At NXP, we understand and respond at those crucial times when you need a bolstered presence through publicity, PR, or reputation management. We use our arsenal of tools and talents to let you control the narrative in situations which demand immediate action and a louder media voice in order to promote an idea or opportunity, or to mitigate a crisis:
- If you are in the process of raising capital, you will need to put your best foot forward to engender and secure investor or lender interest (More Details);
- If you are negotiating an acquisition, merger or underwriting, you will need to support your highest valuation (More Details);
- If you are introducing a new product or service, you will need to have it announced, reviewed and endorsed for purposes of credibility and sales (More Details);
- If you are facing off against a competitor who has recently launched a product or pricing tactic which encroaches on your customer territory, you will need to take remedial and precipitous action (More Details);
- If you are being attacked in the media by a competitor, a rival, an overzealous journalist or investigative reporter, or by some other authority, you will need to take immediate public countermeasures in order to control the narrative and control, reverse, or minimize any damage to your reputation potentially caused by bad press (More Details).
NXP has the tactics and resources to help you steer through demanding or challenging situations and emerge victorious. We are not strangers to the war room.
The process of raising capital is often a delicate matter that is fraught with complexity and perceptual dynamics. Perception, on the part of prospective investors or lenders, is paramount to success in the capitalization process. Your image, brand, and reputation are key to achieving the impression that your company is a viable and desirable investment, and this goes well beyond the essential and ordinary presentation of financial statements, projections, decks, and PowerPoint displays.
During the investment dance – from investor courtship to the actual closing of your financing – solid financial PR is essential, and while NXP cannot offer you financial or accounting advice, we understand the dynamics of appearances. Prospective investors and lenders will likely conduct multiple search engine inquiries into your company and its key executives in making an assessment of your company’s credibility, challenges, and prospects. Our task, working in partnership with your company, is to make certain that those search results yield information that is substantially favorable to your interests.
NXP is your experienced ally in the impression-related matters of investor and lender due diligence, because the way in which your company is seen as a prospective investment opportunity will often be a major deciding factor in whether or not you will be able to achieve a successful closing.
To help ensure its best negotiating leverage and to secure its position, your company requires the best possible capital valuation. While this valuation is usually based upon some combination of real reported statistics and hard facts, it is axiomatic that your company’s quantitative data (both historical and projected) should be supported with plenty of qualitative information that is positively focused. NXP provides a favorable spotlighting of your company (on multiple fronts and in many aspects) in the media to support your company’s best valuation, given its financial data. And since negotiations are often a multi-step process over an expanse of time, NXP provides ongoing media support until your merger, acquisition, or underwriting has been successfully concluded.
When you are in the process of introducing a new product or service into the marketplace, this becomes a newsworthy event, and should be treated as such in terms of media coverage. The exciting news is appropriately disseminated through a mix of media, including journalistic articles (where third-party references and endorsements are made), third-party press releases, news brief videos, and favorable new product reviews. NXP creates or initiates the creation of these important media pronouncements in order to rapidly spread the news about your brand’s innovation.
When your competitor launches a new product or employs an aggressive or predatory pricing practice or strategy, this can potentially threaten your market share or invade your established customer base. It becomes immediately incumbent upon you to take action through either positive or negative countermeasures. An example of a positive countermeasure would be offering to meet or beat a competitor’s price, or to tout a better or comparable product innovation by your company. An example of a negative countermeasure would be the denouncing of your competitor’s product as being less than adequate, or the proclamation that your competitor’s pricing strategy is merely a short-term “bait and switch” type of deceit. NXP creates and expediently implements protective tactics and strategies (preferably positive ones) to protect your customer base and your share of the market when you’ve come under assault by a competitor.
The bigger that you have become, the easier a target you will be for your opposition. It is common practice among adversaries, whatever their position or motivation may be, to take to the media to hurt the reputation of a business enterprise or an individual perceived as a competitor or rival. Dissatisfied customers, former employees, and former clients quite often find some reward or release in maligning a former employer, contractor, or vendor. They may post negative information online or may take to the courts for judicial relief. Courtroom battles often find their way into mainstream and alternative media, and their ultimate outcomes may even be substantially influenced by media bias.
When your brand, corporate or personal, is under attack, NXP will enact appropriate countermeasures to help you regain control of the narrative and give you a better, more positive search engine profile and public appearance. That is the very essence of reputation management PR.
In controlling the narrative, powerful responses to adversarial assaults in the media are posted on your behalf to indicate your responsiveness to negative commentary, as well as to effectively and persuasively present your side of the story. A failure, on your part, to be responsive to your critics is either tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing or fault, or will be perceived negatively as recklessness or indifference. Either prospect is untenable, and negatives must always be counterbalanced and minimized with positives.
While negative information, in the form of poor reviews or courtroom news, cannot generally be made to disappear completely from search engine results, an overwhelming preponderance of positive reviews and favorable information can often very effectively dilute their adverse potency. High-ranking positive search engine results in great numbers tend to “push down” more dated negative information. NXP assists its reputation management PR clients in stacking search engine results in their favor, and in giving each of those clients a better, more decidedly positive general media profile.
NXP oversees your communications and media presence with a view toward optimization of this function. Our skilled staff of award-winning journalists and reporters provides you with a decided edge over your competition, many of which companies are utilizing the services of “old school” insular publicity and PR firms which do not have access to comparable resources. We also supervise and orchestrate all of your media interaction to make certain that your image and branding come through to your best benefit.
Journalists, content creators, videographers (both professional, and nowadays, amateur) and editors oftentimes have their own strong opinions regarding issues which may relate either directly or indirectly to how they will spotlight or represent you. Good working relationships with these parties are essential to getting the right kind and quantity of exposure to the public. NXP networks with these parties on your behalf to optimize media outcomes for your branding, name recognition, and positive image. The importance of having “friends” in the media cannot be overemphasized, and NXP intermediates to ensure that you are treated well and represented fairly by these important parties to the greatest extent that this is possible.
Your online reputation is quite possibly your most valuable intangible asset. It helps you earn trust among consumers, increase the value of your company’s brand, and can even serve to attract and keep more capable and talented employees. And just as you need to market your products and services to raise awareness and increase market share and sales, you also need to market your reputation. Not unsurprisingly, your reputation, once developed and marketed, needs to be continuously monitored and protected.
The marketing aspect of building your online reputation and the protective aspect of maintaining the integrity of your reputation are often referred to together as “reputation PR.” Properly performed, reputation PR will allow you to take control of the narrative around your identity, help to shape people’s perceptions of you and your company’s brand, and protect your image in the crucible of the media and in the court of public opinion.
Reputation PR can also be defined from an operational perspective as proactively using public relations tools, tactics, and strategies in order to protect or improve your online reputation. This can be differentiated somewhat from traditional PR in that it focuses exclusively on building and keeping a good reputation, and not just getting your name mentioned in mainstream and digital media to achieve recognition.
Reputation PR very often includes removing negative online information and articles about your brand, creating and publishing fresh positive content to drive negative press and information further down in search engine results, responding to online customer reviews, or using influencer marketing to build positive brand buzz, just by way of example. Like corporate brand management, reputation PR requires constant vigilance, ongoing creativity, and aggressive communication. A well-crafted reputation PR campaign generally will have your company playing a positive role, but may require, at times, that you assume a defensive role when your image is under attack. NXP is expert at developing, promulgating, and defending your brand’s identity and integrity.
Competitive intelligence is, put simply, the accumulation, formatting, and analysis of data about what’s happening in your industry. It can encompass your competitors’ social media presence, brand positioning, pricing strategy, product tiers, or, at times, their recent job postings. Competitive intelligence is the output of transforming these individual data points into a comprehensive picture of your competitors’ strategies at any given time. And this knowledge, of course, is power.
Competitive intelligence is a necessity when you are planning your company’s next move. With robust data, you can predict where your competitors are heading and how successful they’ll be when they get there–allowing you to aggressively play the offense. Strong competitive intelligence analysis allows you to develop your tactics and strategy preemptively and powerfully.
Using the data and its implications provided by competitive intelligence, you will be ready to formulate and implement actions to outpace your competitors and garner precious market share and customers.
NXP will enable your company to thrive in a competitive market environment through the collection, aggregation, and real-time application of detailed and actionable competitive intelligence.
Any significant media or business event that can substantially negatively impact your sales or business can be considered a PR crisis, and even with the best-made contingency planning, a crisis can materialize due to circumstances which you were unable to anticipate. Crises are also generally characterized by their suddenness – they may catch you off guard and off balance, and force you into the undesirable position of playing defense in order to protect your reputation and your revenues. While some parties regard crisis management and mitigation as a part of reputation PR (and in certain aspects it is), NXP treats it as a separate area of technical specialization and practice that works directly with reputation PR.
A serious threat to your business and brand can occur as a result of any number of unfortunate and unforeseen surprises, including, but not necessarily limited to such possibilities as: losing a court case or the initiation of legal proceedings; being investigated by a regulatory agency; substantively negative press brought about by a bad customer experience, a recalcitrant employee, or by a competitor’s media attack or media victory; a change in relevant technology; an intellectual property dispute; an aggressive competitor suddenly entering your market, or any number of other stressors which arise seemingly out of nowhere, or which simply could not have been predicted and proactively countered. As difficult or as intimidating as these situations may seem, NXP can help you successfully navigate your way to the most positive outcome in each case.
Third-party endorsements provided by well-known social media influencers and celebrity brand ambassadors can be a very potent stimulus to credibility, name recognition, and ultimately, to generating sales or subscriptions from new customers, clients, members, or followers. But using the wrong influencer (or choosing an unsuitable or conflicted celebrity) can bring about the ruin of a brand and a precipitous fall-off in sales. We also know that making arrangements with and dealing with “star” talents can be intimidating and frustrating for the uninitiated.
At NXP, we know how to identify and negotiate the best terms with the best and most image-appropriate influencer or celebrity to spread your brand’s message to your target demographic. In fact, our Social Media Management Group (an unincorporated division of NXP) has the knowledge, talent, contacts and resources to run your entire social media campaign, inclusive of influencer and endorser selection, management, and monitoring. From creating your message, to locating and arranging engagement terms with your influencer or ambassador, NXP covers the field in its entirety for you.