Outbehaving The Competition
This blog and others have talked about the pitfalls of reputation management in a world in which everything is stored forever in searchable online databases.
But leave it to the NYTimes’ Thomas Friedman to nail it – powerfully & succinctly - in his editorial today (sub req), “The Whole World is Watching.”
As part of Friedman’s review of the new book by Dov Seidman, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life), he says:
“Companies that get their hows wrong won’t be able to just hire a P.R. firm to clean up the mess by a taking a couple of reporters to lunch — not when everyone is a reporter and can talk back and be heard globally.
“But this also creates opportunities. Today ‘what’ you make is quickly copied and sold by everyone. But ‘how’ you engage your customers, ‘how’ you keep your promises and ‘how’ you collaborate with partners — that’s not so easy to copy, and that is where companies can now really differentiate themselves.
“‘When it comes to human conduct there is tremendous variation, and where a broad spectrum of variation exists, opportunity exists,’ writes Seidman. ‘The tapestry of human behavior is so varied, so rich and so global that it presents a rare opportunity, the opportunity to outbehave the competition.’”
It’s that idea about “outbehaving the competition” that nailed it for me. It’s not enough to build a better mousetrap. When everyone is a publisher; when every comment, article & blog post exists online forever, then it’s the responsibility of the company to monitor, participate, evangelize, admit & fix errors, etc., better than the other guy.
We can argue that that model is near-impossible to scale. But the good guys will find a way.
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Comments
Sounds an awful lot like Tom Friedman found some inspiration in one of [URL=http://www.pr-squared.com/2006/10/at_mothers_knee.html]your earlier posts[/URL].
I suppose a key lesson from childhood is that everything you do reflects on you. Guard your reputation and don't do anything that would compromise it. Good behavior should and does count for something.
Posted by: Scott Monty | June 27, 2007 04:07 PM
It's so true. I wish I could have held my tongue a little more often.
But then again, you also have personalities like Ann Coulter, Rush, etc. that seem to survive... In PR, we have some personalities, too, and I have no idea how they get so many readers.
So how does it really work? Do winners attract winners, and vice versa? Or does a bad rep. really kill you?
Posted by: Geoff Livingston | June 27, 2007 05:39 PM