THE ROLE OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AND PR IN THE COMPANY’S REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

Научный руководитель:

профессор, доктор педагогических наук,

доцент кафедры иностранных языков №1

Российского экономического университета им. Г. В. Плеханова

Фоминых Наталья Юрьевна

Scientific adviser:

professor, doctor of pedagogical sciences,

associate professor of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​№1 of

Plekhanov Russian University of Economics

Fominykh Nataliia Y.

Nowadays there are many companies operating on different markets. Some of the companies are successful but others are not. Of course there could be a range of reasons for the failure. Nevertheless, there is one thing which is crucially important for the success. And the thing is a good reputation. For instance, Ludmila Salnikova, a Russian scientist, claims that corporate reputation is a key intangible asset of any company.

Because of that companies are looking for the ways to manage their reputation. As for any management processes there could be a range of tools to do it. But, first of all, could really reputation be managed?

Some academics believe that reputation can be managed, while others

claim it cannot. It is connected with the opinion that reputation management is mostly needed while crises are coming so it is more important to speak about crisis management. Despite this more and more managers and researchers start to believe that reputation could be mismanaged and ruined by the company itself. So nowadays it is difficult to deny the idea of reputation management.

According to The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Reputation the corporate reputation is a collective assessment of a company’s attractiveness to a specific group of stakeholders relative to a reference group of companies with which the company competes for resources.[1] This definition outlines the idea that reputation is primarily a number of different opinions about the company. And this point of view is hardly could be argued.

John Doorley and Helio Fred Garcia, the authors of the book “Reputation management. The key to successful public relations and corporate communication”, outline that reputation could be presented as a sum of images of the company. The images contain performance, behavior and communications.[2] Here comes up the idea that communications are connected with the reputation of a company.

Tony Langham, the author of the book “Reputation Management: The Future of Corporate Communications and Public Relations” shares the opinion of John Doorley and Helio Fred Garcia. He also claims that the communication processes and reputation management cannot be divided.

Moreover, some scientists have an opinion that the main aim of any communication of a company is to build a good reputation. For example, the idea is presented in the article “Good reputation is a factor of increasing prestige of a company” written by Zotova Irina in 2005.

But what can be done to build good reputation with communication tools and PR? Firstly, according to Tony Langham, reputation is based on the customer’s trust. Very effective tool in this case is PR. According to Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, public relation means ‘building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favourable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavourable rumors, stories and events’ People tend to trust more to messages of the company translated by PR because it is not paid. Moreover, it is less irritating than advertising. PR could be an effective tool of reputation management.

Another tool of marketing communications is direct marketing. Of course this tool is also possible to use in case of reputation management. Here the company has an opportunity to communicate with a particular person, not with a whole segment. Because of this the value of the communication act could increase.

An example of good communication which has led to an improvement of reputation could be advertising campaign by Actimel. The campaign “Adventures of Italians in Russia” were very helpful in case of reputation management. People became more likely to believe that the brand’s promises are true and the product is really useful.

Nevertheless, advertising also can influence on the reputation of the company. There are many examples of bad, intolerant advertising which has led to destructive aftermaths. One of the latest examples is advertising campaign of Reebok. Their global campaign under the headline “#bemorehuman” was adapted in Russia with a slogan “change a male endorsement needle to sitting on a male face”. This communication was very risky and a lot of people were not inspired by it. Despite the fact that the company claimed their sales has grown, the reputation of the company was spoiled.

To sum up, the role of marketing communication and PR in reputation management is really great. The marketing communications are seemed to be a huge window. And there the external audience could see what the company is doing and is it wrong or right from their point of view.

1. The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Reputation. Edited by Timothy G. Pollock and Michael L. Barnett. Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition (May 13, 2014), 502 p.
2. Reputation management. The key to successful public relations and corporate communication. John Doorley and Helio Fred Garcia. Routledge; 3rd edition (February 25, 2015), 442 p.
3. Зотова Ирина Васильевна Хорошая репутация – фактор, повышающий престиж компании // Акмеология. 2005. №1. URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/horoshaya-reputatsiya-faktor-povyshayuschiy-prestizh-kompanii (дата обращения: 21.03.2021)

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