What is reputation management?

Reputation management is the discipline of understanding how an organisation or leader is perceived by the audiences that matter to it, and acting deliberately to build, protect or recover that perception. In our practice it covers risk assessment, positioning, issues management and post-crisis recovery, delivered across government, media and stakeholder audiences together.

How is reputation management different from crisis management?

Crisis management is the acute response when something has become public and time-compressed: the first 24 hours, the first statement, the spokesperson. Reputation management is the standing work before and after — knowing where you stand, building standing you can draw on, and rebuilding it when it has been spent. We do both. They are separate pages on this site because they are separate engagements with different tempos.

Do you remove negative search results or online reviews?

No. We do not offer search suppression, review removal or review generation. Firms that do exist and some are reputable; we are not one of them and do not pretend to be. We work on what people believe, and on the conduct and communication that shapes it.

Do you work with individuals as well as organisations?

Yes, where the individual's reputation is bound up with an organisation, an office or a public role — chief executives, chairs, founders, elected and appointed officials. We do not take personal reputation work unconnected to a professional or public position.

Is reputation management only for large companies?

No. The organisations in our case studies range from a community football club to a state-owned utility. Reputation matters wherever government, media or community opinion can change an outcome, and that is true at every scale.

Do you work outside South Australia?

Yes. Counsel is delivered nationally, by phone, video and on the ground, and we hold relationships in Canberra and in every state and territory government.

Reputation Management

Reputation is what people believe about you when you are not in the room. We work on what they believe.

Start the
Conversation

Reputation

Reputation management — Adelaide and Australia-wide

Ace Strategies provides corporate reputation management for organisations across Australia, from our base in Adelaide, South Australia. We advise boards, chief executives and leadership teams on how their organisation is seen by the people who decide its future — ministers and their advisers, regulators, journalists, communities, investors, staff — and on what to do about it.

Reputation is not a communications output. It is the accumulated result of what an organisation does, what it says, and whether the two match, as judged by audiences who talk to each other. Managing it means working across all of those audiences at once, which is why our reputation counsel draws on the same team that delivers our government relations, media management and stakeholder engagement work. That team includes an award-winning journalist who has led newsrooms and government offices across Australia, and former political advisers who have watched reputations made and lost from inside government.

Key Service Areas

What our reputation management service covers

radar

Reputation risk assessment

Where does your reputation actually stand, with whom, and what could move it? We map the stakeholders who matter, the issues already in motion, and the gap between how you see yourselves and how they see you. Where the question needs numbers rather than judgement, our research and polling practice measures it.

Research and polling

trending_up

Building and positioning

Reputation built deliberately holds better under pressure than reputation that accrued by accident. We help organisations and leaders define what they want to be known for, earn it through visible action, and communicate it consistently to government, media and community over time — so that when a difficult moment comes, there is something in the bank.

shield

Protection

Most reputational damage is foreseeable. A regulatory change, a community campaign, a project that attracts opposition, a competitor briefing against you, a misinformation campaign. We watch for these, assess their trajectory, and manage them while options still exist. When something does break into the open, our crisis and issues management team takes the acute response and this work continues underneath it.

Crisis and issues management

healing

Recovery

Coverage ends. Belief lingers. After a crisis, a failed project, a leadership change or a regulatory finding, we rebuild standing with the audiences that matter — systematically, audience by audience, on a realistic timeline. This is slow work and we will tell you how long it is likely to take before you engage us.

Who engages us

When organisations call

A board wants an independent view of reputational exposure before a major decision, a transaction or a public commitment.
A project or development is attracting organised opposition and the facts are losing to the narrative.
A leadership team has come through a crisis and needs to know what it cost and how to recover it.
A company is entering the Australian market and needs to arrive with a reputation rather than build one from zero.
An organisation that is well regarded by customers is poorly understood by government, or the reverse.

Engagements range from a single day of counsel to a standing retainer. Most begin with a conversation and a short assessment.

Proof

When the North Adelaide Golf Course redevelopment was targeted by a campaign built on false claims about park lands, fencing and tree removal, our Strategic Counsel publicly corrected the record on the project's history, ecology, ownership and future — the protection work of reputation management, done in the open.

At short notice, the Ace team stepped in to provide reputation management advice — it brought clarity and calmness during a chaotic time.

Doug Phillips — Chief Executive Officer, BIORG
Read the case study

Read the op-ed by our Strategic Counsel, Kevin Naughton, or the North Adelaide Golf Club case study.

Much of our reputation work is confidential by nature and does not appear on this site. 18 published case studies show the breadth of the practice it sits within.

Common questions

What is reputation management?: Reputation management is the discipline of understanding how an organisation or leader is perceived by the audiences that matter to it, and acting deliberately to build, protect or recover that perception. In our practice it covers risk assessment, positioning, issues management and post-crisis recovery, delivered across government, media and stakeholder audiences together.
How is reputation management different from crisis management?: Crisis management is the acute response when something has become public and time-compressed: the first 24 hours, the first statement, the spokesperson. Reputation management is the standing work before and after — knowing where you stand, building standing you can draw on, and rebuilding it when it has been spent. We do both. They are separate pages on this site because they are separate engagements with different tempos.
Do you remove negative search results or online reviews?: No. We do not offer search suppression, review removal or review generation. Firms that do exist and some are reputable; we are not one of them and do not pretend to be. We work on what people believe, and on the conduct and communication that shapes it.
Do you work with individuals as well as organisations?: Yes, where the individual's reputation is bound up with an organisation, an office or a public role — chief executives, chairs, founders, elected and appointed officials. We do not take personal reputation work unconnected to a professional or public position.
Is reputation management only for large companies?: No. The organisations in our case studies range from a community football club to a state-owned utility. Reputation matters wherever government, media or community opinion can change an outcome, and that is true at every scale.
Do you work outside South Australia?: Yes. Counsel is delivered nationally, by phone, video and on the ground, and we hold relationships in Canberra and in every state and territory government.

Related insights

Our published analysis on this work.

opinion North Adelaide Golf Course: What You Might Not Know announcement Ace Strategies and Grant Law PR Partner

18 published case studies Adelaide-based, working nationally

Know where you stand.

Most engagements begin with a short, confidential assessment. Start the conversation — or if it is already urgent, call 0408 207 256.

Start the conversation