My last blog referred to the “Motrin Moms” as a “Stakeholder Group”. In our initial conversations with clients and partners, we are often asked what we mean by “Stakeholder”.

A firm’s stakeholders include any person or group of people who have an interest in the firm, and whose interaction related to that interest may directly impact the firm’s operations. The “Stakeholder Dashboard” in our application “The Mirror” provides metrics around the most quoted people, the most prolific authors, and the inter-relationships between and among the most authoritative and influential people, organizations, authors, and publications related to media about a firm or industry.

Given our clients’ concern with cultivating their reputations for competitive advantage, the ability of a person or people to significantly impact their reputation is by association an ability to impact their operations. Thus, any person or group of people who can impact the firm’s reputation are stakeholders in the firm.

When Motrin responded to online outrage about an ad campaign, it was not responding to a boycott or to lost sales, but to the threat of these things if the weekend outrage by a small group of tech-savvy mothers expanded to a weekday discourse in the mainstream news. Motrin was not sure that this stakeholder group’s outrage would transfer to consumers-at-large, but they were not willing to take the chance that it would. As Motrin continues to apologize and claim that it has learned its lesson, it is assuring its stakeholders that they can have faith in Motrin moving forwards – in other words – it is attempting to repair and improve its reputation. This indicates to me that even if they were not convinced that the “Motrin Moms” outrage would directly cost them sales, concern over a set-back in Motrin’s reputation was enough to justify action.

Motrin received a quick lesson in the power of small but influential group of stakeholders. Other firms would be wise to learn this lesson, since Social Media has certainly given significant voice to formal and information organizations of people who previously would have had trouble being heard. In other words – social media has engendered a wide array of stakeholders who, even five years ago, would have had found it much harder to find like-minded counterparts who shared their stake in the actions of the firm, to let them organize quickly, and to make their collective voice heard around violations of their interests in the firm’s actions. Now that this wide array of stakeholders does have this capability to organize and influence, firms must stop thinking just of “markets” and “segments” and must add “stakeholder analysis” to their strategic planning.