Trust is the Key to Building and Defending Your Reputation

In chapter 11 of Measure What Matters, Katie Paine discusses threats to reputations and how to measure these crises. Trust is extremely important in building and repairing these relationships. When a crisis is not handled correctly or in a timely manner, organizations can experience damaged trust with their consumers, which in turn hurts the relationships and reputation the organization had established with those consumers. 

Organizations depend on trust to create and nurture relationships with their target publics. Employees that trust their their employers are more satisfied with their jobs, which in turn creates lower employee turnover. Trusted organizations grow faster. Most importantly, good relationships with the media can help prevent a crisis. 

Trust is multilevel, culturally rooted, communication-based, dynamic and multidimensional. When you trust a business, organization or brand you are more likely to take the time to listen to their explanation of the crisis and not jump to conclusions.  

Let's look at Burger King, a fast food giant in America. In February of 2013, Burger King's Twitter was hacked and its name changed to McDonald's with a Fish McBite's background and a photo of the golden arches as its profile picture. The hacker tweeted about Burger King being sold to McDonald's, people doing drugs and linked to videos of controversial rapper Chief Keef talking.

The hour long Twitter hi-jacking resulted in Burger King gaining 30,000 new followers, the account being suspended and Burger King's social media team taking responsibility for the situation and doing their best to fix it. Burger King's response to the media was “It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING brand has been hacked. We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings. We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics.”

Because Burger King was quick to respond and take control of their crisis, the media listened and empathized with their situation. Followers and fans of the brand did make some jokes at the burger giant's expense, but it was in good fun. Mentions and conversations about the brand sky rocketed. People trusted the brand, believed them when they they had nothing to do with the hacking and Burger King definitely came out on top in the situation. According to Social Media Today, Burger King received an almost $1,000,000 campaign investment for free due to Burger King trending on Twitter, media coverage of the event and the lack of time, agency involvement or human resources to create this type of campaign. 

What are some other examples that trust in an organization can help it come out on top during a crisis?