Attracting Favorable Media Attention

Today, the rules of doing business have become more sophisticated and complex. The pitfalls and bumps in the road that publicly traded companies have always encountered are no longer shallow, but have deepened into gaping holes that can derail a company, unless they proceed with great caution. The media and the public are understandably skeptical, holding up a magnifying glass for possible ulterior motives or “hidden truths,” such as falsified financial reports.

Today there are also more activists who are vocal in opposing company expansions or weigh in publicly on specific projects. These opponents may or may not have all the facts, but there is no doubt that in many cases misinformation abounds. The discussion here focuses on how you can avoid these pitfalls and position your company as trustworthy. The key words in this regard: honesty and commitment.

Motivational speaker Stephen Covey, in his bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, said that in order to be highly effective one must

I especially recommend you keep Covey’s Habit Number 5 in mind.

The requirements for success in today’s environment are pure and simple: deliver more information in a timelier manner, and make it candid, with no surprises.

The travesties that unfolded at a number of large cap companies, most notably Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing and WorldCom, have been shocking and disheartening, to put it mildly. Not only did these companies fail to communicate effectively, they also failed to communicate the real corporate story, period. In so doing, they deliberately defrauded their investors and the public.

Shareholders worldwide have been rocked by such disclosures. It is a bitter pill for all of us to swallow—that management at these brand-name companies could be so downright dishonest. Yet the facts speak for themselves. These incidents of nondisclosure and poor corporate governance wiped out close to seven trillion dollars of market value almost overnight.

Every publicly traded company, regardless of sector, has been adversely affected by this debacle, and every sensible investor is now rightly questioning every public statement made by corporate management at every public company.

A survey of juror attitudes by jury research firm DecisionQuest, and the nonprofit Minority Corporate Counsel Association, showed the following: