How do you find your organisation's reputation North Star? With Ellie Thompson and Danielle Restivo

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

On the show today, I’m chatting with Delphi co-founder Ellie Thompson and ZOE’s communications director, Danielle Restivo, about how to find your organisation's reputation North Star.

Ellie was previously CEO at Harvard. She launched Delphi alongside Louie St Clare and Pete Marcus in May last year.

Danielle has had in-house experience in senior roles at the likes of Linkedin, SAP, Google and Vodafone. She joined ZOE as its communications and PR director in 2023.

The central premise behind the subject for today’s show is that if reputation were prioritised where it should be within organisations - communications directors would be the CEO’s best friend. And currently, in the main, they are not.

So today, we’re going to chat about the reasons for this - who’s at fault, and hopefully, we’ll touch on some suggested solutions for any comms directors out there who can empathise with this issue.

Before we start a plug for our latest webinar launch, the topic for this one is “How to track the success of an earned media campaign." tickets are free, and we’re putting this one on in partnership with our good friends at Carma. The event is promoted on the PRmoment homepage.

A quick mention about the relaunch of PRmoment. If you take a look at PRmoment.com, you'll see a brand new design with lots of new features, hopefully easier navigation and also the launch of our new subscription training service for senior folks within agencies' PRmoment Leaders. Do take a look and let us know if you like it.

Thanks also so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Elie, Danielle and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Why do organisations need a reputational North Star?

“A reputation north star gives you your reputational requirement…It gives you absolute clarity. …It’s a living shifting thing.”

“It’s about what reputation we need if that’s what we want to achieve as a business.”

4 mins What is the difference between a Reputational North Star and your comms team’s objectives?

6 mins Do many companies try to define their reputational North Star?

7 mins How should companies define their reputational North Star?

10 mins Your North Star Gap: How far away is your organisation’s reputation from your reputation, North Star?

12 mins Do you think too many in-house comms teams get beaten down by the day-to-day?

15 mins How have we got to a place where, for some organisations, comms doesn’t play a leading role in an organisation's reputation management?

“In some organisations, reputation and comms are just not seen as the same thing.”

20 mins To what extent is the in-house comms role a process of internal stakeholder management?

“You will often report to someone who has no experience in comms of reputation.”

24 mins Danielle explains ZOE’s reputational North Star.

28 mins How can communicators make the shift from brand awareness amongst their target audiences to a good reputation?

“Measurement drives behaviours.”

32 mins For some comms teams, there is an increasing emphasis on impact on sales. To what extent is this a product of reputation, and to what extent should a comms team take a shorter-term lead generation approach?

“Every CEO is different. Every CEO has their own experience of comms - and comes with a bias.”

39 mins Ellie’s theory of Reputational Capital: Your reputation is like a bank account. You will have to make deposits into it and withdrawals from it. But don’t go into your overdraft!

“It’s like an investment product. If you invest in it, it delivers some much more value.”

40 mins Is it still a truism that most CEOs don’t understand the importance of reputation and the influence of communications until they have been through a crisis situation?

43 mins The vital link between a good reputation and a good product!

46 mins What are the attributes of a successful in-house comms team?