As if any strategic marketer needed another reason for creating and maintaining a positive brand image, here’s a true story:

An industrial manufacturer far upstream recently found itself making headlines, but it had nothing to do with its PR campaign.  A former employee was arrested for a murder committed in 1982, more than 20 years before he had been hired by the manufacturer. The man had only been employed for about a year and had not worked for the company in several. (In fact, the facility where he had worked had been closed down for more than a year.) When arrested, the accused was four states away, where he had been living and working for at least the last 24 months.

This tenuous association nonetheless put the company in newspaper headlines and articles that then ended up online. Fortunately, a good brand image helped deflect the sudden peak in negative media mentions and the issue slipped into the noise of the world’s nonstop-media machine.

The point is, your company and your brand don’t exist in vacuum. The real world often intrudes into B2B-land, and there’s so many “reputation landmines” nobody could possible prepare for them all. The best thing you can do is establish and then maintain a solid company image with an ongoing PR program. It’s the only armor out there.

Related posts:

1. Advice from a Social Media Pro
2. Word of the Week – Brand Equity
3. Is “Green Marketing” for you?
4. Visuals are a shoe-in for PR targeted to new media outlets

---

About the author:

Brian Courtney is a Sr. Social Media & PR executive, bringing Schubert more than 15 years of corporate PR and editorial experience. Brian enjoys traveling to exotic locations, creative writing and spending time with his family.