If you've visited Vanno.com recently, you know that the subscriber site is no longer accessible.   Our parent company, Identity Commerce LLC, has decided to no longer offer subscriptions to the Vanno Company Reputation Index to the general public.    Identity Commerce LLC will continue to offer consulting services and access to the Vanno database to clients on an engagement basis.  If we can be of assistance in this regard, please don't hesitate to contact us. We've learned a great deal over the last three years about tracking company reputations and quantifying what online crowds (and mobs) are saying about how companies treat their customers, employees, communities, the environment and society in general.   We sincerely hope the result - the Vanno Company Reputation Index - was of benefit to our users and subscribers both personally and professionally.

We recently migrated the Vanno Blog to a new system.  Some of the archived posts have some weird images so bear with us as we clean them up!

How the deepwater oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the reputation of BP is still an open question.     But it may be that there isn't much more damage to do, given that BP had already dropped from one of the top rated oil companies in the Vanno  index in January 2009 - right up there with Royal Dutch Shell - to join bottom dwellers Exxon Mobil and Chevron.    Most of the damage to their overall ranking seems to have come from a precipitous drop in their environmental reputation, as can be seen in the plot below. What drove the big fall in BP's environmental reputation in the Jan. - April 2009 time frame?     Mostly the realization that their widely touted efforts to establish their green bona fides were turning out to be greenwash.     This story by Seventh Generation Chairman Jeffrey Hollender captures it well.

Fat and happy employees + a history of social irresponsibility = a company at risk?

Vanno subscribers are all familiar with the graphic above.   It's the summary of reputation scores and rankings that we show for each company in our index.   What's of particular interest for Goldman Sachs is the high level of employee satisfaction and low levels of social responsibility (and customer satisfaction).    As detailed below, we think this anti-correlation may be a leading indicator of  conflicting motivations - i.e. employees are happy because they are well compensated, but the activities for which they are well compensated are in conflict with the greater societal good (not to mention the good of their customers).   This interpretation is consistent with alleged behavior behind the recently announced S.E.C. probe of Goldman Sachs.

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Google's stand in response to apparent Chinese censorship of its search engine has drawn generally positive reviews, particularly when compared to the more ambiguous positions taken by Microsoft and Yahoo!.   Some pundits have taken this as evidence that Google really is the prototypical socially responsible company.  But is Google really walking its "don't be evil" talk?

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Most people are bad drivers with bad driving habits. I'm not, of course, and you certainly aren't.   But pretty much everyone else is.   That's what researchers report when people's opinions of their driving skills are compared to their actual performance.   It's related to what cognitive psychologists call the  Dunning-Kruger effect:  the tendency of people  (particularly the least competent) to vastly overestimate their skills and abilities.

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Social Responsibility includes avoidance of controversial business, fair trade, good corporate governance, human rights and animal rights.  You can learn more about how the most talked-about companies on the Web treat their customers, employees communities, the environment and society in general at Vanno.

The Environment  includes anti-pollution, recycling, clean & renewable energy, conservation, preservation, and sustainability.  You can learn more about how the most talked-about companies on the Web treat their customers, employees communities, the environment and society in general at Vanno.

Some sanity is finally creeping to into the media free-for-all surrounding the Toyota accelerator and brake recalls.   Curiously, the piling-on seems to be continuing in the business pundit world, with one after another declaring the death of the Toyota brand.   Those with a better understanding of how consumers buy cars seem to be less apocalyptic. Edmunds.com, for example, analyzed National Traffic Safety Administration data over the last ten years and found that  Toyota had had 9.1% of all the complaints in the database, but 13.5% of the U.S. market.  That was good for 17 out of 20 (here a lower rank is better), bettered only by Mercedes, Porsche and Smart.   Compare Toyota to the worst brand on the list - Land Rover - which received 0.6% of the total complaints in the database, while its sales amounted to only 0.1% of all new cars sold in the United States.   Of course, anyone who drives by a Land Rover dealership on a Saturday morning already knows that. As we pointed out in a recent post entitled Five Reasons why Toyota will be OK, people buy cars via comparison shopping.  Our most recent ranking of automobile companies (shown at the top of this post) still has Toyota on top.   Toyota's overall reputation - including customer and employee satisfaction, community involvement, the environment and social responsibility - has dropped a bit recently, but has consistently tracked ahead of competitors like Honda, Ford and GM, as shown in the graph below. That's not to say the recalls involving floor mats, accelerator systems and hybrid brakes - coupled with and a slow and clumsy initial public response by Toyota senior management - haven't taken a toll.   In the graph below, it's clear that Toyota's reputation for customer satisfaction - as reflected in online stories and commentary - has dropped significantly in recent weeks.   But notice that Honda has also seen a drop - most likely associated with their own recalls.   Ford is seen as having recovered somewhat in recent months after a bout of mis-association with the other American automakers involved in government bailouts.  And their reputation for customer satisfaction did NOT follow Toyota and Honda down in recent weeks. For more on how the most talked-about companies online - including Toyota - treat their customers, employees, communities, the environment and society in general, please visit Vanno.