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Safeguarding Your Brand: PR Strategies for Reputation Management in 2025Safeguarding Your Brand: PR Strategies for Reputation Management in 2025
Everything you need to know about protecting your company reputation
7 Min Read
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In this traditionally slower part of the event season, it’s a perfectly natural response to audit your business strategies and workflow as you make plans for the busy year ahead. But how much focus have you put into the threat of a compromised reputation?
Countless studies have shown time and time again that the majority of companies, big or small, will face hits to their reputation at some point. And even the smallest of challenges, such as one bad review from a disgruntled client, runs the risk of making a negative impact.
How does reputation impact an event brand’s success?
It goes without saying that an event company’s reputation affects nearly every aspect of the brand itself. While the obvious ties would be to sales, revenue, client loyalty, and vendor relationships, it actually goes much deeper than that. Reputation can be connected to employee retention, talent acquisition, and crisis resilience, among many other things. As IPSOS shared in a global study, your audience will be far more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt in more difficult times if you already have a strong reputation.
So with that, if reputation management has not been a priority for your event brand as of late, consider building time aside in 2025 to ensure you will be prepared for anything to come.
First: Create a baseline and understand what’s being said
One of the biggest myths of publicity is that its primary function is to constantly be saying something, when in fact, one of the most profound things you should be focusing on is actually listening. Create a baseline in better times so that you can be clear on what’s being said about your event company online.
Start small and consider an automation that can do the work for you, even in the midst of a busy event season. Take just a few minutes to sign up with Talkwalker Alerts, our favorite alternative to Google Alerts. Talkwalker will send you complimentary emails when your selected key words (be it your event company’s name or your personal name) pop up online. This also serves as a great strategy for tracking any online press mentions.
If you already have a baseline for monitoring your brand, then consider upgrading to more sophisticated software such as Sprout Social social media monitoring services or Mention. As with all software integrations, make sure to do your research before committing.
Next: How prepared are you?
If you’re like most small businesses, you probably aren’t 100% prepared. In fact, according to a 2023 study by Aon, only 51% of brands have an actual plan to respond to a reputational risk. If you find yourself in that camp, that’s ok—just start taking small steps towards creating a formal, cohesive plan.
Prioritize answering the following questions first, to start developing a strategy:
Should your reputation be threatened, which of your targeted audiences would be most impacted and a priority to contact? In some instances, the obvious answer will be your clients and prospects, but in our referral-heavy industry, you may also want to consider those who regularly send business to you. You’ll want to be mindful of the vendors you work alongside, as well as potentially media relationships that you already have. Even when you’ve identified all key stakeholders, bear in mind that their priority may vary given the situation at hand.
Brainstorm potential threats, whether general or tied to something specific. Think of clients and vendors that have recently come across your path. Pay attention to any past behavioral patterns exhibited by these threats such as leaving false reviews, taking to their own social media pages, or creating negative content. With that—please don’t spend too much time on this, especially if there isn’t an imminent threat to your reputation. If you have your monitoring strategies in place, let it do the heavy lifting for you.
Be clear on the event brand spokesperson should a reputation crisis arise. Typically this will be the owner of the event company, but larger organizations may have an in-house Communications Director. Even if you anticipate smooth sailing for the coming year, take time at an upcoming staff meeting to let the team know you have put the basics of a plan together and moving forward, a spokesperson has been identified so that everyone is aware that their role is to simply forward any related communication or information to the lead.
Larger corporations are often advised to create at-the-ready communication templates for top crisis scenarios, but that may not be the best use of your time, especially if there aren’t any clear impending challenges. Instead, if you have faced reputation issues previously and have successful strategies, take some time to assemble your past responses and communication specific to that issue, so you can revisit and build off of them, should the need arise.
Finally, does it make sense to build out a team beyond your internal efforts for a “just in case” scenario? As with most business strategies, it will never hurt to “build it before you need it.”
Incorporate thought leadership PR strategies into your marketing
Publicity can take on many forms in the event industry, and the good news is that there are plenty of opportunities to leverage your expertise by educating both clients and the industry through the media. Depending on your bandwidth and expertise, you can consider:
Offering your expertise through being quoted in features. The media is always in need of reliable sources and you can start by simply signing up for a free service like Qwoted, which connects reporters with experts. If you advertise, consider connecting with your contact to ensure you aren’t missing any great editorial opportunities. If you’ve already done both of these, then now is the time to start building out a media list.
Guest blogging for media outlets. If you enjoy writing, then seek out event industry media blogs and publications (such as SpecialEvents.com!) that may welcome your insight. You’ll want to review their recent guest articles first, so you are offering fresh insight, and be sure to create something exclusive (aka brand new) for their audience.
Pitching yourself to podcasts. If you’re more of a talker than a writer, then there are a wealth of event industry podcasts where you can pitch topics. This will take a bit of research but the goal is to essentially narrow down a list of active podcasts that regularly feature guests. Get a better feel for the type of topics they cover and send over ideas that have not been featured there prior, and can be offered exclusively to the host.
The good news is that creating a solid foundation of press mentions is not only a great social proof strategy; it also organically helps elevate the industry by providing timely and relevant education. So even if you never need to lean on your features in a reputation crisis, you still have done a great deed by taking time out to educate others.
A final thought on reputation
At the heart of it, reputation management isn’t about spinning anything or creating a quick fix—it’s about being good and doing good. No amount of publicity could or should replace earned trust.
After all, proactive planning and a solid publicity strategy can only amplify what is already there.
Meghan Ely is the owner of wedding PR agency OFD Consulting. Ely is a sought-after wedding industry speaker and a self-professed royal wedding enthusiast.
