If you lie down with dogs, you’ll wake up with fleas—or so goes an old adage. Basically, it means you’re only as good as the company you keep. When it comes to protecting your brand image, this is a huge part of maintaining a positive visage.

Control Your Narrative

People love a good story. People also listen for inconsistencies in every story they hear. The stories you put out there will determine the way your brand is perceived by the public. To resonate, they have to be relatable, they must have the ring of truth and the threads running through them must form a consistent pattern. In a lot of ways, the narrative you maintain becomes who you are. Be proud of your story, tell it to anyone who will listen and always make sure it reflects the values for which you want to be known.

Love Yourself—Everyone Else Will Too

When your friends tell you negative stories about the organizations for which they work, doesn’t your opinion of that company dim—even if only just a bit? You can spend millions of dollars crafting an image, reinforcing it and protecting it, but if the people who work for you don’t like you, they will undermine that work.

After all, to the world at large, the people who work for you are you. Your employees are your company. If they don’t love themselves (the company), it’s going to be hard to get other people to do so.

Pop icon Prince once wrote; “Style is loving yourself until everyone else does too.” If you’re doing good work and you love yourself assiduously others will eventually see the value in what you do. Make every effort to ensure the people who work for you love your company, whether you sell ebooks online, build fire trucks, or operate a shipping line.

Stand by Your Values

You outlined your beliefs, purpose and the way you go about achieving it in your company’s mission statement. Whenever you’re faced with an ethical dilemma, go back to your mission statement and ask how the decision you make will support it. If it won’t, don’t do it, regardless of how much money you could make.

Remember the Public Is Always Watching

If you really want to know how somebody thinks, observe their behavior when they think nobody’s watching. That’s when you’ll see the true nature of the individual. Of course, when you’re a public entity, everybody is always watching. This is why it’s important to make upholding your company values an intrinsic aspect of the way you do business. If it’s deeply ingrained in your company psyche, your people will behave that way out of “muscle memory.”

Every Communication Is Critical

There is no such thing as a private email message, text message or conversation. Everyone is wearing a wire today, emails always resurface, and text messages do too. You must also be very careful about sharing over social media lest you become the next digital town square flogging victim.

Ask Roseanne Barr or Justine Sacco how quickly your life can turn to dust.

Mind Your Associations

Once again; if you choose to lie down with dogs, don’t be surprised when you wake up with fleas. Be careful to partner with entities whose values match or exceed your own. If you deal with representatives, make sure your contracts include brand standards to which they agree to hold themselves. When you get right down to it, protecting your image is as simple as deciding how you want to be perceived and doing everything possible to ensure you are always seen in that light.

Published: 2018-10-18 17:35:20