"As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there." Hughes Mearns His problem was obvious. No image. Richard M. Nixon had a bad image. John F. Kennedy had a good image. Though history notes the great achievements of Nixon and the human foibles of Kennedy, image endures.

So it is with corporate image. EXXON will have a bad image for a long time, thanks to the EXXON Valdez. So will Foodmaker, Inc., thanks to some very bad burgers. Johnson & Johnson will have a good image, thanks to deft handling of the Tylenol crisis.

In today's marketing world, nothing is more important than corporate image in paving the way to success or failure.

Accounting textbooks state that intangible assets include patents, copyrights, franchises, trademarks and brand names, and good will. While it is difficult to assign a dollar value to good will, it is an established and recognized corporate asset. It's a short leap to conclude that corporate image also is an asset and because of that, needs to be treated a certain way, like other assets.

• Corporate image needs to be taken into consideration in the planning and operations of an organization;
• Corporate image should be maintained, just like equipment and facilities; and
• Corporate image should be assessed periodically, and updated as needed.

Most of all, corporate image should be infused throughout the organization and show itself in every interaction with every member of every audience that organization has. Forget that just one time, with an investor, customer, prospect, employee, community member, supplier or media representative, and you have tarnished the corporate image that makes the difference between success and failure.

What is this beast?
According to G.A. Marken (Public Relations Quarterly, Spring 1990), "Corporate image is defined as the perceived sum, of the entire organization, its objectives and plans. It encompasses … products, services, management style, communications activities and actions around the world."

From an integrated communications standpoint, we define corporate image as the result of the identity we create and communicate, and the reputation conferred on us by others.

In other words, it is a function of what an organization wants to project, and what its audiences "get." Like a first impression, once you interact with anyone, you have an image. The key to success is knowing that identity and reputation make up the image that leads to (or away from) willingness to do business with and support a given organization.

New organizations have the wonderful opportunity to create their images from the ground up. They also have the daunting task of creating their images from the ground up.

Existing organizations that don't feel they have a clear image may have a fragmented or ill-defined image. Organizations get so caught up doing business that they don't often step back and take a look at image.

As a result, their images may be diffuse and/or meaningless to their audiences, not reflect reality and therefore actually hamper sales.

A favorite cartoon shows a high-power executive telling a junior executive, "I want you PR guys to change our image from an enormous multinational corporation to a lil ol' sagebrush rebel." But if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck … it's going to take significant time and effort to convince people it's not a duck.

Changing corporate image is a massive undertaking, much like changing course on an aircraft carrier. It takes a massive (and therefore slow) change in … well … everything.

In the 1980s, we worked with a for-profit hospital chain that specialized in buying distressed hospitals (with poor reputations, low census, poor practices, alienated physicians, etc.), laying off 20 to 30 percent of the staff, and then wondering why their image was poor. We were brought in to change the hospitals' images. In several cases it worked.

But it took changes in administrators, extensive facilities remodeling, name changes, investments in technology, new business focus, renewed commitment to the community, a new openness to the media and concerted, ongoing communications to let people know this. In time, we had major metropolitan daily newspapers touting "turnarounds" of the hospitals.

We also worked with the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce when the appointment of Gilbert A. Partida as president provided the opportunity to change the image of an organization that had lost momentum and clout, to one leading the change that would bring San Diego into the 21st century.

That change took singular vision, enormous pubic and media interest, hundreds of interviews and speeches, buy-in from the entire staff and volunteer base, new channels of communication and one full year of non-stop, unified effort. And that was quick!

From the examples cited earlier, it's clear that good image can be lost in a single defining moment. It need not be the case (Johnson & Johnson could have handled the Tylenol tampering case badly, and been another EXXON), but it can and does happen. More often, good image is lost through erosion.

A constant series of disconnects between what an organization says it is and what it actually is (in the minds of its audiences, where perception truly is reality) will destroy an image that has taken years, even decades, to build. For example, if an organization has a quality image, then installs an impenetrable voice mail system, that image will suffer.

Likewise, if a "quality organization" issues newsletters that are poorly printed (smudged, on cheap paper, out of register), that discordance will hurt its image. Everything needs to be taken into account, from how the telephone is answered to whether the logo should be bright red (bad idea if you want an image of calm) to what typeface you use (sans serif typefaces are technical and cold, ill suited to a warm and caring organization).

If everything is taken into account, an organization that wants an image of being creative will loosen its dress code and be more flexible about hours worked. An organization that has an image of caring will work on its community relations effort. And an organization that wants to be an international player won't have untranslatable dialect or slang in its description.

Corporate image depends on what you are and what you do. It depends more on how you walk than how you talk. It can drive an organization's success or failure, and being mindful of that can tilt the scales towards success.