Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

On this episode, Sima is joined by Anouar El Haji, Founder and CEO at Veylinx, a behavioral insights platform for answering critical business questions during all stages of product innovation.

Topics discussed include:

- Anouar’s background and career path.

- The evolution of economics from being strictly theoretical to being scientifically tested.

- The inherent bias in conducting hypothetical surveys as market research.

- Measuring demand by studying subjects with a financial stake tied to their answers.

- Why the good nature of humans is detrimental to conducting scientific research studies.

- The ways AI could completely change the market research space without the industry proactively adding safeguards.

Resources: 

https://veylinx.com/

Thanks for listening to the Data Gurus podcast, brought to you by Infinity Squared. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review to help get the word out about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.

#Analytics #M&A #Data #Strategy #Innovation #MRX

Sima is delighted to talk with Gordon Allott today! Gordon is the President and CEO of BroadPeak Partners LLC, the company that developed the K3 software.

Today's discussion takes a slightly different turn as we introduce Gordon, who is working on various aspects of data. The work done at BroadPeak brings a fresh perspective on the use of data in today's digital age. So, join us as we delve into Gordon's journey and learn about BroadPeak's unique approach to data integration and analysis!

Gordon's bio

Gordon Allott is the president and CEO of BroadPeak Partners, developer of the K3. K3 is software that takes data from anywhere, allows users to transform, filter, and unify through an intuitive UI, and send it anywhere. Before founding BroadPeak, Gordon was a consultant and attorney in the financial sector. That included advising a wide variety of bulge-bracket banks and hedge funds on derivatives trading. Gordon led the energy trading and risk groups for Sapient, delivering trading projects for Duke, Constellation, JPMorgan, Chevron, and others. Prior to Sapient, he was part of a startup (KWI), leading the USA as VP of Business Development and VP then Asia Pac (now Alstom). Gordon practiced as a derivatives attorney, has a JD from the University of Denver, and a BA from Drake University.

About BroadPeak

BroadPeak is a data integration consultancy that started in 2007. They specialize in extracting data from different systems, merging and blending data, and creating data pipelines. In 2013-2014, they created a data pipeline platform called K3, which allows employees to use a low-code approach to create connections to various data sources, merge, blend, and clean the data to make it analytically ready. K3 is now commercially available and used by 70 Fortune 500 companies. 

BroadPeak’s area of focus

Broadpeak focuses on helping large corporations extract data from old and painful systems to make it meaningful. They are continuing to move forward in the new data era.

Their primary target

Their primary target is operational people with real operational goals and the need to get things done for the enterprise. They offer low-code tools that democratize the data integration process enabling non-coders to connect to APIs and extract data from different systems.

BroadPeak has a secret value proposition

BroadPeak aims to solve the problem of IT teams building their own tools by putting the power in the hands of the people who need it most. They offer a solution through their K3 data pipeline platform, which allows companies to extract data without needing a developer. The platform is a secret value proposition for Broadpeak, as they aim to enable businesses to extract data quickly and efficiently without relying on IT teams.

Examples of the various dimensions of work being done at BroadPeak

One example is creating daily or hourly P&L reports, with explanations of changes, instead of waiting until the end of the month. Another example is marrying two sets or three sets of data together, which often runs into data quality issues. Their goal is to create an analytical or data control framework that can handle unknown challenges, such as cleaning up data or stitching it together.

BroadPeak helps customers assess their challenges

Gordon believes that many companies want to sell software without providing any ongoing support to achieve business outcomes. However, the pressure is on for teams to get answers quickly, and delays can result in missed opportunities. BroadPeak helps its customers assess their challenges and develop viable solutions using their platform, teaching them how to use it effectively. Once the customer learns how to use the platform, it becomes easy to move forward.

A streaming rules engine

BroadPeak has a streaming rules engine that creates case statements using WHEN THEN ELSE statements. That helps with edge cases that take up time, where the data may require different treatments based on its origin or format. The edge cases never stop, and data analysts constantly need to address issues such as date formatting.

The rise of data analytics

The role of the Data Analytics Officer is driving down from the top, and they are the future of the cerebral corporate enterprise. Chat GPT and other technologies have advanced significantly, and they can analyze code and data, which is good for commenting on code and identifying anomalies in data. The role of the data analyst is crucial, and companies have a lot of data they are not using properly. So, Gordon believes that if data is the new oil, this is the place to be!

Velocity

The concept of velocity in data analysis refers to how quickly data can get processed to achieve business outcomes. However, some non-technological issues can impede progress, such as the existence of "data priests" who hoard data and do not share it. The goal of the data analyst is to get access to raw data quickly. Unfortunately, internal politics and power struggles can make that difficult.

A gamechanger

BroadPeak's K3 data pipeline platform is changing the game in the world of data by empowering operational people to extract and analyze data quickly and efficiently without relying on IT teams. BroadPeak helps its customers assess their challenges and develop viable solutions using its platform, teaching them how to use it effectively. 

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Sima is happy to have Venkat Venkataramani joining her for today's episode of Data Gurus! Venkat is the CEO and Co-founder of Rockset. 

Venkat shares his background, dives into the benefits of real-time data analytics and cloud-based infrastructure, and discusses the interesting work they are doing at Rockset.

Biography

Venkat Venkataramani is CEO and Co-founder of Rockset. In his role, Venkat helps organizations build, grow, and compete with data by making real-time analytics accessible to developers and data teams everywhere. Before he founded Rockset, he was an Engineering Director for the Facebook infrastructure team managing online data services for 1.5 billion users. These systems scaled 1000x during his eight years at Facebook, serving five billion queries per second at single-digit millisecond latency and five 9s of reliability. Before joining Facebook, Venkat worked on tools to make the Oracle database easier to manage.

Venkat’s background

Before he founded Rockset, Venkat managed online data infrastructure for Facebook between 2007 and 2015. He was fortunate to work with some amazing people and learned a lot from them. His team was responsible for building, scaling, and maintaining a set of services on which Facebook’s online products had been built. When he started, Facebook had around thirty or forty million monthly active users, and when he left, there were about a billion-and-a-half active users. 

What makes Venkat the proudest

What Venkat feels proudest of, having been part of the Facebook online data infrastructure, are all their product launches, and their transition from web to mobile. 

Facebook’s Like button

The load and demand on Facebook's data infrastructure were completely different before and after the installation of the Like button. So they had to keep on innovating and pushing the envelope.

The Facebook Newsfeed

Most people are surprised to hear that before 2008, the Facebook Newsfeed only got updated once a day!

How real-time data has transformed business

Real-time data allows people to know what is happening in the present moment. Before the advent of real-time data, strategic decisions were all intuition or experience-based rather than data-driven, and that caused many problems. 

Facebook’s shift to real-time data

During the eight years Venkat spent with Facebook, he saw the shift to real-time data happening across every aspect of the back end of Facebook.

The benefits of the cloud

The cloud allows everyone to have accessibility without having any specific kind of software or infrastructure within an organization. That enables every company to be a potential client. 

Rockset’s orientation

Rockset’s orientation is cloud, whereas other companies are still transitioning and moving toward the cloud.

The benefits of cloud-only infrastructure

Cloud-only infrastructure allows businesses to access fast and fresh real-time data analytics. The storage separation of the cloud makes it possible to build massively scalable and very efficient real-time databases and platforms that can be easily and cost-effectively scaled up or down, depending on the demand.

About Rockset

Rockset is cloud-only, so it requires neither downloads nor installation. All their customers have to do is create an account and explain where their data sources are, and Rockset will automatically transform their data into fast sequel tables. 

Why do businesses prefer real-time data?

Working with cloud-based real-time data streams makes it much quicker and simpler for businesses to scale, monitor their business metrics, eliminate risk, build better products for their customers, and save revenue that could potentially have been lost.

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Rockset

Sima is delighted to have Henry Hays joining her on the podcast today! Henry is the energetic and inspiring Co-founder and Disruptor at Henry Hays Consulting.

In this episode of Data Gurus, Henry dives into the concept of disruptive innovation.

Biography

Henry spent most of his adult life in sales and sales leadership- mainly in pharmaceuticals and biotech. He started in the late 1990s and had the good fortune to get promoted to several different roles where he gained a good sense of the business. His break came when he was recruited away from a comfortable job by his professional mentor, and he literally said “yes” before even learning what he was supposed to sell! Within five years, they had grown the company (Avanir Pharmaceuticals) to the point where it was acquired. That gave Henry resources and choice, so he chose that point to step away from the hamster wheel pace. It happened at the time when the first few Blockbuster Video stores began closing, which was crazy for Henry. So he dove head-first into disruptive innovation and has remained in that space since then.

Henry’s background

Henry describes himself as a lifelong sales guy. He has always been extroverted, so he loves interacting with others. After spending 22 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, he had the opportunity in 2008 to help start a company in the Southern California area. After running the company for almost five years, it got purchased. Soon after, Henry’s intellectual curiosity led him to find Clayton Christiansen, the Harvard teacher who came up with the concept of disruptive innovation. Henry was fascinated with Christiansen’s ideas and decided to dedicate a good portion of his time to evangelizing about disruptive innovation. 

Tremendous opportunity

Society has been experiencing some radical shifts lately. As a result, disruptive innovation has taken on a different and more urgent tone, which provides a tremendous opportunity for business owners.

Disrupting businesses

Henry believes that if people are not disrupting their own businesses, someone else will do it for them. He feels that disruption is much easier for smaller businesses because they are more agile and less challenging to transform.

A moment of doubt

It is not unusual for disruptors to experience a moment of doubt and wonder if they have done the right thing. 

Processing innovation and change 

Henry has found that the further we get from our years of schooling, the harder it becomes for us to process new things that do not work for us immediately. Now, when he does not want to opt for some change, he seeks to understand the forces driving the change, why it is happening, who stands to lose, and when. That helps him detach from the emotion of the situation and look at it objectively.

Disrupt Ready 

Henry and two other partners recently started a company called Disrupt Ready. They provide simple, face-to-face technical education for legacy executives on how the blockchain works and help them facilitate a connection to the third-party tech players that match what they want. They designed Disrupt Ready with adult principles in mind.

The Disruption Innovation Index

Henry and his partners at Disrupt Connect came up with what they have called the Disruptive Innovation Index to help executives by giving them a sense of where they are as a company and as an individual.

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Henry Hays Consulting

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Alon Chen, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Tastewise, joins Sima today to share his career journey and dive into what they are doing at Tastewise.

Biography:

Alon Chen is a Co-Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer at Tastewise. He is the developer of an artificial intelligence-based food intelligence platform designed to assist food and beverage businesses and brands. The company's platform works with food brands, manufacturers, ingredient companies, and flavor houses, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Givaudan, Campbell's, and Kraft Heinz, to enhance new product development, build marketing strategies, and accelerate sales in retail and restaurants, enabling restaurants, hospitality groups, and food brands to make smarter decisions for a healthy, sustainable, and delicious future.

Alon’s journey

Alon was born and raised in Israel. He started his first business at fifteen, building and selling computers. His first real job was at Google, looking after the search quality for Hebrew and then working with their marketing team. He was the Founder of Google Partners, the Google partner program for their advertising business. He soon realized he loved working with technology and facing business and marketing challenges. So that is what he does today with Tastewise.

People

Alon can program, develop code, and write code. But he prefers working with people.

Technology

Alon is passionate about technology! Current developments with AI keep him awake all night long, thinking of ways to use AI to improve the food system.

What is Tastewise?

Alon founded Tastewise in 2018. It is an enterprise solution to help the world’s largest food brands digitize and transform their slow and tedious methods of understanding consumers and their consumption preferences and become more efficient with their product innovation lines. So Tastewise is essentially a data platform that collects data points from every single food delivery app and recipe app across the web to allow organizations to find out what consumers eat and drink, to help them move their new product launches from a 90% failure rate to a 100% success rate.

Alon’s idea for Tastewise

Alon’s idea for Tastewise started with his family members sending messages to his mom each week on their family Whatsapp group, telling her about their constantly-changing dietary preferences for their Shabbat dinners on Friday nights so that she did not have to prepare dishes no one would eat. He realized that the same thing was happening in the food industry too, with people’s diets changing constantly. The food industry is slow to adapt and change, so he saw a great business opportunity to help brands understand the trends related to consumers’ constantly changing food preferences and get to know which dishes consumers are making with the products they buy.

The most difficult part

The most difficult part of Alon’s work is applying artificial intelligence to the subtle nuances of a given situation to get to know what consumers actually want.

The technology

One part of Tastewise’s technology involves collecting vast amounts of data. Another is making sense of all the data. The last part is visualizing and conveying the findings to users and helping organizations move in the right direction. 

The biggest challenge

The biggest challenge to getting more acceptance, acceleration, and use of their new methodology has been explaining to end users why their data set is the right one.

Service

Tastewise is here to change the industry. So they do whatever it takes to drive value and help their customers. 

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Alon Chen on LinkedIn

Today, Pedro Almeida, the CEO and Co-founder of MindProber, joins Sima on the podcast to share his background and discuss the innovative work they are doing at MindProber. 

Pedro’s background

Pedro studied social psychology with a strong emphasis on market research. As an undergrad, he worked as a research assistant at a small cognitive neuroscience lab and he later did an internship in social psychology. After graduating, he became a market research consultant while also pursuing his research on electrophysiology. His field of interest was effective processes, emotion, and populations with emotional impairment. Pedro did his Master’s in experimental social psychology. He has always combined his two passions of applied psychology on the one hand and the business side of things on the other.

Social psychology

Social psychology is an experimental field. It looks at social cognition and processes, and how people make social inferences and process social information. That sometimes has to do with social identity- with how people build their social identity and interact with the social identity of others. Social psychology also provides a toolkit for those who want to go into market research and understand data. 

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is a field that looks at the neurobiological implementation of cognitive processes. In other words, what happens in the brain when we think. Even though people tend to make a distinction between cold cognition and hot emotion, all of those processes are still mental processes.

MindProber

Pedro and his business partner founded MindProber with the idea of taking the principles of consumer neuroscience (also known as neuromarketing) and applying them in business settings to understand whether or not certain messages were effective. They took the opportunity to start a consumer neuroscience company in Portugal back in 2010-2011 because there were none there at the time.

Scaling consumer neuroscience

There were hurdles to overcome because consumer neuroscience studies were expensive and non-scalable. So Pedro began thinking of ways to scale consumer neuroscience and make it faster and more agile. 

Getting more input

In 2012- 2013, Pedro came up with the idea of taking consumer neuroscience out of the lab and making it remote to make it more agile. He and his partner also started thinking of ways to get more physiological and behavioral input from people while they were on the floor, and came up with the idea of building a platform to allow them to get and distribute data, and centralize and synchronize it with something. Pedro was fortunate to know someone who could build a sensor to capture people’s physical responses while they were in their homes.

The platform

The MindProber platform has crystalized into becoming a way to access electro-dermal activity in scale, collected from whatever people get exposed to in their homes.

The data

The data provided by the MindProber platform gives an objective, quantifiable, and valuable metric for understanding the quality of the impressions people are getting exposed to, and also the quality of people’s involvement with that content.

The sensor

MindProber rewards people for wearing a sensor while they watch television. The sensor is a small device that gets held in the hand while watching something, and people sometimes even forget that they are holding it. Sports tend to produce the highest emotional responses.

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Pedro Almeida on LinkedIn  

Pedro Almeida on Twitter (@Pedro_R_Almeida)

Reed Cundiff, the newly-appointed CEO of Sago (formerly the Schlesinger Group), joins Sima to talk about how he got to where he is in his career and the exciting journey ahead of him.

Reed’s story

Reed cut his teeth as a marketing analyst. He spent about ten years tracking the enterprise resource planning industry and then moved to Microsoft, where he ran global insights for almost twelve years. After that, he had the opportunity at Kantar to head an integrated team that initially ran the North American business and later all of the Americas. 

Becoming the CEO of Sago

After managing the insights team at Kantar for a long time, learning a lot, and going through multiple business cycles, Reed jumped at the opportunity of becoming CEO of the Schlesinger Group, now known as Sago. 

What attracted Reed to Schlesinger?

Three things attracted Reed to the idea of running Schlesinger. The first was that he felt there was a lot he could learn from his role as a stand-alone CEO and from looking at the industry from a different angle. He liked the family-oriented culture of the business and was also fascinated with the opportunities that a business with that much breadth could offer.

A challenge

Ramping up on understanding what a complex business is was challenging for Reed. The macroeconomic headwinds in the market also made it hard for him to go in as a CEO in mid-November of 2022 and help his clients be as proactive as possible. Fortunately, Steve Schlesinger, the former CEO, did a great job of staying connected to the business and educating Reed rapidly while also giving him the space to step into the opportunity of his new role.

Finding balance

On an ideal day, Reed strives to balance three things: 

Engaging internally and ensuring his teams have whatever they need to be successful and operate at peak performance. 

Engaging with clients and ensuring he does not lose touch with any of them.

Making sure he has the time to do his work and fit in some exercise.

The changing landscape

Reed finds this an exciting time to be an insights professional! He has found it interesting to see how technology has transformed how people do their work. He believes that the digital transformation of the industry will change the way the industry evolves. He feels that the volume and variety of raw materials that insights professionals take into their work will expand to include financial data, behavioral data, cultural data, location data, and more. So essentially, the raw materials and organizations are changing, and Reed hopes the way insights get delivered is also changing.

Data science versus market research

Reed neither favors data science over market research, nor vice versa, because he feels they are both needed to gain momentum in the market.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Reed feels that the industry, as a whole, is not yet where it needs to be in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So the entire industry should commit to improving every day. What he intends to do at Sago is begin promoting from within and proactively ensuring that they have as diverse an applicant pool as possible. He also wants to support his employee research groups and make sure they facilitate open dialogues around gender equality, social inclusivity, mental health awareness, and other topics to ensure that all their employees can show up for work every day without being distracted.

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Reed Cundiff on LinkedIn

Sima is happy to have Tim Clover, the CEO and Founder of Glow, and Sherry Frey, the VP of Wellness at Nielsen IQ, joining her on the show to dive into how consumers think about the planet, sustainability, and societal responsibility.

About Tim

Tim left management consulting almost ten years ago to start Glow, his research technology business. He started Glow to make it easy to get the consumer mindset into the boardroom, remove the layers of complexity using some automation throughout the process, and tie everything together. Tim has had a wonderful journey over the last few years and is very happy to work with Nielsen!

What Sherry is doing at Nielsen IQ

At Nielsen IQ, they refer to total wellness because consumers think about wellness in terms of their personal health and wellness, the health of the environment, and social responsibility. So they built a team at Nielsen that focuses on helping clients better understand the opportunities in the sustainability and social responsibility space, how to think about the business case, and where brands are regarding moving past business as usual toward sustainability. They also look at regeneration, improving the world, and providing a lot of measurement in that space. They are thrilled to have partners like Glow in their network to help them round out their client offering, give them a 360 view of what is happening in the store, and understand consumer perceptions. 

Business people are also consumers

Clients are business people, but they are also consumers. So they are also considering how to better care for themselves, their families, and the planet. 

The pandemic

The pandemic awakened many people to climate change and knowing there is a disparity around health and wellness.

A growing consumer movement

The consumer movement has been growing. More and more consumers are discussing the importance of sustainability and social responsibility. As a result, more brands and retailers are bringing offerings to consumers, which further elevates that awareness.

Taking a leap

As the Founder and CEO of Glow, Tim decided to take a leap and talk about the importance of sustainability and social responsibility. He decided to become an active player in measuring what consumers think about the social responsibility of different brands. As a CEO, he ensures that he builds a sustainable business from the inside out. 

An increase in awareness

There has been more awareness of sustainability and social responsibility from a consumer perspective. Sherry believes that the FMCG space is at the forefront in many cases. Brands are starting to see a business case for sustainability. So they understand they can do good for the planet and people while making a profit. 

How Glow and Nielsen formed a partnership

Several years ago, Glow met with Nielsen in Australia. Nielsen introduced Glow to colleagues in the US who had a technology outfit that could run product and market-related tests that they felt could be useful for Glow’s customers. That ultimately led to Tim meeting with Sherry’s team to pick it up and see if they could take it to market. 

Nielsen was impressed with Glow for many reasons, including their approach. They appreciated getting a full view of whether or not consumers are actually doing what they say and understanding the gap if there is one.

Sustainability has been driving results

There is a secondary value that comes with sustainability that makes a brand more appealing. That has been driving results for many brands and retailers.

Focusing on sustainability

Focusing on sustainability can make businesses more sustainable from a financial standpoint. 

Food and Grocery Report

Glow tracks the measurement of more than 600 brands in various countries. They also take a comparative look at the performance of different industries. The recently-released Food and Grocery report provides context for food and groceries versus other industries. It also looks at some of the macro opinions across various industries. The partnership with Nielsen allowed Glow to overlay sales data for the highest and lowest-performing brands and access more points on the social responsibility score scale. Purpose-driven brands have been standing out in the data.

Challenger brands and large brands

Nielson hypothesized that the challenger brands would drive the growth, and they did. They also found that large brands could drive growth and have been driving outsize growth over the last five years. It is harder for large brands to drive growth, but when a big brand makes a change, they gain a lot of credibility from consumers.

What do consumers want?

Consumers want to understand how brands invest in solving environmental, sustainability, and social responsibility problems and how buying those brands can contribute to solving those problems.

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Tim Clover on LinkedIn

Nielsen IQ

Sherry Frey on LinkedIn

Cliff Courtney, the President and CEO of Courtney180, joins Sima on the show today. 

Cliff’s journey

Cliff comes from a marketing-driven background. He believes marketing is a good background for all companies. Specifically for him because he has worked predominantly in chief strategy officer roles in Omnicom agencies and then in chief marketing roles, also for Omnicom agencies. As a result, he had good scope for go-to-market plans and how to execute and sell them.

Challenges

The biggest challenges Cliff ever faced were how to de-commoditize the commoditized brands. (In other words, how to differentiate certain commonly-found items from other, similar items.) Another challenge he faces is that most brands are challenger brands that are competing with companies with bigger budgets and footprints and more impact. So to win these days, he has to be cagey and very smart when optimizing his media messaging. 

The expanding sphere of influence of the CMO

The sphere of influence of the CMO has expanded. Cliff believes that as that has happened, the view of the typical CMO has become too narrow because they regard performance marketing (data) as the be-all and end-all. He believes that all mediums of media performance should have a specified standard, and CMOs should focus more on their relationships with consumers.

A disconnect in the data world

Cliff sees a big disconnect in the world of data. On the one hand, we live in a world that is quantifiable, and big companies are crunching a lot of data. On the other hand, consumers are complex, messy, and emotional, so their decisions cannot always be quantified.

Two things to consider when dealing with data

There are two things Cliff advises people to be aware of when dealing with data. One is that data is one thing, but it is not the only thing. The other is not to get caught up in the “numbers do not lie” fallacy because even though data has a lot of value, numbers lie all the time. That is why Cliff advises people to ensure that data is only part of the mix rather than the whole thing.

Looking backward

Due to independent variables, data cannot be relied on to know what will happen next. That is why Cliff believes that data works best when looking backward. 

Predictive analytics

Cliff feels that predictive analytics is flawed because it is a forecast conclusion- not a foregone conclusion.

Independent variables

Independent variables cannot be controlled. Unexpected events may happen, and they could affect people’s decisions.

Data

Cliff believes that data is valuable. However, it must only be a part of the puzzle instead of the whole puzzle.

CEOs must have a feel for the market

Steve Jobs based his decisions on his understanding of his brand, his read of the market, and his instincts, and his success rate was mostly flawless. So, even though data is necessary, CEOs must also know their customer and have a feel for the market. 

The key to working with data

The key to how to work with data lies in how you look at it and how you interpret it. So those who work with data need to be both intuitive and smart.

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Courtney 180

Cliff Courtney on LinkedIn

Cliff Courtney on Twitter

Today, Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, the Global Executive Vice President of Enterprise Growth for the RepTrak Company, joins Sima to discuss the history and measurement of reputation. They dive into what reputation is, what shapes it, how to measure it, and its consequences.

Stephen’s background

Stephen was born and raised in the UK, and he has been living in the US since the end of the 1990s. He trained in science for many years and geared himself toward becoming a doctor. But just before he was about to go to medical school, he changed his mind for personal reasons and moved into the realm of branding and reputation. 

He spent his formative years in the agency world. He joined the RepTrak Company eight years ago. He applies many of the skills he used in the agency world to what he does now at RepTrak. 

Stephen’s current focus

Stephen currently focuses on the premise of reputation, what it is, what drives it, and how it can help elevate the success trajectory of companies.

Reputation

The concept of reputation, how to measure it, harness it, and capture it as a tangible life force, is only about 25 years old. However, conversations about branding have been happening for around a hundred years.

The first written evidence of reputation

The first written evidence of what is now known as reputation existed about 4,000 years ago, in ancient China.  

The definition of reputation

A reputation exists in the eye of the beholder. Your reputation is how people perceive you. That gets informed by everything you do and say. 

Something interesting about reputation

Something interesting about reputation is that it ultimately drives behavior. It lies at the heart of the decision-making process when people compare one company with another.

Brand versus reputation

Your brand is the promise you intend to keep, whereas your reputation is your assessment of whether or not that promise has been fulfilled.

A disconnect

A disconnect happens when a company has a high-powered brand story but falls short of people’s expectations. That results in a decline in reputation. 

Three simple parts

Reputation can be broken down into three simple parts:

How you feel

Creating a rational foundation for your emotional belief

How you feel and what you think drives your intended behavior

Products and services

For most companies, products and services are typically the most important driver of their reputation.

Conduct and citizenship

A company’s conduct and citizenship often become the second most important driver of its reputation.

Reputation can be an inhibitor or accelerator

A physicist connected the dots and created a measurable outcome to help people understand and appreciate that reputation can either be an inhibitor or an accelerator for a business.

A trigger point

Whether they decide to do something about it or not, all companies care about their reputations because they understand that reputation is a trigger point for their accelerated success. 

Fortune companies

Fortune companies tend to fixate on their reputations because the stakes and consequences are much higher.

Why reputation counts

A company’s reputation counts because people are looking to support and work for companies that operate fairly and make a concerted effort to make this world a better place to live.

Reputation has become a full-contact sport

Power has shifted from corporate and corporate brands to consumers. Stephen feels that that power shift has turned reputation into a full-contact sport because all companies are just one negative Tweet away from a potential crisis. So they now have to constantly focus on managing their reputations.

Balancing purpose with profits

Companies that balance being purposeful in the way they operate with being profitable tend to do much better in terms of their reputations. 

The future of reputation management

Stephen believes that unofficial intelligence has a critical role in the future of reputation management. 

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Stephen Hahn-Griffiths on LinkedIn