NEW YORK: Looking to leverage the clout of its ’Most Admired’ list, Fortune magazine has teamed with Roper Starch on a new reputation management tool.
NEW YORK: Looking to leverage the clout of its ’Most Admired’ list,
Fortune magazine has teamed with Roper Starch on a new reputation
management tool.
The product, the Fortune/ Roper Corporate Reputation Index, will be
based on a survey of 10,000 business executives and include an
additional survey of 12,000 consumers. It is slated for release next
spring.
The index will include criteria such as innovation and social
responsibility, but will also include traditional financial yardsticks
such as long-term investment value. It will offer comparisons between
responses from the general public, individual investors, industry
executives and other influential groups.
’Companies will be able to see which reputation factors are driving the
perceptions of their company and their products,’ said Vivek Shah,
director of new business ventures.
But Shah would not divulge the cost of the product or any interested
parties. He added that Fortune’s Most Admired rankings will not alter
its current methodology, which emphasizes financial performance.
Fortune had been looking to team with a research firm since last spring
(PRWeek, April 26), but the news is no doubt a response to NYU professor
Charles Fombrun’s recent release of his Reputation Quotient (RQ).
Fombrun and Louis Harris developed the RQ as an alternative to Fortune’s
list, but RQ has not yet been accepted as an industry standard. Also,
some observers have said that the RQ places too much emphasis on
consumer perception at the expense of companies that primarily serve
businesses.
The NYU professor was critical of the Fortune index, suggesting that it
lacked a well-defined methodology.
This latest reputation tool will no doubt carry added weight, as it
comes from a neutral party rather than a PR firm. But as with RQ, there
is no guarantee that it will garner universal acceptance.
Among those involved in creating the new tool is John Gilfeather, who
recently moved from Yankelovich Partners after 30 years.
