Last week I attended the Reputation Institute‘s 15th annual conference on corporate reputation, brand, identity and competitiveness. 

The biggest takeaway? Here are five:

This is the century of reputation.

“Trust capital” can’t be bought. It can only be built.

 Goodwill can’t be duplicated or replaced.

If you can’t measure reputation, you can’t manage it.

In the absence of information you provide (about yourself, your company or your product), someone else will.

“Navigating the Reputation Economy” attracted a few hundred participants from around the globe. Forbes was the media partner. Allstate, BBVA Compass, Pfizer and Vestas sponsored. Highlights: Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint. His candid comments about how he maintains an authentic voice in internal and external communications were inspiring. Mike Perlis, CEO of Forbes Media, on motivating all stakeholders. 

Ginger Hardage, who heads Southwest Airlines’ Culture & Communications division. Christa Carone, Chief Marketing Officer of Xerox, who joined Honeywell’s Tom Buckmaster (VP of Corporate Communications) and Eastman Kodak’s Gerard Meuchner (Director, Communications & Public Affairs), in how they overcame reputation and other issues to successfully turn around those companies. Pfizer’s Sally Susman, Executive Vice President, Policy, External Affairs and Communications and Blair Christie, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Cisco, discussing the relationship between reputation and financial performance. (Key takeaway: telling the story in good times and bad). Most compelling: James M. Wiseman’s frank talk about managing image crises in a time of 24/7 news. Wiseman is Toyota’s longtime Chief Communications Officer.

Priceless: philospher and business ethics expert R. Edward Freeman.  “Reputation,” he said, ”is an outcome of how you create value.”