Each week on The Thursday Three with Pushkin PR we share three news stories that captivated our attention during the week ranging from public relations and social media trend updates to relevant news in the industries we serve including healthcare, nonprofits, government and festival clients.
Corporate Reputation: Who Reigns Supreme?
Chief Executive: Finding the World’s Most Admired Companies
Corporate reputation is built by a variety of factors including customer service, the quality of leadership and their visibility, and of course, public relations efforts. Once a corporate reputation is established (whether favorably or unfavorably) changing the status quo is challenging. This article identifies an interesting phenomenon, the corporate version of Newton’s Law: companies that get in trouble, stay in trouble.
Audiences are so overwhelmed with information and data sources that once they formulate an opinion about a brand, changing that perception is extremely difficult. This study examines the favorability of top brands to determine which factor has the largest impact on corporate reputation and admiration. Read up and get to work ensuring that your company is focused on the aspect the study concludes is the most important to building a favorable brand image. Any guesses about which U.S. company ranks the highest in terms of favorability?
There’s a New iPhone in Town
Vox: 6 things to know about Apple’s latest product announcement
Spoiler alert: if you guessed above that Apple is the nation’s most favorably viewed brand, you are correct! Speaking of our favorite tech giant, they recently introduced the next generation of iPhones and Apple Watches. The big takeaways? Headphone jacks are dead, the Apple Watch is officially a health tracking device and you better get used to unlocking your phone with Face ID.
The Focus Group Still Holds Value for Communicators
Agility PR: Analyzing focus groups—are they still essential for consumer research?
The focus group was born as a tool to analyze how consumers felt about products and why people behave the way they do in order to identify more effective ways to sell to customers. When research pioneers like Robert Merton and Ernest Dichter first began identifying the power of focus groups to tap into what consumers wanted, there were limited avenues for these consumers to express their thoughts. Today, consumers have more platforms than ever to express their thoughts and interact with companies. Does this increased communication power render the focus group obsolete? Not quite, this article argues. Instead, tools like social media allow brands to conduct focus groups on a much larger scale, more quickly and less expensively.