Our opening issue of 2005 picks up on several key themes that emerged from our 2004 Corporate Reputation Watch (CRW) survey.

Leveraging corporate reputation in selling products and services continues to be a preoccupation of senior company executives. Vince Hulbert, a senior leader in our NY corporate practice and Ruth Pestana, head of US research, discuss some of the key trends from a B2B survey done by sister firm Penn, Schoen Berland, which confirms the concept that corporate reputation does matter in the B2B selling process. The authors discover five key trends from the data that are most salient and should be of interest to both corporate and marketing communications professionals.

Once again, attracting and retaining employees is deemed a key objective of reputation management, and Barbara Edler, head of our Enterprise Change Communication specialty in the US, discusses how putting employees first – ahead of shareholders and customers – can yield dividends in terms of customer satisfaction, employee performance, and ultimately financial results. Barbara articulates a five-step approach to making employees vocal and credible ambassadors for their companies.

The corporate governance reform movement is sweeping the globe, and is a top of mind issue among senior execs everywhere, according to CRW. Glenn Schloss, director of our corporate practice in Hong Kong, discusses what Asian companies are doing to catch up to companies in other parts of the world in implementing strong governance programs. He also notes how the need to access equity capital in the US and Europe is helping to drive this trend.

According to CRW, corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is now on the agenda of corporate boards of directors, and is therefore getting much more attention than ever before. Andrew Pharoah, head of corporate affairs in the UK, examines CSR, and the relationship of strategic philanthropy to an overall approach to this discipline. Andy believes that we’re past the “tipping point” for CSR, to where its precepts and imperatives are going to become a permanent part of the global business landscape.

Udo Becker, a director of our corporate practice in Frankfurt, examines the new role of the CEO in driving an integrated approach to reputation management. Udo explains why the CEO continues to be the personal standard bearer for a company’s reputation, and the need for the CEO to drive reputation efforts, both through behavior and communications. He also tackles the topic of transparency, and why some companies find it so difficult to be truly transparent, at the same time urging companies to proactively adopt transparency as a reputation management strategy.

Finally, we focus on the US environment as it relates to governance and large corporate enterprises in the wake of the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. In it, we reinforce the need for companies to act in a human manner to create a sense of personality, bring their employees into the communications mix and take a strategic approach to corporate social responsibility. We also make note of several findings from WPP’s new proprietary study linking corporate reputation to consumer behavior, ReputationZ.

We hope you enjoy this special CRW issue, and that your 2005 is off to a great start.