It is a generally accepted premise that corporate reputation provides a halo effect across all of your stakeholders – influencing decisions about where people invest their money and apply for a job and providing opportunities for premium pricing for products. And few would argue that having a positive reputation beats the alternative, by any measure. But a growing trend seems to suggest that the relationship between product sales and reputation may be even closer than you think, and it is a two-way street. Great products build reputations, and great reputations sell products.

Welcome to the Age of the Corpsumer. Consider the following:

• The annual Harris Reputation Ranking Poll indicates that more than half of general consumers (and almost 3 out of 4 of Opinion Elites) do research about the company before making product purchasing decisions.
• In that same poll, 9 of the 10 companies in the top 10 were companies with category leading consumer products, including Johnson & Johnson – a pharmaceutical company well known for its strategy of building its brand and reputation on its consumer products business as “the baby company” rather than its pharmaceutical and medical device offerings. (Notably, Berkshire Hathaway is the exception – a firm led by Warren Buffet who may be the ultimate example of corpsumerism).
• A recent study by the Reputation Institute revealed that Millennials buy into the company based on their perception of the enterprise, more than their perception of the products – almost two to one.

What is a corpsumer, anyway? And what are the implications for communicators?

A corpsumer is a consumer whose perceptions of a brand and purchase decisions are impacted by their perceptions of the company, as well as the product benefits themselves. They want to support companies that are good employers and good citizens, in addition to buying stylish or trendy products. And they vote with their wallets. In fact, some of our most successful companies today are examples of this very phenomenon…Apple, Starbucks, Nike. Do they really have the best products based on features like functionality, style and price? Or do corpsumers love these companies, and therefore choose their products over similar competitors’ offerings?

Corpsumers are more loyal and more inclined to advocate for the companies and products they love. Once you have them, you have them forever…unless you do something to mess it up. This audience is the “center of the bull’s eye” in terms of growth of the business and growth of the brand.

This development has significant implications for those of us in marketing and communications. Simply put, if you are launching or supporting a product in the marketplace based on the product features alone, you are leaving market share on the table. The reverse is also true – if you are working with a company to build its reputation, improve its perceptions on Wall Street or win the war for talent, and you aren’t leveraging your products for storytelling, you are missing the boat. There is no better example of this approach than Apple, a computer company that fundamentally changed its reputation and exponentially grew its business based on consumer love for its products, that became love for the company, using its CEO as the ultimate pitch man.

We are living in the age of the Corpsumer, and it is here to stay.

As the curtain goes up on the Democratic National Convention, I found myself wondering why we have these conventions at all.  They were originally designed to choose a candidate – yet the candidates in this election, and pretty much every election I can remember, were determined long before either party’s conventions opened.  So what’s the point?  Most experts would say to rally the base, and to some extent put on a show.

The same kinds of conversations are happening in corporate conference rooms.  Do we really need to hold these employee town hall meetings?  Can’t we just do a video conference call?  Or send an email update? These meetings are time consuming, expensive – and heck, I am not sure anyone even wants to come.  (Not to mention the numerous work streams to prep, script and orchestrate the meetings in question.)

Even in our digital society, there is a place and purpose for the good old fashioned employee town hall.  Here are three reasons to keep them going:

1. Build Community – sometimes the greatest value of bringing people together is literally to bring people together. Reinvigorate passion and enthusiasm for your “cause” and re-commit as a team to the common goals by framing them within the current context.  We saw this last week at the Republican National Convention where Making America Great Again took on a new form – of keeping America safe in light of recent events.

2. Showcase the Leadership Team – There is great thought and strategy dedicated to the speaker line-up of a national political convention, with each speaker selected to highlight a particular strength, aspect or focus of the candidate. But these speeches inevitably change the way we view the speechmakers themselves. John F. Kennedy Jr.’s introduction of Ted Kennedy in 1988 and Marco Rubio’s speech just four years ago catapulted them into the category of “potential future contender.”  Michelle Obama’s introduction of her husband humanized President Obama in a way that no one else could, and also made her the First Lady that everyone wanted to have as their BFF.

3. Build Trust – We trust people, not companies, and not positions. Giving employees the opportunity to see their leadership team up close and personal goes a long way to humanizing your leaders and building trust with your team.  The more interactive and engaging the format of the meeting can be, the better.  Trust is often earned in the Q&A section of those meetings where spontaneous, informal interactions show the depth and breadth of your leaders in a way that just doesn’t happen via Power Point presentation.

As we watch the conventions unfold, there will undoubtedly be moments of learning and inspiration about how to do a town hall meeting better.  One thing we know for sure, even an average employee town hall meeting has more impact than an email.

Move over Kim Kardashian.  Michelle Obama broke the Internet and one-upped her carpool karaoke. In a moving speech that provided exactly the right balance of inspiration and attack on he who shall remain nameless, the First Lady showed as that simplicity, authenticity and storytelling trumps soundbites.  She wasn’t just the First Lady of the United States, she was every parent in the United States.  It is hard to pick a best moment, because they were all great moments.  (We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats.)

Like lots of PR pros probably were doing, I found myself wondering how she managed to slay a dragon, without ever naming the opposing candidate. And how she managed to talk about everything from race relations to role models without being hostile, scary or “preachy.”  It all boils down to one simple concept – she shunned sound bites in favor of storytelling.  This isn’t to say that there weren’t quotable moments; there were plenty.  Like “When they go low, we go high.”  But she told a story that everyone could relate to.  And it was her story.  Personal.  Authentic.  Intimate.  Emotional.  This is the stuff of great speeches, and great stories.

This is one of the great contradictions of communications today.  On one hand, we are being inundated with content, which is creating a drive for brevity.  Say it in 140 characters or less, or you lose the audience.  At the same time, storytelling is one of the big buzzwords of our profession.  (For those old enough to remember PR in the 90s, storytelling is the new press conference).

Perhaps it isn’t about length, but rather about engagement.  Storytelling works, despite its length, because it evokes an emotional response.  The First Lady did it by showing us her emotion, and telling her own story.  So many leaders shy away from talking about themselves.  They worry that it will make them seem, well, Trump-like.  Arrogant, self centered, or tone deaf.  And there is a fine line between sharing your personal story and talking about yourself incessantly.  How do you get it right?  It is more of an art than a science, for sure.  As a general rule, personal stories work best when they provide context or validation of a common theme, goal or priority.  Share your vision or dream, and leverage your experience or perspective to explain how to make that dream a reality.

And if you are like me, you are dying to know who wrote that brilliant speech.  For anyone tasked with writing for others, this piece about Michelle Obama’s speechwriter gives some great insight into how great speeches like that happen.  (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t include edits 15 minutes before you step up to the mic!)

We are a culture that celebrates and values athletic achievement.  It’s the reason we pay someone who plays a game at the highest level more than someone who saves lives, or who is the leader of the free world.  It’s why we wear a name other than our own across our chests, and on our backs.  And it’s why brands ante up millions in endorsement deals – because our admiration of these people translates to our spending habits.

I’ve written before about the inevitable moments when these athletes become celebrities, and inevitably let us down, and the reputation implications for the brands that support them.  At the first whiff of a celebrity-athlete scandal, the conversation immediately turns to whether they will lose their endorsement dollars.

But what happens when one of those athletes turns the tables, and becomes a leader – off the field or court?

Michael Jordan, whose footwear and clothing empire is worth an estimated $2.25 billion per year, and is the most famous athlete to have been cut from his high school team, well pretty much ever, is speaking out about racial violence and the problems that have been gripping our headlines.

And he isn’t taking a side, or polarizing people against one another. You can read more about his donations, and his decisions here.  What struck me more than the size of his check or the choice of organizations was the respectful, unifying tone of his explanation – in support of law enforcement, but also acknowledgement that not everyone has had his experiences, particularly members of his own community.

The simplicity of his approach is in its balance – he chose a brand new organization and one of the oldest and most respected, and funded them equally.  He acknowledged problems on both sides.  And he bypassed “silver bullet” reactionary rhetoric in favor of a pragmatic acknowledgement that change takes time.

Isn’t that what leadership is all about?  Presenting something complex and difficult in an accessible, constructive manner, managing expectations and defining success? Helping people see the goal, and believe it can be achieved, then committing resources to making it happen?

Bravo, Michael Jordan.  I am sure I will be buying more sneakers very soon.

In case you missed it yesterday amidst all of the news about backpacks, bombs and terrorist threats, in the wee hours of yesterday morning, Skittles, and its parent company Mars, slayed a dragon with a single tweet. The brand landed in the crosshairs of controversy when Donald Trump Jr. compared refugees to a bowl of Skittles, with a few of them being poisoned.

This is the new kind of social media crisis that companies face – when a celebrity or prominent person references the brand in some sort of public statement, unbeknownst to the brand. Sometimes it is a good thing, and sometimes it is a not so good thing. And sometimes, even a good thing can become a not-so-good thing, depending on the company’s engagement, and the response of the twitter-verse.

Mars stopped a conversation right in its tracks and made its Skittles brand a hero with its response that refugees are people. Skittles are candy. What can every brand learn from the Skittles, Mars’ response?

1. Social media is always on, and you need to be, too – I know you’ve heard it before, and it seems obvious. But notice the time stamp on the Mars response – it was after 1 a.m. Most of the time when brands get caught flat footed, it is because it is after hours.  Logic dictates that social conversation gets active when people are being social – outside of work hours. Brands need to be ready. All the time.

2. Choose your “spokesperson’ wisely – in a traditional media situation, a PR team would think carefully about the spokesperson – who has the right “voice” and demeanor? Who has the most credibility? Who is available and can get to the CNN studio? The same is true with social channels, with the added benefit that all of your social channels are always on, and always available. In the Skittles case, Mars took the reigns as the parent company. Skittles’ social channels are about candy – fun and whimsical. The Mars channels tackle social issues, sustainability and other aspects of citizenship. It was a great choice to elevate this conversation to the Mars level.

3. Resist the urge to market at every opportunity – Every year, there are roundup articles about the worst twitter fails, and they usually involve brands that jump into a conversation in poor taste. Like DiGiornio pizza mistakenly tapping into a hashtag about domestic violence. Or pretty much everything Kenneth Cole does.

In just one week, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will square off head to head in the first Presidential debate.  For political junkies, this is the equivalent of Oscar night or the Super Bowl, and pundits offering their views of the behind the scenes debate prep will soon be hitting the airwaves.  We will hear all about things like clothing choices, diction, and anticipating the tough questions.  We know in debates past, candidates literally got up on their soap boxes in an effort to eliminate the proverbial height bias in Presidential politics.  But this year there will also be a new dynamic at play.  One as dramatic and long-lasting as the first televised debates between Nixon and Kennedy.  For the first time we will see a man square off against a woman.

For those in the Hillary Camp, this debate preparation takes on a whole new layer of complexity.  Finding the balance between assertive and shrill; authoritative and bossy; knowledgeable and “know it all.”  These gender biases in communications and leadership are nothing new to women in corporate America.  Ask an accomplished woman if she’s ever been called a -itch, felt like her ideas went unheard or un-noticed.  Or struggled to navigate the double standards of leadership behavior and effective communications between men and women.  (Do you even need to ask?)

One thing we do know – women may be held to very high standards, but there is huge interest in the stories about and from women in leadership.  In fact, a recent MWW study of media coverage of female leaders revealed that female CEOs receive twice as much media coverage as their male counterparts.   Last week, Fortune released its latest Most Powerful Women list, and no surprise that among the women in the top tier are some of the great communicators of our time – Mary Barra, Indra Nooyi, Sheryl Sandberg and another one-time candidate, Meg Whitman.  How closely connected are effective leadership and effective communications?  And how can women level the playing field?

The solutions are complex, and there is no silver bullet.  The risk here is that women can lose their authentic voice in their efforts to navigate these kinds of communications challenges.  Like most unconscious biases, it starts with acknowledging the problem exists, and offering support and solutions for women, like MWW’s HerVoice practice – a suite of PR services designed by women, for women in leadership positions, or who strive to get there.  I particularly liked this piece about how women in the White House amplify each other (good advice for managers and leaders of all genders).  What a simple, but effective concept.

Somewhere in a conference room, a Donald Trump impersonator and a team of experts are helping Hillary Clinton prepare for the upcoming debates.  Will she find her authentic voice, and be able to tell her story?  Or will gender bias live on – not just in the media coverage of these debates, but in living rooms across America? Time will tell.

Being a woman in America in 2016 is an experience riddled with dichotomy. In some ways, things feel more equal than ever. Many women are now the primary breadwinners in their households. Women are more likely than men to enroll in and graduate from college. And yet, women ― particularly women of color ― are paid less and are far less likely to hold leadership roles at work. One in five women are sexually assaulted while in college. Despite a female candidate now favored to win the Presidency, misogyny is alive and well. In many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Like most social issues, awareness is the first step to solving them. The rise of feminism in American cultural conversation is an encouraging trend, whether it’s about “Leaning In” or #blackgirlmagic. For many people of an older generation, “feminism” is a complicated and often dirty word. It conjures up images of bra burning, man-hating women of an era gone by. But it shouldn’t be. Because of our collective unconscious bias against women — and speaking plainly, pretty much everyone who isn’t a straight white man — can only be addressed if we can acknowledge it. There are promising signs that the next generation of Americans will help lead the way. While there’s been much hand-wringing about over-policing of speech on college campuses — criticism that’s not without validity — young Americans are more attuned and committed than any other generation in history to creating an equal playing field at home, in the workplace, and in public life.

Of course, this forward thinking hasn’t reached every corner of America. Female leaders, particularly those guiding large corporations or organizations in male-dominated fields, often cringe at the level of interest in their gender.  We know that women in CEO roles receive more media interest and coverage than their male counterparts, even though they are far fewer in number.  And while we may not want our gender to be a topic of conversation, women who have managed to climb to the top of the ladder have a responsibility to ensure that the progress we’ve made continues to grow and reach back down to help others up. We can’t blaze new trails if the ones behind us become overgrown and impassable. Failing to acknowledge and talk about gender in the workplace and in society
enables the erosion of progress, in the same way clichéd talk about “colorblind” policies around race ignore a legacy of structural inequity that’s still unresolved today.

Today is the International Day of the Girl, the one day out of the year where we are reminded that it is important to empower girls from a young age to find their passion, and to find their voices. Whether it’s Girls Who Code, Girls Inc., or She’s the First, countless organizations are emerging that do the hard and dirty work of reaching back down the ladder to help the next young woman up. Talking — or for that matter, writing a blog post — is easy. Getting into the trenches and making real impacts is where it gets hard and where the most meaningful work is done to empower the next generation.

At MWWPR, we have an expertise in working with female leaders, and we’ve developed our HerVoice offerings to help women in leadership roles find their authentic voices as women, and as leaders, and to use those voices to advance their company’s reputation. This presents another bittersweet dichotomy: on one hand, I am proud our agency is empowering and advancing women in leadership, and walking the talk with a leadership team that is filled with strong, accomplished, and inspiring women.  But it also makes me sad that in 2016, this is still needed.

Change begins with conversation, and let’s hope that the next generation of women in leadership won’t need HerVoice, because they will have found their voices long ago. Today, tell your daughters, nieces, neighbors and friends that their ideas, their voices and their passions matter. And more importantly, find a way to act. Whether it’s in ways big or small, at a local or global level, we are the change we’ve been waiting for.

Anyone besides me have election fatigue? This Presidential race has been particularly toxic, revealing the dark underbelly of our society in an unsettling manner. No doubt, in a just a few short days, our President-elect will begin to talk about healing America, coming together and fixing what ails us. And (call me a skeptic) in all likelihood, the government will fail, as partisan politics, personal ambition and re-election priorities inevitably take precedent.

But all is not lost. In fact, data suggests that Americans are putting their faith in Corporate America to fix what ails us. In fact, the Cassandra Report found that 63 percent of people in the U.S. think that it’s companies, not their governments, that can make the biggest positive impact in the world. And if you think about it, this makes perfect sense. The workplace is the only real “classroom” for teaching adults that we have. In the past month, I’ve had three separate client conversations where they’ve talked about their ability to have an impact on society by making changes within their four walls. (And everyone knows 3 makes a trend!) This is CSR and citizenship on a whole new level…and corporations are tackling social issues that legislation and regulation have failed to conquer.

Take a look at three big issues we’ve been hearing about on the campaign trail and ask yourself, how has government fixed it? And then consider what Corporate America is doing.

Income inequality – The fight to raise the minimum wage has been raging for a couple of years now, making headlines but not making much in the way of progress. New disclosure rules around CEO pay will take effect in 2017, creating additional conversations about the disparity between the haves and the have nots. But meanwhile, in corporate America some of the poster children of the problems of low wages have been raising employee pay voluntarily, and with great business benefit. Walmart made the connection between employee pay and customer service, and increased hourly wages, prompting a 75 percent rebound in customer service scores. McDonald’s, Fight for Fifteen’s enemy No. 1, had similar results when they raised their wages, further supporting the idea that doing what is right is also good for business. Other companies are taking an even more progressive approach known as “Open Salaries” providing transparency of pay for all levels, not just the CEO. And of course, the notion that the hourly job you have today shouldn’t be your forever job, a position promoted by Starbucks and others as part of their progressive approach to tuition reimbursement addressing the root cause of low wages – lack of skills and education, rather than just throwing money at the problem.

Equal Opportunity – Gender, race and age continue to be front and center in the news and on the political stage, and some of the legislative and regulatory remedies have created more problems than they solved, with the transgender bathroom issue being one of the most prominent examples. It would be hard to find a company today that doesn’t have a public statement of commitment to diversity and inclusion, but some of the newer and trickier issues around LGBTQ are a great example of how companies are leading the charge for our society. In addition, we are seeing a renewed focus in this year of the woman to be sure that we eliminate the glass ceiling for women, particularly in fields like technology,  science and finance with companies ranging from DropBox to IBM leading the charge.

Strengthening the Family – Despite the campaign soundbites about family values and the importance of the family, it is not a secret that the U.S. lags the developed world in terms of creating family friendly policies, particularly as related to work. This is a place where corporate America is leading the charge, including MWWPR’s client Deloitte, whose announcement about paid family leave was the first in a series of companies deciding to expand their family leave benefits in a meaningful way, and to include benefits for things other than birth of a child. Of course, major tech companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Netflix are a big part of this movement. But what is even more encouraging is seeing companies outside of the tech sector like Nike, law firm DLA Piper, Goldman Sachs and Choice Hotels getting in on the action.

This is not to say that there isn’t an important role for government in tackling the biggest issues of our time. But it is great to see companies getting off the sidelines and doing innovative and progressive things to contribute to the solutions. So as we debate which candidate will be better for (fill in the blank of your most important issue here) let’s not forget that employers have the opportunity to influence people and their behavior, too. It’s good for business, and it’s good for America. And as Glinda told Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we’ve had the power all along.

On Election Day, I watched my social media feeds fill with posts from amazing, pant-suit wearing women taking their daughters to the polls and proudly casting their vote for our first woman President. All the polls told us she would win. It was mathematically impossible for him to get enough electoral votes. Until he did, and she didn’t.

This presidential cycle has revealed a dark underbelly of American society. We are more divided than ever. More racist than we care to admit. And even so, more willing to elect a man, any man, (gasp! even a black man) than to elect a woman who has been described as the most qualified candidate to run for President in history.

Throughout the process, we brushed off commentary about Secretary Clinton’s “strident and shrill” tone. The continued conversation about her wardrobe, something we know that fascinates the media when talking about women, and not about men. We allowed her opponent to continually describe her as weak and “lacking the stamina” for the job because she had pneumonia. (Can you imagine a male candidate powering through pneumonia?)

Then we donned our pantsuits and confidently headed to the polls. Except that many of us voted for him. Half of white women voted for Trump, despite his blatant and repeated displays of misogyny; his flip attitude about rape; and his clear contempt for high achieving women, unless he’d deem them worthy of dating. Women of color didn’t really turn out for her either.

So much for the year of the woman. Let’s not let a few women reaching C-level roles, or impressive lists like Forbes Most Powerful Women cloud the facts: the only thing more pervasive in America than racism is sexism. The glass ceiling is alive and well. We view women getting close as cracks in that ceiling, but it seems the opposite is true. The closer we get, the stronger it gets. In this case, people who hadn’t voted in 20 years turned out in droves to reinforce the glass ceiling and ensure that our next Commander in Chief would be a Mr. President, not a Madame President.

In response, we focus on building the self-esteem of young girls, urging them towards careers in STEM and boosting their confidence, while doing little to change the system they will enter as adults that is stacked against them.

They say the first step to solving a problem is recognizing you have one.  And Secretary Clinton, in her gracious and inspiring concession speech, reminded us all that we still have work to do.  Now, more than ever, it is important that we make our voices heard; and that we elevate and celebrate women in leadership roles and encourage them to tell their stories.

So many women in leadership shy away from talking about their experiences as women, for fear of being taken less seriously than their male counterparts.  But our experience is different.  We do overcome more hurdles, different challenges and bring a unique perspective to leadership as a result of those experiences. It’s time for accomplished, successful women to embrace their entire story, not just the sanitized, gender-free version of it we think that society will accept. Because gender bias is real. The first step to solving it is acknowledging it.

The past couple of weeks have been very eye-opening in America, on many fronts. And with the election of Donald Trump to the White House, despite overwhelming polls predicting that Hillary Clinton would break the most visible glass ceiling in the world, we must re-examine our ideas about gender in our society.

America, we’ve been kidding ourselves.

Despite a growing body of evidence that companies with more women in leadership and on the board have better financial performance, an overwhelming number of Americans still think men are better at business strategy, better at financial management and better at negotiation than women. Even more striking, one-third of Americans think that we won’t see gender parity in the workplace for 100 years or more. Think about it this way: people think we will be vacationing on Mars before we will have gender equality.

These were the results of the MWWPR HerVoice Survey on Gender in the Workplace, which was conducted by Wakefield Research in October of this year…before the Presidential election.

Depressing. Or motivating, depends on your perspective. Personally, I am a fighter. So what can we do about it? I believe that realizing you have a problem (or realizing you have a bigger problem than you thought) is the first step to changing it. Here’s my take on three simple things leaders of both genders can do to make it happen.

1. Stop shying away from talking about your experience as a woman in leadership (or your experiences with women in leadership). It doesn’t make you less of a leader to talk about your unique experience, whether it is because of gender or something else. But when we brush off that discussion as being too “pink” we inadvertently reinforce the belief that gender bias no longer exists.

2. Take advantage of the high level of media interest in female leaders, but don’t allow others to “pink-wash” you (or the women in your organization) by limiting the conversation to soft topics like workplace issues. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to be on the front lines of advocacy for workplace policies that are family and woman friendly. However, by defining ourselves as leaders exclusively by those topics, we reinforce the stereotype that the “heavy lifting” of business strategy and financial management are being handled by the boys.

3. Be more than a mentor. Be an advocate. Amplify the ideas of women, be sure they get the credit they deserve. Women are encouraged from a young age to develop high levels of emotional intelligence. To be collaborative. To worry about the outcomes over who gets the credit. These are all good things. But they are also the reasons that we need advocates (of either gender by the way) – people who are willing to put some skin in the game of a woman’s career by recommending them, advocating for them and publicly supporting them, not just coaching them one on one.

Unconscious bias is called unconscious for a reason. But we have the power to change it. One conversation, and one leader at a time.