IN ITS relatively short existence since it was launched with fanfare as a Silicon Valley start-up in San Francisco, USA, in 2009, the Uber brand has managed to spread its reach right across the globe with relative ease. Over the past six years the revolutionary taxi operation has faced a string of public relations faux [...]
OTHER than coming up with a fancy Sotho brand name "Fiela" (sweep) to possibly seem 'local and lekker', whoever branded the government's post-xenophobic operation seems to have been in a hurry and, as a result, failed to think and brainstorm the matter sufficiently before submitting it for implementation. They could have called it "Operation Lukisa" [...]
This column is not about making excuses for cases where there have been clear abuse of public resources or position, even though professional reputations also get damaged in such cases. It seeks to discuss the increasing number of cases in which the public never gets to know the truth, which is often the first casualty and, [...]
“I WISH Woolworths could be found guilty of something; anything!” This comment was posted in 2013 on Woolworths’ Twitter/Facebook page amid accusations that the retailer had “stolen” a piece of artwork depicting a hummingbird from a local artist. We now know that the accuser turned out to have been rather careless with the truth, having [...]
The Reputation Economy It is often said that we now operate in a Reputation Economy. You can read this in any way you like but, whatever approach you take, you have to consider as a starting point the extent to which the world and all of us have become much more connected by the internet. [...]