Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset.
It was a simple decision made by a low-ranking employee: When rescue workers at the nearby site of the World Trade Center disaster sought bottled water from a Starbucks outlet, they complained an employee overcharged them. In a mater of hours the media had picked up the story and Starbucks' carefully cultivated reputation was instantly besmirched.
This is just one of the numerous tales of corporate woe that veteran 'Wall Street Journal' staff writer Ronald L Alsop covers about a vital - and increasingly important - element of doing business. More than 40 percent of all companies claim they have a system for measuring reputation, but companies in all industries - from Polaroid to Procter & Gamble to Philip Morris - clearly have much to learn.
Readers are shown how to identify the most likely threats to their companies' images, how to use the Internet as a tool to control perceptions, how to strike the best compromise between gratuitous publicity and getting the word out about their good deeds, and much more.
The result is a book ideal not only for business executives, but also for anyone eager to know more about the companies they deal with on a daily basis.
