we were training very senior McKinsey leaders to be able to say ‘I don't know’ with a smile.
Have the genuine humility to say, ‘I don't know. This is the problem I'm grappling with. And I'm interested in gathering the wisdom of the room to come up with a solution.’ That’s probably the best signal of authenticity that we can give.” - Vijay Bhat
11. Every new business starts off with a trust deficit. You have to build with that authenticity and consistency to start creating that bridge.
Managing a crisis
12. Every crisis is an opportunity to build trust, to rise above the normal.
“You get to prove to people, your customers, your colleagues, your partners, to the world, that I'm not just another company. I will react to this differently.” - Aditya Ghosh
- The way the employees at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai responded on the night of 26th November—no amount of advertising could have built the reputation of the Tatas as that one incident did.
- I had colleagues inside the Taj. My last call was picked up at well past midnight, and this lady told me, ‘I’ve made a note of your friends, we'll try to get to that person.’
13. Every crisis is a slow leak.
“You have to be able to smell the gas leaking before the house blows up.” - Aditya Ghosh
- [If you’ve built trust, and are listening] your colleagues, your customers, will have the confidence to come up to you and say, you might be missing this because this is a blind spot.
14. You don’t deal with a crisis alone. You lean on values and community.
“Practicing crisis [management drills] is extremely important.” - Sabia Schwarzer
- Allianz has a Standing Crisis Committee, with the head of the committee making the decisions in a crisis. This person is an independent person, and not from the board. There are crisis management drills.
15. In a crisis, whether you invested in your employees or not will really become evident.
“When you're sewing something and the seams are not properly done, if there’s a little pressure, it’s going to rip.” - Sabia Schwarzer
- You need everybody thinking way above and beyond their assigned role, their assigned circles of influence.
- They need to be thinking in a way that you taught them to with the values you put first. And that only comes if you've invested properly, and you have shown in your day to day what you stand for.
- Transparency: Go out first with whatever news you have. Even if you don’t know the full picture, go out with bad news.
16. The best ambassadors who are the most authentic and believable people today are employees and customers. It's not the CEOs, or even journalists or reporters.
- You will need to lean on the community—which includes employees—that you have cultivated first. Without a community that reaches into several areas and aspects of your stakeholder groups, you will not be able to manage a crisis.
17. Outrage cannot be met with facts and reasoning.
“Outrage is such a personal emotion. As a corporate, it’s very hard to react to that, because outrage cannot be met with facts with reasoning. It's an emotion. It needs to be on a personal level. I still haven't found the formula to deal with outrage.” - Sabia Schwarzer
- Our civic dialogue is lost—where we listen to each other. That’s an antidote to outrage.
18. [To avoid actions being interpreted as greenwashing] Pick one thing as a company that you want to get right instead of 10 things. If you take one thing and you're consistent with that, it's easier to achieve.
