Reputation Counsel
Reputation Counsel
When your reputation is suddenly at stake.
Short-notice communications support for when you are suddenly under scrutiny and have to respond without a communications team.
What sets it off
The cause can be almost anything. What happens next is the part that matters.
A decision. An allegation. Something said years ago. A business relationship, a collaborator, a media enquiry, or simply a situation that is now being read differently.
What these have in common is not the cause but the position: public attention has arrived before there is a plan, and the next few decisions will set the frame.
A short intervention, not a programme
Read the situation. Decide the position. Write the material.
The read.
What is known and what is public. Who actually matters here. What would make the situation worse. What needs an answer, and what is better left alone.
The position.
What to do and what not to do, in what order, and what has to change: a website, a campaign, published material, a relationship or association that needs addressing.
The material.
Statements and response lines. Messages to clients, partners or staff. Preparation for media enquiries. Written, not briefed.
What it is not
Personal branding.
Long-term reputation management.
Online reputation monitoring.
Direct, experienced communications work,
for as long as it matters.
It is not a substitute for legal advice where legal advice is required. The two work alongside each other, because legal and communications considerations do not always point to the same next step.
If the situation requires coordination across several teams, formal crisis structures or sustained crisis management, that is crisis communications. Reputation Counsel is the shorter intervention: something has landed, the next few decisions matter, and there is nobody in between.
Hands-on
Not just advice on what the statement should achieve. The statement.
Most of this work is writing under time pressure: the lines that go out, the message to the people who need to hear it first, the paragraph that replaces the one that no longer holds.
Senior communications support while the situation is developing, without building more machinery around it than it needs.
Who it is for
- People whose work or role makes them publicly visible
- Owner-led businesses, practices, studios and firms without a communications function
- People in management or on boards without a communications function behind them
- Anyone facing a media enquiry with no one to ask
The common factor is not sector or size. The issue, the decision and the communication all land with the same person.
Talk in confidence