Steel giant tests its reputation

Steel giant tests its reputation against the leadership team's ambitions

One of the world's largest metals-to-mining companies required a Board report on the reputational challenges and opportunities it was facing across its main international operations, with a view to raising its market capitalisation.
Echo proposed concrete benchmarks of performance in reputation management, reputational assets and liabilities, and communication to drive improvement.

Internal perceptions of the group's reputation were explored through in-depth interviews with key company executives. A wider programme of semi-structured external stakeholder interviews provided qualitative and quantitative insight into the drivers of reputation in each target market. These included national and European Commission policy makers, business leaders, editors and financial analysts. The findings informed a full Market Sentiment review of its positioning, messaging and competitive strategies in the media and social media.

Our client's comment was: "Based on Echo's research results, we carried out a range of measures which allowed us to greatly improve the perception of the company's transparency, corporate governance and social responsibility by our key audiences. We issued our first Social Responsibility Report and arranged special meetings with the investor community to present our vision of further increasing the company's market value …. Our market value rose more than twofold over the next year."