We know that web-based organisations like Wikileaks and UKUncut are doing a great job, but it is still gratifying to read that corporate Britain is running scared as a result. The question is will it make the tax dodgers clean up their act. PR Week gives us some clues, but it’s not god news! The report reveals:
One senior agency source told PRWeek that boardrooms across the UK were fearful of web-based organisations such as Wikileaks and UKUncut. ‘A lot of corporate Britain is running scared,’ said the source.
Leading corporate PR company chief executive, Nick Murray-Leslie of Chatsworth Communications, said that, for top corporate executives whose recent concerns have been primarily about financial risk and exposure: “reputational risk is now in the ascendency.” Asked why Wikileaks is so dangerous, he added:
Quite simply, because it has changed everything. It has opened an extended risk front to the business world, that of almost instant, global reputational risk.
Hill & Knowlton’s boss of crisis management, Tim Luckett, agreed that the internet was making corporate reputations more vulnerable:
Fundamentally, the web not only exposes businesses to a far broader range of critics, but also makes it easier to bring them together. Add to that, the reputational legacy of such incidents via the Google Effect and there becomes a significant threat to your brand. The way in which activists are mobilising has changed – these online organisations have increasing influence and subsequent offline power.
So what is the corporate world doing about this new threat? Cleaning up its act? Paying a fair amount of tax, perhaps? Err, not exactly, it seems.
Murray-Leslie explains:
Not being evil helps but if you can’t do that, prepare, prepare, prepare.
Spending a lot more on employing PR consultants seems to be the answer.
What a surprise.