The Changing Dynamics of Brand Reputation Management

My friend Jeff was talking about the brand reputation management with me last night and showed me what happened when one puts in Microsoft into facebook. Nice!

While large brands can use their linking capabilities to create search engine dominance in Google with only the occasional negative message eeking through, within the world of smaller social networks they are at the customer’s opinion peril.

Jeff was asking what that might mean for brand reputation management in the coming years?

I was thinking about this and I still believe that if we look to the world of environmental management, (which I always love to do), old models of command and control have miserably failed. Similarly, mid-way points that attempted to “manage” ecosystems have been only partially successful because it assumes a sense of linear order that on some level can be manipulated.

And yet, people continue to attempt to utilize old models and tools to manage customers and brands within the dynamics of Web ecosystems, which are morphing and changing the way we communicate on a daily if not hourly basis. Chaos theory has more to do with understanding them than traditional business approaches.

It seems that everything has changed because of digital, everything except how traditional marketers and advertising agencies manage and develop brands. As the growth of smaller networks on the edges of Web continue to develop, I wonder if this may push companies to rethink their approaches? Who knows. This day and age, almost anything is possible even if not particularly probable.