Corporate Communications

Reputation Management

It requires strategic vision to bulletproof corporate reputation, along with a partner who understands how marketplaces shape opinion, how stakeholders get information in the digital age, how government influences business outcomes, and how employees want to be engaged with information.

A positive corporate reputation is a valuable and concrete asset that can:

  • Enhance trust and generate the lasting loyalty of customers, shareholders, employees, and business partners.
  • Drive a positive narrative to replace a negative, or non-existent, one.
  • Fortify corporate positioning and build market share.
  • Provide a distinct competitive advantage.
  • Accrue reputational equity to draw on when threatened by crisis or attack.

To achieve these benefits, Levick works with clients at multiple levels, including:

Strategic Development – Craft the messages and storylines that resonate with diverse stakeholders and that win the loyalty of customers and the confidence of industry experts. We identify and segment your audiences, implementing traditional and digital media initiatives that reach each one with frequency and high-impact influence. At the same time, we enlist and deploy third parties to underscore your credibility and amplify your business, financial, or political position.

Internal/Employee Communications – Develop workplace communications to ensure the ongoing commitment and morale of personnel at every level of operations. Through the engagement of employees as stakeholders in good times and bad, we help to forge the strongest mutual sense of common mission.

Channel Relations – Drive channel communications with the full range of your business partners – from suppliers to distributors to retailers – that strengthen collaborations and encourage new opportunities for business growth.

Corporate Social Responsibility – Maximize public awareness of philanthropic initiatives as essential expressions of corporate purpose and culture. We help companies assume leadership roles in order to address the key issues that surround their industries – achieving substantive results and a positive reputational legacy for their good works.

Community Engagement – Create programs for companies to engage with business, social, and political leaders in their host communities translating goodwill into stronger workforces, greater support in the event of a crisis, and political influence to help advance public policy goals.

Among the many areas where Levick’s Corporate Communications practice has served our clients...

  • External and internal communications during actions launched by the SEC, state securities regulators and Attorneys General, and trial lawyers
  • Public advocacy during Department of Justice inquiries and investigations, including criminal exposure as well as bet-the-company civil claims
  • Communications direction with all key financial industry stakeholders, including regulators, institutional investors, buy- and sell-side analysts, proxy services and advisors, and credit rating agencies
  • Programs to counsel foreign companies in the United States, including preparation for appearances before Congress and regulatory bodies as well as matters pertaining to The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
  • Communications initiatives for U.S. entities in their interactions with foreign regulators.
  • Focus on penetration of emerging markets in collaboration with all key stakeholders.
  • Campaigns to minimize the reputational impact of Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) advocacy in diverse contexts, from product liability to the capital markets to NGO alliances with organized labor.

Case Studies

Deepwater Horizon

As the U.S. government took aggressive steps to assess blame across the private sector for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a 10 percent non-operating minority investor faced the real possibility of guilt by association.

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Global Oil Company

An international energy company faced a substantial need to improve its corporate reputation and image in the United States.  In addition to being assailed as "Big Oil" - and at a time of particularly high gasoline prices - it was dealing wtih a myriad of other issues and political controversies.  The company had a very good story to tell about its operations, people, and dedicated community programs, but the barrage of negative stories in the traditional and online media created an environment where everything positive was drowned out.

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