SALİM KADIBEŞEGİL

Preface to 10th edition of Reputation management

In the years following the first edition of the book, much has happened in the world that has directly affected all areas of the discipline of communication. Of course, we must first put the Wall Street Global Financial Crisis of 2008 at the beginning of these. This phenomenon, which has been gnawing at humanity and the fundamental values of the planet for more than a hundred years in the temple of capitalism, was raising the “flag of surrender” as the US government partnered with the bankrupt banks with the people’s money. His funeral was lifted in August 2019 when Business Roundtable, one of the world’s most powerful lobbies, comprised of the CEOs of 200 companies that are the main players of capitalism, issued a statement that they were “changing the raison d’être of companies.” In summary, this statement emphasized that the prescription that companies have defined as creating “value for their shareholders”, that is, making money, as the raison d’être of companies for more than a hundred years was wrong. Instead, they explained that they would prioritize creating value primarily for their customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders such as the local people in the places where they manufacture. Thus, we can say that a system that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then its main enemy, capitalism, remained under the walls that collapsed on Wall Street.

In fact, everyone had given up hope in capitalism and was dressing the cancer patient with different concepts such as “social capitalism” and “stakeholder capitalism”. But it was not in anyone’s interest to touch the ethical and fair values at the core of the work, such as responsibility, transparency and accountability, which the logic of capitalism swept under the rug.

However, in a world where we sat on the lap of Instagram, capitalism did not care about anyone. Only the uncertainty about what to “replace” began to change the agendas as a global stir touched us everywhere in daily life with the understanding that the climate crisis was entering the house from the doorstep.

What happened in the first quarter of the century shows that we are traveling in a different life than before.

What Happened with the Headlines?

The fact that big stores such as Sears, Toys ‘R Us, which are icons of consumer culture in the USA, which can be considered the temple of capitalism, have gone bankrupt.

Penalties that could lead to bankruptcy for some companies that no one would dare to touch, such as Purdue Pharmaceuticals and Monsanto (Monsanto was sold to Bayer and escaped bankruptcy, but this time Bayer is brooding), Johnson & Johnson is seeking reconciliation, General Electric is trying to get out of the spiral of accounting scandal…

The European Union, which started to be solved by Brexit, is also trying to solve the problem of Poland and Hungary, which cannot adapt to the values of the community.

In the technology world, the issue of stealing personal data is never missing in the agenda managed by social media, and of course Facebook is leading the way in this regard…

The fact that terrorist organizations, ISIS and social media, especially YouTube, are the focus of their inhumane projects have not gone unnoticed.

But in any case, the most notable note to be left in history must be that important social media environments suspended the accounts of US President Donald Trump.

In the world of civil society, the #metoo movement has shown that the “untouchable” can be touched…

But in the anti-apartheid demonstrations that began with the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in the United States, no one could have imagined that those whose statues were once erected because they were so respectable would end up being dumped in the trash with their statues.

Nike’s confident use of Colin Coepernick, who was forever suspended from the American Football League for his stance against racial discrimination, as the face of advertising deserved a privileged page in the history of brands.

Another similar bold outburst came from Ben & Jerry, who decided to halt sales and production in the occupied Palestinian territories because he did not see Israeli policies in that area as in line with his values.

On the political scene, names such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the USA and Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, who took different stances and gave hope for the future, began to make their mark.

But the fact that rovers began to roam Mars on the one hand, and on the other hand, the fact that different entrepreneurs were issuing tickets to space travel with their own brands could not make us forget what happened on Wall Street in 2008. Life could not recover.

Is the U.S. Running Out?

Developments in the United States continue to occupy the whole world. The fact that a country, which is the cradle of science and technology, is the scene of successive events and developments that will destroy its reputation is reflected to us with the fact that everyone has dozens of lessons to learn from it.

For example; The ridiculous situation of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it has resorted to armed “remedies” by claiming to bring democracy, in the face of its claim to be “the most developed country in the world” has been glued to the reputation of the United States as a stain that no detergent can remove. Especially the images of Afghans occupying the left and right wings of the US plane that took off from Afghanistan airport have become a legacy for future generations, which they have overshadowed even the images of the Saigon evacuation in the 1970s related to the country’s reputation. But we need to make a special note of January 6, 2020. The U.S. Congress is raided! The supporters of President Trump, who did not accept the defeat in the elections, broke down the doors and windows with guns and flags in their hands and occupied the US Congress building while there was a unity inside. This grave incident, which took place in a country that is claimed to be the cradle of democracy, has also lost its credibility among the concepts of “Democracy and the USA”.

In my 2012 book The Game Over, I shared a quote that the United States could fall apart in the 2020s. We cannot ignore the fact that American society is being divided in such a way that it cannot easily recover, especially with the imposition of Trump’s leadership approach. We are watching this sharp divergence not only on the streets, but also in the public bureaucracy, the security forces and the institutions responsible for ensuring the security of the society in the media environments.

We are burning, we are drowning, I think we are perishing!

On the other hand, the issue of sustainability has suddenly become the backbone of company and brand strategies. Climate crisis managers in companies have started to open up positions. On the one hand, issues such as ecological environment, nature, water, waste; drought, hunger, poverty, injustice in income distribution on the other hand; issues such as racial discrimination, mass migration and refugees, violence against women, violations of children’s rights have begun to gather under the umbrella of our forgotten “values” with the emergence of nation states elsewhere.

Of course, during the period of empires, human beings faced these problems and paid a great price. But there was a difference; The main indicator of the war of powers was focused on territorial gains. The main motivation of moving the influence of companies and brands on the governments of countries along with nation states can be defined as the dominance of an understanding that the basic values of life, especially human rights, are bonded to money.

Especially after the 1929 crisis, the “consumer society“, which was the focus of brand, public relations, advertising and marketing disciplines,  bore fruit in the 2000s and opened the flag of rebellion by saying “our planet can no longer bear this burden”.

In fact, the day will come when humanity will thank the coronavirus. The epidemic, which brought the meaninglessness of geographical borders and the helplessness of nation states in the face of this epidemic to the stage of history, necessitated a “life bound by other rules” that would last for many years! A real future fiction will be made in which it is not clear how the treatment will be, where the debates about the protection of the developed vaccines continue, where the scientific world makes different but dangerous sounds about their variants, and how realistic will this fiction be?

On the other hand, initiatives such as “Sustainable Human Development”, “Global Compact” and “Millennium Goals”, which the United Nations tried to put on the agenda intensively in the 1990s and 2000s, were not perceived beyond being a simple “bureaucratic process” in the world of brands and companies  . In a world where not signing the Kyoto Convention  is considered a “skill”, the withdrawal of the signature from the Paris agreement, which was also signed, was presented to the public as a victory for politics. It should also be kept aside how Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, of which it gained great prestige because it was the first signatory, has an impact on the country’s reputation.

But…

Humanity is now in the last corner. There are non-governmental organizations that have the courage to face the reality of the climate crisis and act on a global scale in the face of the calculations of the USA, China, Japan, Russia and India to make all humanity pay for the carbon emissions they have caused, especially during the last hundred years.

The return to the basic values of humanity reminded of the reality of the climate crisis and the fact that the philosophy of reputation represented by these values is the future strategy of companies and brands, and that the regulatory institutions acting on behalf of the public come on the stage as the auditors of these values, may carry us promising clues for future generations. In other words, it is necessary to look at two basic inputs to improve reputation management performance; The first is not to watch the climate crisis from the bench, to be involved in the game, to be active, to be an example… The other is to do it “sincerely”!

In fact, there were those who hoped that the mistakes of the past could be corrected with the skills of artificial intelligence. At least we would be able to capture rising values such as fairness and ethics, transparency! However, the fact that states have transformed the whole world into successive and successive societies in order to protect and protect themselves has left expectations about artificial intelligence in our course. Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have exposed the immorality of the dirty laundry of those who govern us. Of course, there was no reputation in them. But justice, which in 2008 left millions homeless, barred, unemployed, and found no fault in the executives of the investment banks that went bankrupt and withdrew from the scene, for some reason did not hesitate to covet the reputations of Snowden and Assange!

The fact that the French cement company Lafarge made financial contributions to ISIS, which is active in Syria, where the civil war was intense, to leave itself alone, resulted in the disadvantage of the company in the French courts entered our agenda as another example of the debates at different layers of the issue of corporate reputation. But even more ominously, the court’s decision was that the French government was aware of all this.

What about Carlos Ghosn? The fact that the legendary CEO, the inventor of the Renault-Nissan merger, was arrested in Japan for allegedly using company facilities for his own private interests and fled to Beirut via Istanbul on a private plane in a double bass box is not something that will be easily forgotten in the reputation management agenda. However, the books he wrote, such as business management and marketing, were taught as textbooks not only in French but also in the universities of many countries. So Ghosn’s reputation was at its peak! He was hosted as the chief guest of the heads of state. Where was all the gains he carried in his pocket as a reputation when he risked the journey in a double bass box?

But as one of the most notable developments, we need to put blockchain and crypto money in a privileged place.  Because it threatens the reputations of central banks. Policies based on securing the interests of rich countries in the world economy by printing money for free are cornered by crypto coins. Although the blockchain, which has defined sub-details about transparency and accountability, has faced criticism due to its high energy use for global warming, it inherently incorporates new financial systems when the issue of reliability is put on the table. This is a harbinger of the opening of another page in the friendship of money and reputation.

To remind you again; reputation is a philosophy, not a project. If we look at it from within the business world, it is a philosophy that is based on being a company, a brand, an institution that is appreciated and appreciated by society.

For this reason, there is no other way to survive than to be a “reputable” individual and institution! The future can only be built on our reputation. Whether we are institutions or individuals!

October 2021

Alacati

October 2021