Reputation Management

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Recommended: Use of social media for crisis communication

The research suggests that reputation comes from relationships and trust. Fombrun (1996) stated that to have a positive reputation managers must invest in building and maintaining good relationships. Building relationships with the company’s publics can result in a higher opinion of their reputation. These relationships also builds trust in the company. “Trust, like reputation, can take years and resources to build up, and while it may be difficult to break, it, again, like reputation, can take considerable time and even more resources to restore” (Bronn, 2010, pg. 310). With both relationships and trust, a company must be communicating with its publics. Van Riel and Fombrun (2007) developed six key communications principles that yield a high reputation: visibility, distinctiveness, authenticity, transparency, consistency and responsiveness (pg. 313). Applying these six principles to the Carnival case, we can determine if Carnival used them in managing their reputation.

Visibility deals with the public and market prominence of the organization or how much people know about the organization (pg 313). During this crisis, Carnival used social media to keep people updated about what was happening at sea. Before this instance, Carnival was a common name in the cruise industry. According to the Carnival website (www.carnival.com) Carnival is apart of the World’s Leading Cruise Lines alliance. Coombs (2010) said that, “a strong reputation prior to a crisis is an asset to organizations during the crisis” (pg. 478). Having this positive reputation before hand should help Carnival in the end with customers. Distinctiveness are the characteristics that set an organization apart from others. These characteristics can be its logo, slogan and trademarks (pg. 314). Carnival has all three, a distinct logo, slogan “Fun for All. All for Fun.” and trademarks on the names of ships, “Splendor”, “Freedom” and “Liberty” to name a few of the 23 different ships (www.carnival.com). Authenticity helps make an organization real, genuine, accurate, reliable and trustworthy (pg. 314). By using social media and addressing the crisis head on, the company appears trustworthy to people. Carnival took responsibility for the accident and tried to solve it as quick as possible. The CEO of Carnival also made a public apology to those on the ship and to Carnival customers.

Next, transparency is how much information and access stakeholders have about an organization (pg. 314). The Carnival Cruise Director John Heald went to his blog to offer updates and on-broad accounts to consumers and the press.

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