Companies live and die by their reputations

BILL COLETTI
FOUNDER, KITH

Learn what to do before, during, and most importantly, after a crisis.

Bill Coletti’s Critical Moments: A New Mindset for Reputation Management is the book described as “required C-Suite reading” and “a must-read for communications professionals”.

There are only two types of businesses: Those that are experiencing a crisis and those that will experience a crisis in the near future. Whether you are currently managing a challenging situation or planning ahead for the inevitable, Bill Coletti has written the perfect playbook for you. A must-read for the stakeholders of any business.

Putting out public fires leaves charred brand reputations. It’s time to get critical about crisis management

Your company owns its brand but the public owns its reputation… which may leave you feeling out of control of what’s said in the open.

You can’t avoid all crises. Instead, shore up your brand’s image before disasters hit, with guidance from Bill Coletti.

Coletti’s Critical Moments is the framework for shifting out of crisis reactivity and into reputational excellence.

It’s the roadmap for CEOs, heads of marketing and communications, legal counsel and board members charged with protecting and growing their organization’s reputation.

As a PR veteran, I've seen — and written — lots of those thick crisis scenario binders that never quite anticipate the big scary crisis lurking around the corner. This book takes a much more modern, proactive approach to reputation management...

Those scary moments now become critical moments or opportunities to burnish a positive reputation moving forward. A must-read for comms people!

What’s Inside Critical Moments

Managing your reputation may seem like an overwhelming task, but the key message contained in this book is that reputation management can be made manageable.

In these pages, you will learn how to stop over-focusing on crises and instead discover practices to help you avoid, manage, and recover from the events that affect your company's reputation."

Bill Coletti

critical moments

Introduction:
Reframing Crisis Management

Why cataloging “what-if” calamities rarely prepares organizations when crises hit (and what to do, instead)
How to differentiate between the public disruption of crises and critical moments that shape reputation
What brands like Chipotle, EpiPen, SBC, American Airlines have done wrong — and right
Why differentiating between the three types of risk helps you mitigate crises strategically

Part 1:
Unlocking the Potential of Reputation Management

What reputation really means (and why brand management isn’t enough)
How applying the seven levers of reputation earns you public credit
What you can learn from Amazon, Clorox, Patagonia, Ferrero, Home Depot, Apple, Johnson & Johnson and FedEx
How to simplify your stakeholder maps and focus on those who really matter to your company
What the product lifecycle teaches about reputation and your corporate DNA

Part 2:
The Four A’s of Reputation Management

Awareness: Creating a system that helps you differentiate smoke from fire
Assessment: Gauging stakeholder needs, beliefs and opinions about your brand
Authority: Securing the buy-in required to fortify your brand reputation
Action: Achieving a reservoir of reputational resilience

Get the book

Available from Amazon in Kindle, hardcover and paperback

Until now, reputation management has been an oxymoron. How do you manage the unmanageable? Bill's 4 As go a long way in creating a framework for success that leaders can follow to make sense of reputation.

Crises are overwhelming. Don’t wait until there’s a crisis. Use Critical Moments to shape your future.

In Bill Coletti’s seminal text, learn how to grow your reputation for future resilience — and reap the rewards of a stronger public image.

What C-Suite Leaders, Industry Experts, Communications and Marketing Authorities are Saying About Critical Moments

For any organization today, reputation has never been more critical or less stable. Bill Coletti offers deep experience and plain-spoken wisdom that will help you understand the stakes, navigate the challenges, and make smart decisions while everyone is watching.

Take your crisis binders off the shelf, throw them away, and put this book there instead. It's all you need.

Clearest thinking yet on how organizations should reconsider their POV of crises and reputation-building/ management. Some things you can control, others you cannot. The key is a clear-headed understanding of that which you can control and then getting to work. Extremely practical guide. Wish to hell this had been around when I was working on crises from BP to Katrina and beyond.

Critical Moments is a must-read for CEOs and their teams for its concepts on how reputations are made, lost, and grown.

In a crisis, you want a battle-tested veteran. And you want someone like Bill Coletti who can not only put out the immediate fire but help ensure there is no long-term damage to a firm or individual's reputation. Coletti learned it all the hard way, in the trenches. You can learn it all the easy way by picking up Critical Moments.

Crisis? What crisis? In Critical Moments Bill Coletti shows how proper reputation management allows astute marketers to turn mistakes and other unanticipated events into opportunities.

In the digital world, corporate reputation can change in an instant. Bill Coletti's advice and insights are well worth reading.

The C-Suite should read this book to understand the power reputation has over brand beyond products and services…Buy it today to be prepared tomorrow.

About the Author,
Bill Coletti

Bill Coletti, Kith’s founder, is a crisis communications and reputation management expert with more than twenty-five years of experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for Fortune 500 companies and global political campaigns.

Bill previously co-led the Global Risk Management and Crisis Communications Practice for Hill+Knowlton Strategies and has provided senior counsel in crisis management, corporate communications, and reputation defense to clients including AT&T, Cargill, The College Board, Target Corporation, American Airlines, The Home Depot, American Express, and Xerox, as well as major universities and NGOs.

In Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management, Coletti draws on his extensive experience to set out a clear framework for getting ahead of the next, inevitable crisis. Brought to life with vivid examples of corporate blunders and brilliance, Critical Moments gives readers practical illustrations of how brands can protect and promote reputation

I wrote Critical Moments because time and again, I saw brilliant leaders fall prey to a crisis-driven mindset. When we view reputation through the lens of crisis, we’re bound to think of disaster — instead of self-inflicted reputational wounds.

Companies live and die by their reputations

Amazon Reviewer

Putting out public fires leaves charred brand reputations. It’s time to get critical about crisis management

Jim Delulio,
President, PR Talent