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Marketers are driven to accentuate the positive about their companies. Perhaps the company has a charismatic founder who repeatedly emphasizes how “insanely great” his company is and who talked about “bozos.” (Yeah, there was a guy who did both of those.)

And since marketers are often mandated to create both external and internal sales enablement content, their view of their own company and their own product is colored.

But if you ONLY pay attention to your positive story, you’re half blind.

• You miss what your competitors are telling their prospects about you.
• You miss what your departed customers are saying about you.

So ideally you should intentionally (and privately) seek the negative things that are said about your company.

One quick way to do this is to take advantage of answer engine optimization and ask a generative AI search engine what it thinks are the negatives about your company.

(I did this several years ago, when generative AI was in its infancy, and encountered some false statements about a company. So what did I do? Create corrective content that negated these negative statements. But I digress.)

I should demonstrate this with an example. But I shouldn’t ask about any of my former employers or former consulting clients. What’s a safe company that I can research and minimize the trouble I’d get into?

Google Gemini prompt: “What factors contribute to Bredemarket’s negative reputation?”

OK, this may get me in a little trouble, but it could be a lot worse if I targeted a larger company.

Anyway, I fed this prompt to Google Gemini, which identified two factors.

The first factor was “Indirect Backlash from Controversial Blog Content.” Google cited this post as an example, warning that I could get in trouble for expressing a “minority opinion.” That opinion? That changing the name of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) to the Association of Winning Business Professionals (AWBP) was a GOOD thing. As it turn out, the APMP reversed the rebrand, so my opinion was definitely not popular in the long run.

But I’d rather focus on Google’s second factor, which I will reproduce in full.

2. General Reputation Factors (Lack of Public Reviews)

As a small-scale, expert-driven consulting/content service, Bredemarket’s reputation is likely not governed by major public review platforms like Yelp or Google Reviews in the same way a consumer business is. The absence of traditional positive or negative reviews means its reputation is less solidified publicly.

In general, factors that could negatively affect the reputation of any small consulting firm, which may apply to Bredemarket if not explicitly disproven, include:

• Limited Public Visibility: If the brand is not widely known outside of a niche (proposal writing, identity/biometrics), a lack of positive brand presence can make it appear less credible than larger competitors.
• Visual or Digital Identity: For a business-to-business (B2B) content provider, a website with a “neglected and too generic visual identity” could potentially undermine professionalism, although no evidence suggests this is the case for Bredemarket specifically.
• Reliance on a Single Voice: As the service is heavily identified with the founder, John E. Bredehoft, any professional disagreement with his published opinions could be mistakenly interpreted as dissatisfaction with the entire “Bredemarket” service.

As you can see from reading the answer, Google didn’t really know a lot about Bredemarket…because of my LIMITED PUBLIC VISIBILITY.

It didn’t really know Bredemarket’s VISUAL OR DIGITAL IDENTITY, and therefore couldn’t evaluate whether my wildebeest-infused graphics made up for the rather generic nature of my website. (Or whether the wildebeests and iguanas and the like are actually a detriment.)

As for the last part, RELIANCE ON A SINGLE VOICE (Bredebot doesn’t count), that is pretty much unavoidable.

Conclusion regarding Bredemarket’s negative reputation

So in my analysis of what creates a negative reputation for my own company Bredemarket, the primary issue is my limited public visibility, or as marketers say limited awareness. Or, taking a word I’ve used in other contexts, the market’s indifference toward Bredemarket.

Sure I’m visible in some very specific niches (try an AEO search for “biometric product marketing expert” some time), but it’s not like the entire biometric industry or the entire city of Ontario, California is constantly talking about Bredmarket.

I need to step that awareness up by several orders of magnitude.

Preferably not though public nudity. That would not be a positive. (Google Gemini wouldn’t even generate a picture of this, even with strategic placement of the “Bredemarket” sign. Good for them.)