Make your corporate website a reputation fortress

From trade disputes to culture wars, 2025 is serving up a fresh, complex brew of reputational risks for all companies.   

Meanwhile, generative AI is transforming how customers, investors, jobseekers and others get information about your organisation.

All this makes the corporate website more powerful than ever as a risk and reputation management tool – if it’s used correctly.   

Here are five steps for achieving this. 

Purge inconsistencies  

In today’s polarised world, it’s tempting to say one thing to employees and another to external audiences – such as investors. This is a mistake that will erode trust.  

Whether it’s environmental policies, inclusion commitments or job cuts, what’s said on your internal channels must be consistent with messaging on the corporate website, social media and elsewhere. 

Boeing took a simple but effective approach to this last October, by turning a (sobering) CEO all-staff memo into an external press release.  

McDonald’s did something similar in January this year, publishing an email to employees about changes to inclusion policies on its corporate website.  

Kill jargon  

Acronyms, technical terms and in-house terminology are perennial corporate communications pollutants. There are two reasons why they are now more damaging than ever:  

First, terms like ESG and DEI have been politically weaponised – rendering them lightning-rods for acrimony and pushback.  

Second, use of corporate jargon reduces the chances that AI search tools, such as ChatGPT and Google’s new AI Mode, will use your content to provide answers to users’ questions about your company.  

Use clear language – and talk about things in the way that your audiences do. Amazon’s Our Positions page remains the best example of this that I’ve seen on a corporate website.  

Explain everything 

Make your corporate website the “mothership of truth” about all relevant issues – even difficult ones. If you don’t, AI search tools and real people will get the answers from sources outside your control.  

Providing an “A to Z” of your company’s positions on all key issues is a simple way of achieving this. See these approaches by GSK, Nestlé, Unilever and Amazon as examples.   

If you take this approach, it’s vital to keep content updated as hot topics, and your company’s positions on them, change.   

Tell stories  

Give your employees the platform and mandate to explain what life is really like inside the company, in their own words. This can take the form of video testimonials on the corporate website, “day in the life” posts on Instagram (here’s an effective example from Salesforce), or short documentaries on YouTube.   

This is a powerful way of conveying messages about your company’s environmental activities or commitments to diversity, for example, while avoiding poisonous debate about corporate policies.  

Stories – articles, infographics and videos – are also a winning way of demystifying difficult or contentious topics. You can find a list of effective examples of this on the episode page for Bowen Craggs’ podcast, Cutting Through.   

Be human 

People relate to other people, not faceless corporations – now more than ever.

If there’s a major announcement or policy change, persuade your CEO to explain the business case for it in a video – then promote this on the corporate website and other channels – internal as well as external. 

For example, Unilever published a video interview with its new CEO on its global website soon after his appointment in March this year.  

All the above can be easier said than done, especially if you’re under time and resource pressures or have your hands tied by internal politics. Bowen Craggs can provide you with targeted recommendations to fortify your corporate website and other channels amid global volatility, to reduce risk and strengthen the reputational impact of your digital channels.  

To find out more, contact Tom Golden at tgolden@bowencraggs.com.