A picture of the work, with the names removed.
Discretion is of the utmost importance to us, so the case studies below have been stripped of identifying information. We realize anonymized stories are less vivid for readers and prospects, but they give an honest picture of what we do. For further color, we would welcome a conversation.
How we close the gap, in practice.
Financial Sector Discoverability
A New York based private equity fund was preparing to raise a new fund and worried that prospective investors could not easily find accurate information about the firm or its track record. The problem was compounded by a fund in Australia with a nearly identical name, the kind of entity collision that scatters a brand across the results page.
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Like many similar firms, it had never focused on promoting itself. There was no more than a one-page website, no business profile pages, and no corporate presence on any social platform. The online reputation simply did not reflect the brand.
Build and strengthen a sustainable online profile informed by the client’s own goals. After meeting with the firm to understand its business needs, requirements, and sensitivities, we conducted an in-depth peer analysis, comparing it to other funds with similar business goals to establish what a strong, accurate presence should look like for an entity of its type.
- Analyze peers and competitors to establish the typical online reputation for similar entities.
- Make the existing one-page website far more robust.
- Pursue a Wikipedia presence and optimize the Google Knowledge graph.
- Claim and build out profiles on sites such as Crunchbase and Glassdoor.
- Update the Bloomberg profile, which proved to be the missing key.
- Work with the head of communications to place thought-leadership content in publications likely to rank well for a firm like theirs.
The firm’s online reputation was significantly optimized. Stakeholders, in this case potential investors, could easily find the firm’s website and relevant profiles and articles.
Recommended thought-leadership content was optimized to appear prominently within the first page of results for the fund.
Corporate Brand Identity
A food & beverage client, with details kept deliberately vague to preserve anonymity, had built its brand on healthy and clean living. Its branded Google results told a different story: negative content surrounding a specific regulatory issue, some brand confusion, and mixed online reviews.
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The overall strategy was to promote copious positive content to demote the negatives and to clarify the brand. The game plan:
- Analyze the data and the peers.
- Optimize owned content across the company’s own sites.
- Leverage Google features such as the Knowledge Panel and People Also Ask.
- Strengthen social presence so accounts surfaced in search.
- Use Wikidata to disambiguate the brand identity issues.
- Work with the Wikipedia editor community on accuracy.
- Coordinate PR and news efforts with the client’s PR company.
Desired content actively surfaced across the focus keywords and across locations (USA, UK, Canada), with particular success ranking Twitter and Wikidata.
Negative content was pushed down across the focus keywords and locations, with similar progress on 70+ secondary terms from ongoing work.
Google learned to distinguish the brand name from its products, so customers and stakeholders found more accurate information.
At the close of the six-month program we continued monitoring every keyword and kept up vigilant work to demote negatives and increase ownership of the narrative. We pushed beyond product into evergreen content, working with the PR company on positive media coverage and thought leadership in health, and acted as a force multiplier across website, social, PR, video, and content deployment.
Executive Reputation
In business, the leadership of a company is sometimes unfairly targeted by disgruntled former employees. Several employees of a large corporation were justifiably terminated. The former employees then used activist websites and forums to paint the CEO as greedy and unlawful. Though they lost their court case against the corporation for unlawful termination, the damage to the digital reputation of the brand and its CEO was done: most of the search results about the CEO were negative.
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The CEO had been vindicated in the court of law. The task was to improve his reputation in the court of public opinion.
Engagements of this kind sit between active issue management and deliberate, in-advance reputation building. We coordinate with the client’s communications and PR teams, not the legal team, to keep the response measured rather than adversarial. From there the discipline is the same as our other work: track what is surfacing, analyze why the results page does not match an accurate picture of the leadership, and curate the owned content, profiles, and coverage that should rank instead.
- Work with the company’s PR team on targeted local press coverage, surfacing philanthropic activities and business achievements.
- Ask associated organizations, such as charities, to include references to the executive’s contributions on their own sites.
- Leverage video content: original footage uploaded to the company’s channel, then amplified through press placements and social distribution.
- Upload new, corporate-friendly images tied to published coverage so that image results reflect an accurate and positive picture.
Negative activist content pushed off the first page; prominent results now reflect accurate, positive coverage of the executive’s record.
Philanthropic activities and business profile pieces now populate the top results, sourced from press, charity sites, and video.
Specific details withheld by design. We would be glad to walk through this engagement in a confidential conversation.
Different sectors, one method.
Each engagement starts with a careful read of the live results page and an in-depth peer analysis, comparing the brand or leader to others with similar goals to establish what a strong, accurate presence should look like.
From there we curate it: a more robust website, claimed and optimized profiles, Wikipedia and Wikidata accuracy, Knowledge Panel and People Also Ask clarity, and thought-leadership content placed where it will rank. The work is tracked over time and against peers, so progress can be shown rather than asserted.
See the methodology in depth →For further color, contact us.
Anonymized stories only go so far. Reach a senior specialist directly and we will walk you through the work, in confidence, against your own situation.
● Confidential by designA senior member of our business development team reads these. We are happy to sign an NDA in advance of your sharing anything sensitive, and we typically respond within one business day.
Members of our team, some of whom you may work with
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