As one of the largest specialty chemicals companies, the customer operates in many areas worldwide, where even minor incidents can trigger significant public outrage – from mining in developing countries to working with odorous and explosive chemicals to substances that can be used in both pharmaceutical development and drug production. As a publicly traded company with significant free float, negative headlines can have a dramatic impact on company value and capital. Its primary interest is therefore to prevent accidents from occurring in the first place – and, where something does happen, to recognize the very first and smallest signs in order to resolve problems and actively communicate them, rather than allowing them to escalate into a scandal.
To achieve this goal, Hase & Igel conducts interviews with employees from various units and systematically evaluates previous crisis events. On this basis, a system of potential reputation-relevant crises and corresponding indicators is developed, which can be used to identify such incidents and their escalation potential early on from public signals. Social listening and media monitoring are used to continuously test the identified topics against live data. This makes it clearer how people really talk about such issues and which formulations should be interpreted as the first warning signs – without constantly raising false alarms. The Neutrum Topic Navigator, in particularly critical topic areas, provides a highly differentiated record of the different “camps” among critics and which aspects are crucial for each of them. The Reputation Monitor – an adaptation of the Neutrum Innovation Monitor – is then trained with this quality-assured data for the continuous, global collection, automatic classification, and evaluation of early warning indicators for potential reputation crises. The system is completed with the design of appropriate alerting and escalation processes – and training of all internal stakeholders.
The specialty chemicals group now has a global, automated monitoring and alerting system for potential crises that identifies reputation-threatening events and issues within minutes with a high accuracy rate and places them on the agenda at headquarters. This ensures an extremely rapid response and avoids stock market losses. A welcome side effect: A greater understanding of the sensitivities of external stakeholders also leads to the discovery and exploitation of opportunities. This dimension will be given even greater weight in the future through a gradual expansion of the Reputation Monitor , which has already begun, into an opportunity radar that also monitors drivers of share-price-promoting perceptions.
German 