how to run image audit for your company

I came to know about Mr.K Srinivasan, CEO, Prime Point Public Relations P Limited, Chennai from the Yahoo PR groups he managed that are currently one of the best groups of PR professionals online. Beyond this, he is also known for the impressive image audits he conducts for various organisations. Often at times I felt the need to conduct image audits for my clients before planning out any strategy for them or before the annual review to see how our PR campaigns have fared. Maybe I might be working with Mr. Srinivasan soon for my clients. Anyway back to the topic, what exactly is Image audit and how it is conducted? I asked Mr. Srinivasan and he explained:

Image Audit is the study of ‘hidden perception’.  Every human being has some hidden perception, which normally is not revealed.  For example, an employee has several hidden perception on their employer company or management and he does not want to reveal for his own reasons.

How do you get to know what other people are feeling about you? Normally everybody tend to be frank and honest for revealing their mind when (1) they are in group and (2) they are asked to reveal anonymously.

Image Audit is based on this principle.  We discuss with the management and find out the issues to be studied.  We design a questionnaire to suit the situation and test audit with few target sample.  After finalising the questionnaire, we administer the questionnaire to the audience after assembling them together. Then we make them respond without indicating their identity.  All the response sheets are pooled through a ballot box.  In this process, we have found near 100 percent accuracy.

We analyse the data and interpret properly.  Interpretation is more important, otherwise, it may lead to a wrong conclusion. Finally, we make a report and submit to the Manager with our recommendations.

Normally, when the data is analysed, we used to get a clear trend of perception uniformly.  That trend indicates lot of things to the management.

Through Image Audit, managements can understand the hidden perception of their stakeholders, particularly their own employees and plan suitable strategies.  Also, it can forewarn crisis also.  Image Audit will be helpful during crisis time. It can unearth the real root problems.

More details and a live report is available at the Image Audit site. You can also listen to the corporate podcast here.

source: http://www.indiaprblog.com/2007/09/how-to-run-image-audit-for-your-company.html