British consumers are increasingly turning to social media sites to 'hashtag' and 'bashtag' brands, rather than calling their customer service centres.

Brands also feel the change, and are starting to work out the best ways to engage and tackle the social media customer.

Echo Research and Fishburn Hedges identified six actionable insights that well-known brands, such as Barclaycard, BT and Sainsbury's often practice, such as 'choosing the right battle - but entering it fast' and 'not letting social media define you'.

But how did we reach this conclusion? To start with, Fishburn Hedges ran an online poll with 2,000 consumers nationwide, followed by in-depth interviews, conducted by Echo Research, with several blue-chip companies, including PepsiCo, HSBC and Oasis.

The social media savvy brands were more than happy to speak to us about topics including: their use of social media, who is responsible for their social media sites, whether they've ever experienced a customer backlash and how they dealt with it, and how they publicise their use of social media sites.

At Echo Research, we often conduct qualitative interviews to get to the heart of an issue, while probing and prompting our way through a series of questions and answers. We find that this traditional - analogue! - method is still one of the best for understanding a customer, stakeholder or opinion former, to ensure that an opportunity or threat is understood in depth, so that clear recommendations can be accurately passed to a client.

However, as our research shows, qualitative research works exceptionally well when hand-in-hand with quantitative research. The findings are more substantive and robust, yet also are rich with ideas and opinions. On this occasion, merging the insights from customers and brands offered a truly holistic picture of the current situation from both sides of the cash till to ensure that the findings are more insightful, powerful and genuinely actionable. We also have the technology to make sense of social media through our Echo Sonar platform, sorting the digital wheat from the chaff, enabling brands and companies to understand whether there is genuinely a storm brewing or whether it's just in a teacup.

As part of Echo Research's Ethics and Environment Programme employees are able to support their chosen charity for a day during the working week, so in order to take full advantage of getting out of the office, I decided to offer my time to the PSP Association!

PSP stands for Progressive Supranucleur Palsy and is a debilitating, terminal illness that leaves the person living with it unable to walk, talk, see, or swallow. There is currently no cure or treatment for the disease. See the infographic for first signs and symptoms of the illness.

My volunteer work for the PSP Association consisted of helping out at a support group meeting, where carers and those living with PSP could meet health care professionals, and more generally have informal discussions with each other. In addition to these goodwill efforts, I also lent a hand last Sunday, on London Marathon Day.

The day's activities consisted of blowing up balloons, precariously balancing on my boyfriend's shoulders to affix directional signs to lampposts to guide the runners to our 'after party', cheering on and congratulating the fabulous athletes, ensuring that food was plentiful and the runners were catered for, and not least, to raise awareness of PSP.

This week is awareness week 2012 for the PSP Association; "A million to beat PSP". Please help us to raise awareness of this cruel disease by 'following' and 'liking' the PSP Association. The disease is often mis-diagnosed and is still relatively unknown, even by health care professionals, so every little bit of increased awareness helps!

Dan Soulas explains how what stakeholders think of your brand is responsible for an average of 31% of US share prices.

Few CEOs would question that corporate reputation ranks amongst their most important assets. However, hardly any would be able to say exactly how much it's worth.

More importantly perhaps, few would be able to say with any confidence that they knew exactly what they should be doing to manage and ultimately maximize the value it represents.

Our research, however, reveals that:

• Corporate reputation was adding close to $3.4bn of shareholder value to companies across the S&P500 as at August 2011.
• The proportion of a company's market capitalization attributable to reputation averages 31% across the S&P500.

In fact, a rise in the value of corporate reputation in the last four years has laid the foundations for the share price recovery that we see today. Although many corporate reputations suffered in the turmoil precipitated by the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008, reputation has been an important driver of stock price growth since then.

Our analysis shows that in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 market collapse, the average contribution of reputation to company value in the S&P500 fell by 3 percentage points to 13%. Since then, it has grown steadily in absolute terms and now represents 31%.

Naturally as reputation has grown its share of company value, some companies have performed better than others. The average contribution of reputation of the largest 20% of companies (by market cap) tracked is 45%. The top performing organizations are Apple and Google with a 58% contribution.

By contrast the contribution of corporate reputation in the bottom 20% of companies analyzed is only 13% and, in many cases, poor reputation is destroying value and reducing market capitalization.

The bottom line is that corporate reputations are now underpinning investor confidence in companies' ability to deliver the economic returns expected.

On the whole, the larger, and arguably more "communications sophisticated" companies, are more successful at creating value through their corporate reputations.

Nevertheless reputational value can be a fickle friend and can, and sometimes does, change quickly. Although the reputation contribution of the companies common to both our 2011 and 2010 studies increased by an average of 11%, individual changes ranged significantly.

The 10 largest risers registered an average increase of 28 percentage points while at the other end of the spectrum the 10 largest fallers declined by 11 percentage points.

What chief executives really want to know, however, is how corporate reputation can grow shareholder value.
Our analysis shows that on average, a 5% improvement in the strength of a corporate reputation of an S&P500 company can be expected to deliver an increase in market capitalization of close to 3%.

Furthermore, a better reputation will also increase the investment community's confidence in a company's ability to deliver the returns it promises.

The bottom line is that investment in building corporate reputation pays dividends and investment in understanding which particular components of reputation offer the greatest returns will enable companies to maximize them.

In the first of Ebiquity's 3 sessions on 'brand optimisation' at BrandMAX, the discussion was about Reputation, more specifically about how social media means that there is an increasing need for Marketing and Corporate Affairs to better align their efforts and activities.

Our panel represented Marketing (Nigel Gilbert, Virgin Media), Corporate Affairs (Dominic Fry, M&S) and brand (Khaled Ismail, Tetrapak) representing both the B2B and B2C sectors. The session chair was Matthew Gwyther, editor of Management Today.

'We boobed' said the ad that M&S ran just 48 hours after the story broke that they were charging shoppers more for larger bra sizes. Dominic described how Marketing and Corporate Affairs worked swiftly and cohesively to minimise the negative impact on the brand's reputation following the story gaining traction in social media and subsequently mainstream media. They engaged the social media groups that were formed, reduced prices, apologised and turned what may have lost them market share into a share gain. "Reputation protection is a key focus for us," he said.

Nigel Gilbert described the relationship between Marketing and Corporate Affairs at Virgin Media as 'unusually close'. He said that the immediacy of the media business necessitates such closeness.

Describing his time at Lloyds Banking Group, he said he witnessed how they went from trusted High Street name to a 'pariah' during the banking crisis in 2008. It was he said a 'salutary lesson' in how to move from 'neutral to negative' in one bound. He went on to describe how 'trust is the key to reputation' and how the name change to Virgin (from NTL:Telewest) improved perceptions of by 30%. "This says a lot about the Virgin brand," he said.

He was very complimentary when asked about Sky in the context of News International and the phone hacking scandal. He knows that the scandal did have a negative impact on the Sky brand because Virgin constantly monitor Virgin and their competitors reputations and social media sentiment.

Khaled described how Tetra Pak go to great lengths to ensure that all areas of their business are aligned and that their staff do things 'the Tetra Pak way'.

He agreed with Nigel that the trust of all stakeholders is the single most important thing, "If the Nestle, Coke or Danone consumer loses trust, we can all go home." He described reputation as the 'cushion' that means stakeholders give you the benefit of the doubt in a crisis.

The panel were asked about the role of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in building reputation. Khaled talked about how Tetra Pak had been active in the area for a while but now consumers were demanding that they 'turn up the volume' on it. Dominic was frank about Marks & Spencer's challenge to generate an emotional response from consumers on its 'Plan A' initiative for them to make a commercial gain.

They were asked whether the inevitable cost-cutting drives many businesses are facing, might threaten initiatives that businesses put in place to build and protect reputation. 'Potentially' was the reply. Dominic talked how he manages this threat at an executive level and how risk audits help inform such decisions.

The session was hosted by Sandra Macleod of Echo Research, Ebiquity's Reputation & PR arm.

Social media demands that companies link both their paid and unpaid communications and measurement. Andrew Challier asks what this means for brands.

In the age of the informed consumer, big brands are subject to an unprecedented level of scrutiny. That scrutiny extends way beyond the confines of their products and financial performance.

If brands are under the microscope, it is social media which has provided the means to dramatically increase the order of magnification. The bigger the brand, the bigger the target, and so the bigger the threat posed by what would historically be labelled a 'PR crisis' but which now should be seen just as much as a 'brand crisis'. BP, Toyota, almost any bank and, most recently, News International have all suffered from the attentions of the social media 'chatterati' as well as the mainstream media.

On the plus side, however, the opportunity to manage the crisis - via the same social media channels - is greater than it ever has been.

We all recognise that 'reputation management' seeks to mitigate the negative and accentuate the positive. In this new world, however, we also need to recognise that reputation management is no longer the preserve of the Corporate Affairs function, nor is 'brand management' the sole preserve of Marketing. The consequences of misaligned communication have never been more critical.

A greater variety of Influencers

Reputations and brands are impacted by a wide variety of stakeholders, internal (staff) and external (consumers, investors, lobbyists etc) and businesses need a way to measure, manage and influence these various constituencies. Paid media is an important part - but only a part - of the picture. Brands need to benchmark and analyse both paid and unpaid media, to help identify both the 'danger signs' and the opportunities.

To create effective tools, a brand needs to understand the context for how its key products (within key markets) - and those of its competitors - are being discussed in social (and editorial) media around the world. This helps start to build an understanding of the issues of most importance and how they might choose to engage with relevant groups/audiences in a relevant way.

At the same time, by benchmarking paid-for messaging versus their principal competitors, companies can analyse the extent to which they are able to 'own' important topics and the extent to which they or their competitors are achieving better alignment between what is seen as important and the messages transmitted. Benchmarking the price paid for that media and the quality of its placement completes this circle.

Choosing the right measures and tools

There is an increasing amount of message monitoring software available to brands - paid, unpaid and social media etc. Most of it adds little value: whilst it aggregates the data, it lacks the human intelligence to draw meaningful, business-relevant conclusions. Clients are demanding an integrated 'vital signs' marcomms monitoring service tailored to their individual needs. Such a system need not be complex (in fact, the less complex the better), but the benefit is magnified when the total picture is assembled from a single, impartial perspective. And it only works to its true potential when brands have identified the correct KPIs within the business that can be reasonably linked to the benchmarking.

While brands might wish for the holy grail of a 'one size fits all' brand optimisation tool - simply drop all the ingredients in the top, pull a lever (or push a button) and out drops an optimised plan at the bottom - the reality is that there are very good reasons to use a combination of methodologies and tools.

For example, digital measures frequently underplay the contribution of offline marketing and other media 'levers' and, while econometric modelling is great at budget allocation and provides a powerful basis for budget optimisation between markets, brands and different channels, it rarely reflects the importance of reputation.

Different - and appropriate - techniques are available for measuring the corporate value of reputation. The 'brand lesson' which we preach, therefore, is to understand how these different measurement techniques are best used - not to provide a universal panacea, but to inform better quality decision making.

Taking action

Messaging

Ensure that corporate and brand messaging are aligned - addressing the key issues in a coordinated manner.

Example:

British Airways is aiming to rekindle pride among staff and consumers via a new 'heritage' marketing campaign; the aim is to regain the trust of both the general public and its own employees disillusioned by strike action, cancelled flights and low morale.

Organisation

Ensure that the company organisation is aligned organisationally. This doesn't have to imply a merger between corporate affairs and marketing.

Example:

Nestlé has appointed Pete Blackshaw - author of Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000 - as Global Head of Digital and Social Media, with dual reporting lines into the global heads of both Corporate Affairs and Marketing.

Measurement:

Ensure that tracking and measurement are able to answer these two questions from a consistent and comparable perspective: - What are people saying about us and our competitors? - What are our competitors saying about themselves?

Example:

In response to client demand, Ebiquity has developed an integrated message alignment reporting and benchmarking service, which draws upon data from its Portfolio and Echo Sonar monitoring software, and which feeds into both the marketing and corporate affairs functions.

'CR' or 'CSR' or 'corporate sustainability' - whichever name you like best, Echo has a new qualification in it.

Last month I sat with French, Swiss, Greeks, Russians, Lebanese and Chinese in a Brussels hotel debating what good sustainable behaviour means and how to become better guides to our clients and colleagues on best CR practice. We'd come together at the global Centre for Sustainability and Excellence to stay abreast of the latest thinking about living and communicating corporate responsibility (CR). It was a chance to consider companies' greatest lapses into unacceptable behaviour, and their more elevated moments.

What became clear to me as we talked was how important 'due diligence' on reputational risks is. The mistake some companies make is to question stakeholders directly themselves about these things. But if the definition of reputation is "What people say about you when you've left the room", then doing your own investigations may not be the best way of getting at the unvarnished truth.

I was impressed to see how much value the workshop's moderators set by research. They saw it as a big tranche in the cycle of running a good CSR programme. The phases of identifying stakeholders, their needs and expectations, the opportunities and risks that might come from them, were all on the agenda.

Communicating and assessing success were said to be vital too - how the social and mainstream media deliver an echo of CR, as a distorted noise or a perfect sound replica.
CR reports were thought to need a test-bed of reader comment about how unique or transparent they are, or else risk being so much 'white noise'. Numbers alone are not illuminating, people said; measuring even distant 'echoes' and perspectives qualitatively gives important feedback on the journey ahead.

The risks from supply chains, and the need to measure supplier conformity to standards, came over as the 'hottest and hardest' topic. Here again, having access to research teams in remote and culturally disparate territories was important in winning intelligence about risks. It was about knowing how different stakeholders march to the beat of different drums, and comparing and reconciling the drumbeats - and for that, a good understanding of cultural relativity was crucial.

After writing a mini-thesis on the ideal CSR programme, and two hard-working, lively days in Brussels, Echo acquired another accreditation to add to the letterhead. (see above)

Brands are promises. To be strong, those promises have to be lived and authentic.

And brands are judged by the company they keep - think Disney (& Coca Cola & HP), think McDonalds (& Dreamworks), think WWF (& BSkyB), think the 2012 Olympics (& Visa), even think Accenture & Tiger Woods. These associations can be powerful metaphors until there is a disconnect with your target audience's values. And that's what's happened here.

Part of News of the World's brand promise has been as the people's champion - the nation's newspaper fighting 'little people's' battles against the large, rich and powerful. Now they've turned against the ordinary people - soldiers' widows, parents of murdered children - and look more like the cynical corrupt elite they claim they target. Their brand promise is broken. If but on that basis, News of the World has become 'damaged goods' and would struggle to survive this.

Legal issues and ethics aside, which the full and proper investigation should confirm or otherwise, the sense of betrayal that such a significant and trusted 'people's newspaper' would encourage, allow or turn a blind eye to abusing the vulnerable is staggering. People will remember that - those in Liverpool are still boycotting The Sun after its Hillsborough coverage.
For major advertisers, to do nothing, in terms of changing allegiances or stopping the association, indicates tacit approval and acceptance - and potentially tarnishing their own reputation as uncaring and socially irresponsible.

That is why the likes of Sainsbury's, NPower, Boots, O2 and even the Royal British Legion would not wish to be connected with the distaste that the hacking scandal has provoked among the general public, many of whom swell News of the World's significant readership. Keeping their own reputation intact by being true to their and their customers' core values matters more to them than the effectiveness of advertising through what was once the largest circulation newspaper in the country.

This is a legal matter, but it's also emotional, commercial and political. More has yet to come out and other media titles won't let this die.

Such as today's Economist piece on 'Streets of Shame':

It's been said that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Is it time to think about research and evaluation in that context, too?

Measurement has always been the bug-bear of the PR industry, with calls for standard common measures and a pure, golden bullet, to take this 'headache' away from PR practitioners and let them 'get on' with their excellent work. But therein lies the problem. No one measure answers ALL questions or needs. No one approach will do. 'Getting on with the job' depends as much on the insights and data it uses to determine direction and convince others, as the activities that surround it. Measurement depends on where you are and what the need is. Otherwise the real danger is that the wrong exam question is answered really well, with 'E' for effort as the result.

The Barcelona Principles, set by amec and the CIPR rallying other leading industry bodies to common understandings, is an important beginning, with its seven guiding principles on best practice, including that of focusing on outcomes not outputs. This Summer's Measurement Summit in Lisbon took it a stage further in setting the course for the future by building in education and models. These are essential building blocks towards what ultimately matters - getting the thinking and behaviour right.

Research among practitioners, measurement experts and summit delegates keep assuring us that we know what we should do. Like eating our daily allowance of vegetables. We know what's important. We know AVEs (advertising value equivalence) is sugary-sweet and oh-so-tempting, but empty in terms of contributing to organisational results. We also know that the strength and credibility of public relations depends on insight and data. As time goes by, we are learning how to do it and take clients with us. But like our green leafy friends, we don't always embrace it as usefully as we should do,. The healthy, desired outcome - applying measurement meaningfully for the organisation and non-PR colleagues - should be the ultimate measure of success for us all. If the PR industry doesn't rise to this challenge and opportunity, the ringing in our ears may not be wholly welcomed or uncalled for.

Echo's latest research conceals a small timebomb. It is about how aware companies are of the human rights issue as a business risk. The good news that emerges is: they're well aware. Over 95% believe business needs to respect the human rights of those whose lives it touches.

But the not-so-good news is that a disconcertingly large share (33%) say their organisation has no formal policy on human rights.

Adoption of a formal policy, like it or not, is a first step towards the happy state where people trust you because you "say what you do and do what you say". It's all about the - not always exciting but always important - process of getting people to agree on what you all need to sign up to, then writing it down so it becomes a guiding principle.

The research shows that, with openness seen as a key insurance against damage from difficult issues, there is not much of a stampede for transparency on human rights. Two-thirds of those asked intend to publicly report their human rights impact but do not do so at the moment.

The risks are rife and growing, though, and time is not on companies' side. Respondents to Echo's research, when asked what human rights hazards had hit the headlines recently, far from mentioning a "spike" of 3-4 notorious cases, gave a wide raft of examples: human rights infringements by oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico and the Niger Delta, displacement of indigenous peoples by mining conglomerates, support by telecoms companies for repressive Middle Eastern regimes, breaches of the right to privacy by media companies, the silencing of whistleblowers by agribusiness, sex discrimination by fashion houses, discrimination around disability (whether self-inflicted or not) by airlines, religious bias on dress codes, complicity by web companies in gagging free expression, doubtful medical ethics by pharmaceutical companies … the list was long.

The research also highlights the plight of poor middle management - squeezed from the top and pressured from the bottom - often without the right measures or training or both to deal with these challenging issues. There's clearly a role for business schools and more enlightened management development programmes ahead.

Crucial steps to build a robust protective framework are to discover what and where the risks are, and where things might go wrong. For this task, an experienced reputational auditor is required, one who can investigate the challenges through questioning and observation, both in situ and remotely. Such an independent third party garners insights, opinions and intelligence to a greater depth and more reliably than a "First Party" can.

To help companies cope with the whole business of human rights exposure, the UN has created a framework, "Protect, Respect, Remedy". Echo endorses it through our long-term commitment to the UN Global Compact for Business, and through our yearly reporting of what we do about it. It gives us a good inside track on what keeps sustainability executives awake in the wee small hours.

This research is a clarion call for any corporates out there still vague about the explosive potential of the human rights issue. We'd advise them: investigate the risks now through independent research. Then get policies in place which you can observe and live by.

Click here to view the research results for the IHRB.

Fate, coincidence, alignment of the stars - call it what you want all I know is that last night I had one of those strange experiences where you feel someone out there has an inside track on your life (and I'm not ruling that out by the way as I've just re-read 1984).

Let me fill you in.

Just last week, Echo Research - the global leader in communication and reputation measurement - was acquired by Ebiquity plc, the global leader in media and marketing measurement. Put simply it means that together we can now measure and analyse how effectively a company's communication is working together to achieve its goals - are their PR, advertising, marketing, sponsorship, online etc all aligned and on message and if not why not?

Yesterday was our 'getting to know you' day, as our two teams shared ideas, approaches and were introduced to their new colleagues - an inspiring day all round. So imagine my surprise when on the way home I read Gideon Spanier's excellent article in The Evening Standard, where he very neatly outlined the breaking down of the barriers between content and advertising.

We have reached the point when neither can be seen in isolation, or as standalone components of the communications mix. Now all communications must be joined up, working together to tell the story, to tell it clearly and show that it means what it says.

So no wonder I felt like Winston Smith for a split second - this is exactly the space that Echo and Ebiquity operate in - Gideon was talking to me, about me. Then the paranoia wore off and reality set in. This convergence of media, communications and marketing and their collective impact on reputation were the precise reason that our two companies had come together. This is the direction our world is moving.

Clients have been telling us for some time now that they want to link the various strands of their communications mix across the business, to understand what the common voice is and that all are working to the same ends - but this comes with a realisation that it's far easier said than done. Gone are the days of marketing, advertising, sponsorship and communications departments working in silos - now the opposite is true - so how do they work together?

Of course social media is to blame; it always is, no matter what the subject.

To me, it's simply about authenticity. Think back to the bad old days where the consumer's voice was a letter to faceless bods in a company that didn't even know you existed. A one-way (if you're lucky two-way) conversation to share your grievances and that was it - nobody else knew about it apart from close friends, family and anyone else you cared to tell about it and ok, they may have sympathised with you but the point is it didn't change anything - we all just carried on being a bit disgruntled - that's how it worked.

Through the power of one way media they could tell you they were the most customer-friendly company in the world or had your best interests at heart but the reality could have been quite different - authenticity was undermined.

Social media has put paid to that! Nothing is secret in social media, nothing is personal and nothing can be ignored. If you let someone down, you'll hear about it on social media (ask Dave Carroll) So if you're claiming one thing in your communications and you're delivering something else - you'll know what to expect.
Okay, that's been the established model for a while now but it's brought about a subtle change whereby authenticity is now placed at the heart of everything leading companies must do - there is nowhere to hide so you might as well be up front about it and you MUST be consistent about it.

Mix your message, confuse your stakeholders or worse, fail to deliver against your promises and you'll be found out. So, no, it's not about how good your advertising is any more or how well your PR is working for you - it's about how well they're working together, how clearly they are delivering your message and how well they are instilling trust.
For those that get it right then that social media machine will shout it from the rooftops and the word will spread like wildfire - get it wrong and Room 101 awaits.