What should a CCO’s annual reputation management budget include?

A CCO’s annual reputation budget should fund the channels where reputation now forms, not just the media relations line that historically dominated it. Six components belong in it. A reputation management retainer covering the ongoing search, entity, and narrative work that compounds over the year. AI monitoring of the AIQ class, because what ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode say about the company is now a primary impression. Wikipedia work through disclosed conflict-of-interest editing, since the article feeds the Knowledge Panel and the engines and drifts when no one owns it. Crisis preparedness, funding infrastructure built before an event rather than improvised during one. Owned-property production – the FAQ pages, bios, and fact assets that give search and AI accurate material. And analytics and reporting to measure all of it, because a program that cannot be measured cannot be defended at budget time. Underfunding the AI and Wikipedia lines is the most common and costly omission we see.