You spend lots of time and money building the brand; it's an asset worth protecting so make sure that everyone and anyone who has custody of your brand works hard to maintain it. Reputational risk can be a serious issue for your business and one that needs continued attention.

But, what is reputational risk? It is "The risk that a company will lose potential business because its character or quality has been called into question. For example, if it revealed that a company has been cheating customers out of money for years, this risk would become a stronger possibility due to the company's tarnished reputation".Managing reputational risk is a specialist role and one where your PR agency should be able to offer advice and support - if they can't find someone that can.

Your role is to brainstorm all of the scenarios that could go wrong and then put a mitigation plan in place. Consider some of these as a start point:

1. 
   
2. A customer is injured by one of your products.
3. Someone sets up a 'hate' campaign against the company
4. Your competitors 'play dirty'
5. An employee is found guilty of an offense.
6. The company is fined for a breach of.....

Don't forget that the reputational bombardment may be both on-line or off-line and will require different tactics to handle them.

Be confident that anyone in your company authorised to talk to the press has been
media trained - one slip-up could be fatal for your business - many will
remember Gerald Ratner's flippant comment about the quality of the jewellery
they sold!

The press can be your best friends or your worst enemies. Learning how to handle
them is a skill which is easily learnt, with a bit of intense training. Media
training is well worth investing in if you are going to put yourself in the
firing line! It doesn't take too long to learn the basics, but I would recommend
you take advice from an expert in the industry to help prepare you.