The competition between Italian top managers
The chart success of Reputation Science. Francis Walsingham's letter
Dear director,
you're making me appreciate Italian newspapers: and to think that until recently I almost didn't read them, preferring only American, British and French ones for work.
In recent days I discovered that in the Monday supplement of Corriere della Sera , L'Economia , there is a periodic column with a ranking of the Italian managers who enjoy the best online reputation. The ranking is curated by the company Reputation Science, which defines itself as "the first Italian company capable of managing the reputation of companies, managers and institutions in a scientific and integrated way".
Intrigued by the methodological-journalistic-editorial innovation, I began to delve deeper and discovered – compared to what I read both in the Corriere della Sera and in the Prima Comunicazione magazine, which host the Reputation Science rankings – which company heads have registered the greatest increase and decrease in reputation level.
On the latest ranking relating to the reputation of managers, the positive record was recorded in October by Pasqualino Monti . Never heard of it before, I tell you frankly. I searched on Google to find out who he was and I saw that he is the CEO of Enav. Ah, of course, Enav: the Italian wind energy association . No, forgive me, I got confused: it's the National Flight Assistance Agency, a companycontrolled by the Ministry of Economy.
I felt very ignorant, dear director, I confess. However, I still have a curiosity, given that from Google I see that Enav is talked about very rarely, only on the occasion of the publication of company data and some (sporadic) announcements regarding commercial agreements. An institutional communication that I would define as minimalist, rightly minimalist given the characteristics of the company. Even more so, however, I really don't understand what caused the leap in Monti's reputation recorded in October. I thought about publishing the results for the first nine months of the year. But then I saw that the budget data were released in November . I don't know.
I also have another question about the last place in October: Marina Berlusconi, who lost 6.2 percent of her reputation and eleven positions in the rankings. How come? Is it due to the effects of the Giambruno case ? Yet it was Piersilvio Berlusconi who exposed himself much more on the topic, from a media point of view.
In any case, having delved into the Reputation Science methodology, there really aren't enough grounds to have doubts about the goodness and seriousness of the methods. Reputation Science develops "data driven strategies" for its clients, based on rigorous data analysis and supported by mathematical methods. Reputational engineering, I learn from the company website, “is a scientific methodology that allows you to design, manage, protect and optimize the digital identity and online reputation of an individual; thanks to this, Reputation Science can shape the digital identity of brands and executives in the digital ecosystem, a universe in which every single piece of content remains indefinitely regardless of its publication date. Starting from a conception of information present online as objects classifiable with a scientific methodology, reputational engineering translates concepts and theorems used in the world of physics, electronics and financial analysis into the world of communication".
You know, I bow before science and the rigor of the scientific method.
Furthermore, as stated at the bottom of the published rankings, "the ranking takes into consideration the web 1.0 channels (news and mentions), those on web 2.0 (blogs, social networks) and the historical evolution, calculating for each content the reputational contribution in both quantitative (volume) and qualitative (value) terms".
That said, last Thursday I had lunch in Milan with a friend who has dealt with external relations for decades in medium-large companies, mostly state-owned, and I mentioned this discovery I made about the ranking of Italian managers. He revealed to me that the rankings have a significant success among company heads and top managers because their image is obviously at the top of their minds.
This recently retired friend revealed to me that there is a sort of undeclared competition between the company heads of the major Italian groups to appear at the top of the Reputation Science rankings; and that this competition often induces managers to mobilize company structures that deal in a broad sense also with communication to implement possible measures and adequate means – obviously in a completely legitimate and in many respects also understandable way – to increase content online that talk about the company and therefore also about the company manager, to be published both on the company's website and to be reported to the press. This content production serves to ensure that the name of the company and its CEO rise in position on Google, pushing any less positive journalistic articles down.
Will it be true? Ah, knowing that, Dagospia said when he was still Dagospia .
Best regards,
Francis Walsingham
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/reputation-science-classifiche-manager/ on Thu, 16 Nov 2023 10:04:57 +0000.