by PAUL ALLEN

Doesn’t it seem as if the mortgage business is always in the news? Well, that’s because it is. After all, the industry is connected to interest rates, demography, real estate values, state and federal regulation, tax law, design trends and personal tastes, just to name a few.

But when the mortgage business hits the airwaves and really pings a nerve, it’s about reputation and trust issues. And lately there’s been a growing perception that this is an industry of hollow promises trolling for short-term profit. Continue Reading

by PAUL DUNAY

Lots of brands are finding out the hard way that there are plenty of conversations taking place about them online. For good or bad.

Many brands choose to ignore this. But hope is not a strategy.

Since consumers rely heavily on the Web as an authoritative source of information, managing a brand’s online reputation has become a top priority for companies. Here are 5 tips from The Reputation Garage’s “new technology” archives. They could help you avoid a major disaster and reduce the risk of a flogging in the blogosphere. Continue Reading

by JARVIS CROMWELL

We find Andrew Zolli one of the more interesting and relevant futurists out there these days. He recently wrote a great piece in Fast Company (here) that kicked off with a quote from renown free-marketeer Milton Friedman:

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business”, Friedman wrote back in 1970, and that is to “engage in activities designed to increase profits.”

As soon as we read this quote here in the Garage, we knew that Zolli had nailed it: Friedman’s pronouncement marked a watershed moment for global business, a tipping point for the guiding principal of the era: profitable self-interest would prove to be the only reliable endgame.

Everyone knows the good parts that played out with the help of Friedman’s compass. The rise of the activist shareholder movement. Reagan-era deregulation. Michael Douglas’ declaration that “Greed is Good” in the movie Wall Street. The tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The creation of the Jack Welch rules of management.

All of this and more helped companies achieve higher performance throughout the 80s and 90s. “Mr. Market” surged, helped along by a long-term decline in interest rates and a speculative bubble or two. A lot of executives (and shareholders) grew rich.

Greed took a victory lap. Capitalistic self-interest flourished. Customers got better and cheaper products. All in, Friedman’s playbook worked. But… Continue Reading