新托福阅读材料汇总：怎样经营品牌声誉

In February, Google found itself in an unusual position: out of step with its customers. When the company launched Buzz, its social networking service, it faced a barrage of criticism from users who objected to the way it had automatically enrolled users of Gmail, its e-mail service, into the new offering. Their gripe was that it would make their private contacts public. Google was stung by the uproar but put it down to a mistake made in good faith and quickly made Buzz optional.

今年2月，谷歌(Google)发现自己陷入了一个不同寻常的境地：与客户步调不合。公司推出社交网络服务Buzz时，遭到用户的猛烈批评，他们反对谷歌将电子邮件Gmail的用户自动注册为新服务的用户，抱怨这会公开自己的私密联系人。这场骚乱对谷歌造成了打击，但公司将此归为无心之失，并迅速把Buzz变成可选服务。

For a company that ranked second in a recent survey by Fortune magazine of the world's most admired companies, getting it so wrong with users was uncomfortable. It also begged the question of how a company known for being so intuitively connected to consumers could get it so wrong.

在《财富》(Fortune)杂志近期的世界最受尊敬公司调查中，谷歌排名第二。对这样一家公司来说，对用户的了解错到如此地步是令人不安的。这也提出了一个问题：一家以与消费者心有灵犀而出名的公司怎么会犯错呢?

Google had established its reputation on the back of the functionality and ease of use of its search engine, a stream of popular innovations and a declared commitment to free access to information and the democratisation of the internet. Estimates vary wildly, but in 2009 one research agency, Millward Brown Optimor, valued the Google brand at $100bn.

谷歌的声誉依赖于搜索引擎的功能性和易用性、接连不断广受欢迎的创新、以及对自由获取信息和网络民主化的公开推崇。市场对谷歌品牌价值的估算相去甚远，但2009年，研究机构Millward Brown Optimor对它的估值为1000亿美元。

But, even before the furore over Buzz, there were signs of cracks in the edifice. Google's reputation took a beating over its decision to enter the Chinese market, where it initially agreed to government demands to censor search results, only to recant and redirect users to a non-censored site in January based in Hong Kong. Observers wondered if the decision to enter China in the first place had compromised Google's founding values, summed up in its unofficial motto: "Don't be evil."

然而，甚至在Buzz事件引发众怒之前，谷歌大厦便已出现了裂痕。进军中国市场的决定给谷歌的声誉造成了冲击——谷歌最初接受了中国政府对搜索结果进行审查的要求，但在今年1月被迫放弃，并将用户重新链接至香港的站点(最近为了申请延长其在中国的ICP牌照，谷歌不再把中国内地用户自动转往其香港站点——编者注)。观察人士怀疑最初进军中国的决定是否损害了谷歌的创始价值观：用其非官方的座右铭总结就是“不做恶”。

Google, of course, is not the only brand to have seen its reputation suffer recently. The public image of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, has suffered in the wake of the credit crunch with a famous article in Rolling Stone magazine describing the organisation as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity". BPis widely perceived to have compounded the damage done to its image by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico through a poor public relations and crisis management strategy in its aftermath.

当然，谷歌不是最近声名受损的惟一品牌。信贷危机爆发后，投资银行高盛(Goldman Sachs)的公众形象也受到了损害，《滚石》(Rolling Stone)杂志上一篇著名的文章将该公司描述为“缠绕在人性面孔上的巨大吸血乌贼”。而外界广泛认为，英国石油(BP)事后不力的公共关系和危机管理战略，进一步加重了墨西哥湾原油泄漏事件对其形象的损害。

What affects reputations in turn affects brands. It is too soon to say how badly the Goldman Sachs and BP brands will be affected but it seems certain that they will be. And what all of these examples highlight is how hard it is to manage reputations.

影响声誉的事情反过来也会影响到品牌。要判断高盛和英国石油的品牌会受到多么严重的冲击，现在还为时过早，但冲击似乎已不可避免。这些例子都突显出管理声誉有多么困难。

Rohit Deshpandé, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, says the pressures to grow mean that some businesses, and start-ups in particular, forget to adapt their strategies as they become bigger. "When you are growing, your focus is on growing rapidly and you tend to be opportunistic about growth," he says. "You are not thinking about the vision and strategy. You are doing everything, so you have no time to sit back and think about things."

哈佛商学院(HBS)营销学教授罗希特•德什潘德(Rohit Deshpandé)表示，增长的压力会让部分企业(尤其是初创企业)在发展壮大时忘记调整自己的战略。“在发展阶段，你的关注重点是迅速成长，对于发展往往抱着机会主义心态，”他说。“你没有考虑到愿景和战略。你什么事都要做，所以没有时间坐下来想事情。”

In other cases, companies lose sight of the core values that define their brand. "Brands are attitudes and perceptions in customers' minds," says Patrick Barwise, a professor of marketing at London Business School and chairman of Which?, the consumer organisation. Successful reputations, he says, are built on customer experience. Those companies that have built strong global brands, such as Apple and Procter & Gamble, have done so by first creating a strong customer promise and then delivering on that promise consistently.

在其他一些案例中，企业忘记了诠释其品牌的核心价值观。“品牌就是顾客心目中的态度和认知，”伦敦商学院(LBS)营销学教授、消费者组织Which?的主席帕特里克•巴韦斯(Patrick Barwise)表示。他说，成功的声誉建立在顾客的体验上。打造了知名国际品牌的公司，如苹果(Apple)和宝洁(P&G)，都是先对顾客做出强有力的承诺，接着不间断地履行这个承诺，才取得成功。

Other companies start out well and then lose their way. Café chain Starbucks was a very powerful and successful brand in North America, in part because it became very good at delivering what customers wanted. But somewhere along the way, says Prof Deshpandé, hubris set in. "It was so focused on growth by opening new stores that it lost touch with its core customers," he says. As a result in some markets, such as the UK, Starbucks has seen its image and reputation decline.

还有一些企业开头不错，但后来迷失了方向。连锁咖啡店星巴克(Starbucks)曾是北美地区一个非常强大和成功的品牌，部分原因就在于它非常善于满足客户需求。但在发展过程中，德什潘德表示，傲慢不知不觉地滋生了。“它过于重视发展壮大，不断开设新店，以至于失去了与核心顾客的联系，”他表示。结果在英国等部分市场，星巴克的形象和声誉都直线下落。

Prof Deshpandé adds that most companies make a big mistake by relegating brand management issues to the marketing department.

德什潘德补充表示，大多数公司都犯了个大错：把品牌管理事务托付给了营销部门。

Martin Roll, chief executive of brand consultancy VentureRepublic, agrees. Many companies, he says, think of brands only in terms of advertising and positioning. "Most companies do not put brands at the heart of their strategy," he says.

品牌咨询公司VentureRepublic首席执行官马丁•罗尔(Martin Roll)对此表示赞同。他说，许多公司只是从广告和定位的角度去考虑品牌。“大多数公司没有把品牌作为战略的核心。”

Another challenge for companies is how to manage their reputations as their operations become more global. It was easier for Google, for example, to adhere to its motto when it operated in open markets such as the US and western Europe but in a more controlled economy, such as China, this proved more tricky.

企业面临的另一个挑战是，在业务进一步全球化之时，如何管理品牌声誉。例如，当谷歌在美国和西欧等开放市场里经营时，要坚守自己的信条会比较容易，但在中国这样管控更加严格的经济体，问题就会更加棘手。

A similar difficulty is faced by Asian companies as they try to grow outside their home markets. The Tata group, for example, is India's biggest and most valuable brand but the country's own brand image is weak in the west. Apart from IT services, India is considered by many to be a source of low-cost, low-quality goods and services. How can Tata transcend that image? One option is to follow the example of Sony and create a global brand that is not country-specific.

当亚洲企业试图在本土市场以外发展时，也面临类似的难题。比如，塔塔集团(Tata)是印度最大、最有价值的品牌，但在西方，这个国家自身的品牌形象很弱。除了IT服务之外，许多人都将印度视为廉价低质商品和服务的来源。塔塔如何才能超越这种形象?选择之一是效仿索尼(Sony)，打造一个没有国别色彩的全球化品牌。