Sometimes Reputation Management issues can’t be helped, you may have disgruntled former employees, former customers with a real or perceived issue, or just someone who enjoys talking down other companies / competitors. But what about self inflicted wounds? Well, as the BBC has recently found out, something as innocent as a little kitten can cause a big reputation management issue. Children’s program ‘Blue Peter’ ran a online vote to name the newest pet on the show, a cute fluffy little kitten. The winner of the vote was ‘Cookie’. The winner that they announced on the show was ‘Socks’, which was chosen by the production team as a ‘more suitable’ name. Naturally, the news leaked that Socks was not the name chosen, and the show has now received a black eye. Already you can see that a search for ‘Blue Peter’ in Google has the news about the deceptive vote in first position.

So what’s the moral of this story? Well, you should be as honest as you can be in your dealings with your customers / donators / audience, for if you’re not, at some point the truth is going to come out, and you’re going to have much more of a reputation management issue than if you’d gone down the right path in the first place.