2016年新托福閱讀材料：怎樣經(jīng)營品牌聲譽(yù)

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2016年新托福閱讀材料：怎樣經(jīng)營品牌聲譽(yù)

In February, Google found itself in an unusual position: out of step with its customers. When the company launched Buzz, its social networking service, it faced a barrage of criticism from users who objected to the way it had automatically enrolled users of Gmail, its e-mail service, into the new offering. Their gripe was that it would make their private contacts public. Google was stung by the uproar but put it down to a mistake made in good faith and quickly made Buzz optional.

今年2月，谷歌(Google)發(fā)現(xiàn)自己陷入了一個不同尋常的境地：與客戶步調(diào)不合。公司推出社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)服務(wù)Buzz時，遭到用戶的猛烈批評，他們反對谷歌將電子郵件Gmail的用戶自動注冊為新服務(wù)的用戶，抱怨這會公開自己的私密聯(lián)系人。這場騷亂對谷歌造成了打擊，但公司將此歸為無心之失，并迅速把Buzz變成可選服務(wù)。

For a company that ranked second in a recent survey by Fortune magazine of the world's most admired companies, getting it so wrong with users was uncomfortable. It also begged the question of how a company known for being so intuitively connected to consumers could get it so wrong.

在《財富》(Fortune)雜志近期的世界最受尊敬公司調(diào)查中，谷歌排名第二。對這樣一家公司來說，對用戶的了解錯到如此地步是令人不安的。這也提出了一個問題：一家以與消費(fèi)者心有靈犀而出名的公司怎么會犯錯呢?

Google had established its reputation on the back of the functionality and ease of use of its search engine, a stream of popular innovations and a declared commitment to free access to information and the democratisation of the internet. Estimates vary wildly, but in 2016 one research agency, Millward Brown Optimor, valued the Google brand at $100bn.

谷歌的聲譽(yù)依賴于搜索引擎的功能性和易用性、接連不斷廣受歡迎的創(chuàng)新、以及對自由獲取信息和網(wǎng)絡(luò)民主化的公開推崇。市場對谷歌品牌價值的估算相去甚遠(yuǎn)，但2016年，研究機(jī)構(gòu)Millward Brown Optimor對它的估值為1000億美元。

But, even before the furore over Buzz, there were signs of cracks in the edifice. Google's reputation took a beating over its decision to enter the Chinese market, where it initially agreed to government demands to censor search results, only to recant and redirect users to a non-censored site in January based in Hong Kong. Observers wondered if the decision to enter China in the first place had compromised Google's founding values, summed up in its unofficial motto: "Don't be evil."

然而，甚至在Buzz事件引發(fā)眾怒之前，谷歌大廈便已出現(xiàn)了裂痕。進(jìn)軍中國市場的決定給谷歌的聲譽(yù)造成了沖擊——谷歌最初接受了中國政府對搜索結(jié)果進(jìn)行審查的要求，但在今年1月被迫放棄，并將用戶重新鏈接至香港的站點(diǎn)(最近為了申請延長其在中國的ICP牌照，谷歌不再把中國內(nèi)地用戶自動轉(zhuǎn)往其香港站點(diǎn)——編者注)。觀察人士懷疑最初進(jìn)軍中國的決定是否損害了谷歌的創(chuàng)始價值觀：用其非官方的座右銘總結(jié)就是“不做惡”。

Google, of course, is not the only brand to have seen its reputation suffer recently. The public image of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, has suffered in the wake of the credit crunch with a famous article in Rolling Stone magazine describing the organisation as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity". BPis widely perceived to have compounded the damage done to its image by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico through a poor public relations and crisis management strategy in its aftermath.

當(dāng)然，谷歌不是最近聲名受損的惟一品牌。信貸危機(jī)爆發(fā)后，投資銀行高盛(Goldman Sachs)的公眾形象也受到了損害，《滾石》(Rolling Stone)雜志上一篇著名的文章將該公司描述為“纏繞在人性面孔上的巨大吸血烏賊”。而外界廣泛認(rèn)為，英國石油(BP)事后不力的公共關(guān)系和危機(jī)管理戰(zhàn)略，進(jìn)一步加重了墨西哥灣原油泄漏事件對其形象的損害。

What affects reputations in turn affects brands. It is too soon to say how badly the Goldman Sachs and BP brands will be affected but it seems certain that they will be. And what all of these examples highlight is how hard it is to manage reputations.

影響聲譽(yù)的事情反過來也會影響到品牌。要判斷高盛和英國石油的品牌會受到多么嚴(yán)重的沖擊，現(xiàn)在還為時過早，但沖擊似乎已不可避免。這些例子都突顯出管理聲譽(yù)有多么困難。

Rohit Deshpandé, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, says the pressures to grow mean that some businesses, and start-ups in particular, forget to adapt their strategies as they become bigger. "When you are growing, your focus is on growing rapidly and you tend to be opportunistic about growth," he says. "You are not thinking about the vision and strategy. You are doing everything, so you have no time to sit back and think about things."

哈佛商學(xué)院(HBS)營銷學(xué)教授羅希特?德什潘德(Rohit Deshpandé)表示，增長的壓力會讓部分企業(yè)(尤其是初創(chuàng)企業(yè))在發(fā)展壯大時忘記調(diào)整自己的戰(zhàn)略。“在發(fā)展階段，你的關(guān)注重點(diǎn)是迅速成長，對于發(fā)展往往抱著機(jī)會主義心態(tài)，”他說?！澳銢]有考慮到愿景和戰(zhàn)略。你什么事都要做，所以沒有時間坐下來想事情?！?

In other cases, companies lose sight of the core values that define their brand. "Brands are attitudes and perceptions in customers' minds," says Patrick Barwise, a professor of marketing at London Business School and chairman of Which?, the consumer organisation. Successful reputations, he says, are built on customer experience. Those companies that have built strong global brands, such as Apple and Procter & Gamble, have done so by first creating a strong customer promise and then delivering on that promise consistently.

在其他一些案例中，企業(yè)忘記了詮釋其品牌的核心價值觀?！捌放凭褪穷櫩托哪恐械膽B(tài)度和認(rèn)知，”倫敦商學(xué)院(LBS)營銷學(xué)教授、消費(fèi)者組織Which?的主席帕特里克?巴韋斯(Patrick Barwise)表示。他說，成功的聲譽(yù)建立在顧客的體驗(yàn)上。打造了知名國際品牌的公司，如蘋果(Apple)和寶潔(P&G)，都是先對顧客做出強(qiáng)有力的承諾，接著不間斷地履行這個承諾，才取得成功。

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