Insurance.

When I was younger and someone besmirched your honest name, you went out the back and had a punch up. In those days, this was known as first call resolution. If you were lucky enough to keep all your teeth in the resolution discussion about your reputation management, you could continue to drink your beer uninterrupted knowing your good name was safe once more.

And you all thought I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And no they didn’t say besmirched either.

Fast forward to now and it becomes difficult for individuals and companies to take everyone out the back and work on that first call resolution if they have been attacked, especially in the new world of social media. It has gone from singular combatant to thousands, to tens of thousands and no one is in that good a shape.

So when companies talk about reputation management and brand integrity being paramount to their continuing success and how difficult it is to keep the barbarians from the gate, they often refer to the inherent dangers of dealing with axe grinding social media individuals? The net has become a powerful arbiter of taste, opinions, thoughts and communication channels with dire consequences for negative feedback.

There are a number of ways to combat the negative attacks and the easiest is not to get involved. That works well for Jerry the corner barber with one chair, no waiting. It doesn’t suit the rest of the corporate community who work hard at keeping their integrity and credibility in tact while trying to maintain a moral high ground under attack from the denizens of the net. Pulitzer stuff right?

So who should ride in wearing the white hat but the insurance companies? Companies such as AON have indicated they are putting together brand damage and reputation related risk policies for social media mishaps.

If only they had been around in my pub days. I could have just exchanged insurance details and avoided the bruises and broken teeth.

So how do they measure the intangibles of integrity, reputation, credibility and ethical standing? With difficulty I assume and with difficulty no doubt, come high policy fees.

Is IBM’s reputation worth more than Coca Cola’s? Is the integrity of the Cancer Council worth more than the Fred Hollows Foundation? What about an individual’s credibility? Mother Teresa Vs Barack Obama.

It’s difficult to see how the insurance companies can come up with solutions to keep everyone happy. Interest will be high amongst the leading practitioners of the social media landscape and I’m sure Facebook, Google and the like will require a lot of input. The obvious question is how do you get rid of the damage once it is on the net? The net never forgets.

Thinking back to those halcyon days at the pub, we did at least resolve the issues so that everyone, no matter how battered and bruised could move on with their lives.

I’m off to the pub, anyone know a good insurance company?