Nov. 4, 2009 (PR Newswire) --

MUNICH, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of the financial crisis, how can companies regain public trust and safeguard their corporate reputations?

That is the subject of a new management book entitled "Reputation Capital: Building and Maintaining Trust in the 21st Century." The editors, Joachim Klewes and Robert Wreschniok of Ketchum Pleon, a leading European public relations consultancy and part of Ketchum, make the case that strategies for building reputation are strikingly similar to the classic investment strategies followed in the financial marketplace, including total-return, value, growth and hedge.

The editors will be discussing these strategies and other aspects of reputation management at the European Centre for Reputation Studies' (ECRS) fourth annual international symposium, Nov. 13, in Munich. They will be joined by Siemens, the Dow Chemical Company, EADS and some of the 29 international authors who contributed articles to the just-released book published by Springer.

"The rules for building reputation mirror classic investment strategies - with a definite relationship between risk and return," says Robert Wreschniok, one of the book's co-editors.

A recent study by Harvard Business Manager (http://wissen.harvardbusinessmanager.de/wissen/leseprobe/62546216/artikel.html) counts reputation among the five most important intangible corporate assets. Simply put, a company's reputation translates directly to the bottom line. The challenge, says Wreschniok, is how to systematically build reputation at a time when people have less faith in corporations.

The "hedge strategy" is one that proved particularly successful when used in Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

"To an extent unusual even in politics, the Obama campaign's reputation capital was almost solely tied up in the candidate," says Joachim Klewes, the book's other co-editor. "An analogy in the corporate world is the company that strongly links its reputation-building efforts to a charismatic CEO, a highly visible marketing campaign or a high-growth area of the business."

The complete opposite of such a risky strategy is the "total-return" approach, which aims to preserve reputation capital and achieve the highest level of security.

"But total-return strategies have had their day and are no longer realistic," says Wreschniok. "In a world of 24/7 media coverage and the intense scrutiny of Web 2.0-enabled critics, there is no place a company can hide."

A more enlightened approach, says Klewes, is the "growth strategy," in which companies analyze the various attributes or sectors of their business that may affect reputation.