Dear Disney, Can You Hear Me Now?

As the saying goes perception is reality. A few weeks ago, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek made national headlines for not publicly opposing the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill in Florida. As a result, employees walked out of work in a protest demanding a response from the national icon. Increasingly brands and major corporations are expected to be social advocates on a wide variety of issues by their stakeholders – customers, employees, investors, and their communities. Often finding themselves in the hot seat with everything from their reputation to employee morale and profits at stake, what can brands do when politics hit the boardroom?

With the rise of social media and online conversations happening in real-time on social, economic, and political issues, companies are finding themselves on their heels trying to figure out if or when they should respond. With competing stakeholder interests, brands today must understand their stakeholder perceptions first before the crisis happens.

A company’s reputation equals past perceptions + expected future behaviors. Its exact measure is complex, but whether or not a group of stakeholders trusts your company is a good way to start. Trust is the key to a positive reputation.

So what did Disney do wrong? They did what most companies do, stay silent and hope the issue passes. Today silence is no longer an option with social media conversations happening 24/7. Advocates will hold the brand accountable online and demand response or worse, employees will walk out in protest. In the days following, CEO Bob Chapek finally made a public statement to apologize and promised to go on an “employee listening tour”, but it was too late. The reputational damage had been done, trust was lost, and the company has been under public scrutiny in the national spotlight ever since.

Conversate Labs can help brands avoid a reputational crisis by listening to and understanding their audience’s perceptions, opinions, and emotions on a specific topic before it becomes a national headline. If Disney listened to their employees before this became an issue, they would have known how to respond on the topic. The only way for a brand to recover from a national crisis on this scale is to begin to build trust with its stakeholders again, which will take time and significant effort. For now, stakeholders and employees can only wonder, “Can you hear me now?”