Your company’s reputation is probably 6 months behind reality

Tyler Sumrall is communications manager at Honeywell Technologies. 

One of the more challenging parts of communications is realizing that stakeholders often aren’t reacting to the company you see every day. They’re reacting to a much earlier version of it.

A leadership team may have changed direction, new investments may have been made, internal issues may have been addressed, yet reporters, employees, customers and community members can continue to view the organization through a lens formed months earlier.

In 10 years both agency-side and in-house, I’ve seen leadership teams grow frustrated when major improvements failed to immediately change external perceptions. The change was real, but the old narrative was still driving conversations.

Inside an organization, information moves quickly. Employees see new initiatives being launched and leaders see decisions being made. Communications teams are involved from the beginning, so they’re often looking at the most current version of the story. Most stakeholders aren’t seeing those changes in real time.

People engage with brands intermittently. A job candidate may have read an article six months ago. A customer may be relying on impressions formed during their last interaction. A reporter covering a company today could be drawing from reporting conducted years ago and sources developed over time. Perceptions tend to stick until people encounter enough evidence to update them.

That’s one reason comms work can feel repetitive. The message that seems old internally may still be new or completely unknown to much of your audience. By the time a company is ready to move on to the next story, audiences on the outside are often still processing the last one.

During periods of change, organizations often underestimate how long it takes for external perceptions to reflect internal progress. Announcing a change is relatively easy, but building recognition and credibility around that change takes longer. People generally want to see consistency before they update their opinions.

Closing the gap: What communicators can do

For communications teams, a better starting point is understanding what stakeholders currently believe about the organization.

I like to ask a simple question in brainstorming sessions: If someone hasn’t paid attention to our organization in the last six months, how would they describe us today?

Communications efforts rarely start from a blank slate. Stakeholders already have assumptions, memories and narratives that shape how they interpret new information, whether those perceptions are current or not.

Reputation rarely moves at the pace of the business, and recognizing that reality helps communicators set better expectations, build stronger plans and focus on the work required to close the gap.

Before launching the next campaign, ask what version of the company your stakeholders are reacting to — that answer should shape the strategy. Communications teams tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the story they want to tell next. Just as important is understanding the story audiences are still carrying with them.