As Scot noted in the previous post, reputation is held in receivership, a constantly changing equation of perceptions held in the minds of stakeholders.

Your company’s reputation is constantly challenged by various interests in the arenas of media and government. So there are compelling lessons to be learned when the attacking interests within these quarters damage themselves by falling on the sword of their own tactics.

“Astroturfing” in the healthcare debate is a case whereby the organized tactics that set out to damage the reputation of another party and set forth regulation or reprisal were revealed as fraudulent.

Because reputation relies on trust – the willingness of others to be open to our influence – and because integrity-based trust-violations erode the positive perceptions associated with a group, being exposed as disingenuous is typically damaging to the cause of the exposed interests. Scenarios like this present an opportunity for restoring and even increasing the perceived credibility of the entity being attacked, as they counter-balance the negative perceptions that were previously fostered by the attacking interests. Expect to see a shift in healthcare conversation back to a focus on benefits, as opposed to the elicitation of dread.

Before engaging with organized interests, communications professionals should question the legitimacy of the opposing forces and consider the likelihood that the organized interests will be exposed by the forces that oppose them. An analysis that considers the third parties and media forces that work against these groups should be considered. Countering false or staged claims should not be the object of a communications strategy (think the failure of the “swiftboat” response), but rather a trust-oriented re-positioning of discourse that will help expose the opposing agenda, frame them as untrustworthy, and level the perceptual equation in the minds of receivers.