We tend to think about reputation when we're actively trying to manage it. A press release goes out, the chief executive gives an interview, a campaign launches or something goes wrong and suddenly everyone is paying attention.
In reality, most of an organisation's reputation is built in much less exciting moments.
It's shaped by what happens when a customer complains, whether you deliver on a promise, how you treat your staff and what it's like to actually deal with you. None of those things necessarily involves the communications team, but all of them influence what people think and, importantly, what they tell other people.
There's plenty of research behind this. Charles Fombrun, one of the best-known academics in the field, identified people's direct experiences of a business, its products and its services as important building blocks of corporate reputation.
That doesn't mean communications is just window dressing. Far from it. Good PR helps people understand an organisation, gives context to what it does and can be particularly important when things go wrong. But there is a limit to what communications can achieve if the message and the reality don't match.
More recent research makes a similar point. A 2025 study by Joon Soo Lim and Jun Zhang looked at the relationship between stakeholder engagement, authenticity and corporate reputation. In the case they studied, people's perceptions were influenced not simply by what the company said, but by whether they believed its actions were genuine and consistent with its position.
That's where reputation management gets interesting. It isn't simply about deciding what you want people to think and then finding the right words to tell them. It's about understanding what they already think, why they think it and whether their experience of the organisation backs up the story you're telling.
PR can shape a reputation, strengthen it and protect it. But it needs something real to work with.