The Context and Brand Reputation Impacts
The central bank of Ghana known as Bank of Ghana (BoG) in a press release dated the 4th March 2024, suspended the Foreign Exchange Trading Licenses of Guaranty Trust Bank Limited (GT Bank) and FBN Bank Ghana Limited (FirstBank Ghana) for one month under section 11 (2) of the Foreign Exchange Act 2006, (Act 723) for breaching forex regulatory guidelines.
Globally, corporate brands are obliged to follow and adhere to industrial regulatory guidelines for sustainable business environment and consumer trust. How corporate brands are presented across the media ecosystems induce a mental-image and a degree of consumer perception about a brand which subsequently drives business towards a brand. How the media select and present brand narratives as news stories are not just news stories but a brand’s story hinging on brand values of image, trust, reputation, loyalty, consumer behavior and relations towards a brand. Reputation remains a critical element at the centre of any brand’s story and should form part of every company’s integrated corporate strategic communication planning and campaign metrics.
In addition, brand reputation is an aesthetic value-lenses through which consumers perceive companies as either positive and trustworthy or less attractive to be engaged with. A company’s positive reputation therefore serves as business driving force with a tendency to increase sales or a down turn in sales. Similarly, negative banking company news headlines such as Regulatory breaches: Forex trading licenses of GT Bank, FBN Bank suspended for one month — BoG
(www.modernghana.com, March 5,2024) does not only impacts negatively on company’s reputation but also connotes a dented corporate perception among consumers and competitors.
Subsequently, lack of positively driven brand reputation could go a long way to cause reduction in sales as consumer loyalty drops, it pushes investor confidence to a lowest ebb, it impacts on company-relations’ harmony among employees especially when the brand is presented in the media with regulatory ethical breaches and trust. Banking corporate-brand reputation is an intrinsic trustworthy-public collateral value, the more it gets chipped off, the more a company loses its relevance within the competitive landscapes. In this light of negative news story on brand reputations , University of Pennsylvania study concluded that “negative information hurts, negative reviews, messages, or rumors hurt product evaluations and reduce purchase likelihood and sales” (Kate Coleman: Status Labs) just as in a collaborated assertion of 2019 study revealed “the effect of negative news on reputation is three times larger than the effect of positive news” (Kate Coleman: Status Labs) for “business with just one negative article risk losing up to 22% of prospective customers” (Kate Coleman: Status Labs).
It is against the backdrop of the importance of company’s reputational and trust attributes and related impacts on corporate success is this article weaved around the media’s coverage of negative brand news story:
Media coverage and reputational dent repairs
Globally, there is an assumption that negative news story lights up quickly across media platforms. The media might not necessary be interested in negative news values but as a public’s ombudsman and custodian of public’s moral principles and values attaches higher news attention to negative brand story relating to trust, reputational and regulatory breaches. In an era of world corporate and multicultural connectivity, negative news stories have higher online shareability being news portals which compounds the negative dents on a brand’s reputation. An analysis of the coverage of the GT Bank Ghana and FirstBank Ghana negative stories confirms media appetite for negative news than positive news stories to an extent: During the month of March, FirstBank Ghana recorded a remarkable corporate growth story, engaged in youth development social
responsibility activity and observance of the international women’s day whilst GT Bank Ghana also voted GHC5 million for social investments and sustainable CSR initiative none of these positive news beats attracted highest media attention.
The basis of this data is the application of narrative content analysis of 42 online media in March, 2024 which reported on the FirstBank Ghana and GT Bank Ghana forex licenses suspension with the purpose of benchmarking media’s coverage of positive and negative stories about the two banking brands Inter-coder validity of the data is 85%. The Chart below revealed the media’s taste for negative news story as over 82% of the media analyzed gave extensive coverage to the negative corporate story but as compared to only 19% of media given attention to positive news stories generated by the FirstBank Ghana and GT Bank Ghana during the month the negative news story broke.
The Media however Ignored FirstBank Ghana and GT Bank Ghana’s positive stories in March but gave the negative Forex License issues the highest attention: Does it mean the media has high appetite for negative news stories?
As pointed out, negative brand stories have a tendency of affecting a company’s overall success in a competitive business environment. In managing a dent inflicted on a company’s reputation, a concerted consideration should be attached to evolving positive narratives to offset the negative brand tones by being ethically transparent, responsible, admittance of wrong-doing and render apology, and offer assurance to consumers and compliance agencies. Strategic corporate communication departments should employ consistent media monitoring for their brand sentiments profiling, and social media listening in order to be ahead of their brand narratives.
Also, communication executives need a new orientation about brand-image metrics, and corporate-story positioning for positive news story doesn’t guarantee an extensive media coverage, but depends on strategic deployment of customized media relations effort for respective story.
In all these, the basic approach towards reputational management is finding answers to the following corporate media intelligence – Is your positive brand story getting the needed media attention, what is the degree of your social media sentiment, share, reach and the aggregate score of your brand reputation among your competitors? Strategic answers to this rhetoric prevent negative brand story from impacting negatively on your company’s reputation. It is highly recommended that companies should turn every single positive corporate initiative into an earn media strategy to leverage on unexpected negative brand sentiments.
The Author: Messan Mawugbe (PhD)
Institute of Brands Narrative Analysis (IBNA)
Email: ibna@banksmediaintelligencereports.com
nekzy@yahoo.com
