There are several reasons to encourage companies to care for consolidating their reputation, but at least two of them represent top priorities for corporate communication:
- Reputation has its own value and facilitates measurement, and robust metrics
- Reputation acts as a protection shield in crisis, and resilience builder in unpredictable times
Reputation: The Invisible Asset That Protects and Differentiates
Business-people love KPIs and metrics, regardless of industry, company history and organizational culture. Every decision has to be grounded on data and supported by metrics and indicators, from brand awareness to likeability or familiarity indicators. For every penny spent, the business owner or the CMO wants to get the appropriate measure of the ROI, while marcom teams invest an important part of their activities in measurement and evaluation tools, platforms, and methodologies.
Despite this almost natural approach of the stakeholder management processes, reality shows that, generally, companies disregard their reputation while business goes as always. Otherwise said: reputation is an unperceived value that a CEO or a top management team sees only when it starts being tarnished, not when it shines. The concerns appear when the company has to react to increasing competition, to evolving trends that affect the relationship with different stakeholders, to issue and crisis events or to rumours affecting the talent pipeline.
Unhappy customers posting negative reviews on TrustPilot or App store, a criticising article published by a tier 1 publication or an unfavorable review from a well-known podcast creator are immediately scrutinised, measured, and transformed into „business impact”. Thus, most companies start fearing for their reputation only when they see the signals of a damaged relationship with their customers, employees, regulators or journalists. Without a comprehensive, well-tested and also reputable methodology, any empirical assessment of the consequences and outcome is a pure speculation. And speculations cannot serve as grounds for anchored rational decision-making. Or, at least, this is what I've heard myself so many times from internal clients.
During my almost 30 years communications career, I have been a witness of a reactive attitude most owners and top management teams have when it comes to their companies’ reputation. Deceived clients, unmet expectations and unkept promises are the first triggers of a reputation management, and the first task is always to measure the impact. With one exception - public companies.
When listed on the stock exchange, organizations become more aware of the importance of their reputation and they build strategies aiming to strengthen this intangible asset. As part of their obligations incurring from the public company status, organizations invest in measuring and stewarding their corporate reputation, as sentiment is not part of the business language understood by shareholders, financial analysts, investors.
Thus, complex measurement tools like RepTrak™, Ipsos, Caliber Stakeholder Intelligence platform, Meltwater, Kantar, Morning Consult, Reputation Quotient from Axios Harris Poll are amongst the widely used models for reputation evaluation. And most of the publicly held companies use these tools and platforms to guide and explain their reputation management strategies.
Why Reputation Matters Before Crisis Hits
Practitioners and theoreticians have agreed that reputation ”must be framed as a core business asset” (Vandy Mayer, AT&T, for PR Week, retrieved from www.PRWeek.com). Research conducted in the last 30-40 years highlighted that reputation is a multifaceted construction, surging from the judgments and personal evaluation created by different stakeholders - employees, customers, partners, authorities and governments, regulators, investors, mass-media, influencers, general public, word-of-mouth.
Though, this diversity of sources and perceptions succeed to contribute to an unique positioning of an organisation or personality, providing it with uniqueness, stability over time, consistency, predictability. How the company reacted and acted in the past is a guarantee for a legitimate and predictable behavior at present or in the future, making it trustworthy, authentic, and eligible.
RepTrak creators synthesized the expected behaviours from the stakeholders in their measurement model based on a ”think, feel, do” framework, evaluating corporate reputation through drivers like ”Products & Services (1), Innovation (2), Workplace (3), Conduct (4), Citizenship (5), Leadership (6), and Performance (7)” (retrieved from RepTrak.com). But, with a new stakeholder gaining increasing space like AI, reputation is now more co-constructed through social media, digital communications, communities. The infrastructure and channels contributing to reputation building are evolving and new streams are involved.
Trust Is Under Pressure
Moreover, the society as a whole is confronted with a trust collapse. Edelman's Trust Barometer 2026 showed that the global population feels the impact of the insularity provoked by economic anxiety, collapse in optimism, institutional distrust, and information crisis. In the last few years, according to the same source, ”insularity has emerged as the next crisis of trust”, as Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, shared at the launch of the report. Another research, Digital News Report 2026 by Reuters Institute and Oxford University, confirms the negative trend of trust affecting traditional media reputation. In Romania, the authors of the study showed that trust in news overall decreased last year by 3 pp (to 23%) compared to the previous year. In 2021, the same study indicated a trust rate in news of 42% in the country where, in the context of the elections in 2024 and 2025, when fake news and disinformation surged across social media platforms.
Against all negative findings, Edelman’s Report also shares some good news, helping businesses and communicators to identify opportunities for reputational construction. The employer is the most trusted entity (78% of the employees), with CEOs mentioned as responsible for leading by trust-model. For the first time since the creation of the survey, the companies are seen as more ethical than NGOs (20 vs 17 points). Community (neighbours, friends, family, co-workers) gain trust and have an important contribution to building reputation than other entities, compared to the past results of the survey.
Reputation is a strategic asset that helps companies navigate uncertainty, build legitimacy, and stand out in crowded markets. It is also an important factor in attracting and retaining talent, because people are drawn to organizations they trust and admire.
To put it simply, a strong reputation gives companies resilience in times of change, protects them from doubt, and makes them more attractive to customers, employees, and stakeholders alike. To strengthen this asset, your company should assess its reputation proactively, before a crisis exposes its weaknesses, and use the findings to shape clearer, more credible communication. And it should start today.
References:
Axios Harris Poll 100 reputation rankings, retrieved at July 21st, 2026
2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: Society slides into insularity, retrieved at July 21st, 2026
Global Reputation Centre, retrieved at July 21st, 2026
Kantar Marketplace, retrieved at July 21st, 2026
Meltwater. Reputation measurement, retrieved at July 20th, 2026
Morning Consult Intelligence, retrieved at July 20th, 2026
PRWeek - AI, an important stakeholder, retrieved at July 20th, 2026
RepTrak. AI reputation strategy integration, retrieved at July 21st, 2026
Global RepTrak 2026, retrieved at July 21st, 2026
Reuters Institute. (2026). Digital News Report 2026: Romania, retrieved at July 20th, 2026