Image Management, Part II.

IN MY LAST COLUMN, I TOLD you something you already knew -- that image is important to any organization s success -- and something you probably suspected -- that it's possible, and not that difficult, to diagnose your company's current image. I also presented one simple way to turn an image assessment into a good marketing strategy.

I also promised you a real example, so let's get to it. The following comes from an image assessment for a large Midwestern university that was having recruitment problems. We developed and conducted surveys of four important groups: current students, their parents, recent alumni and staff members. While the four surveys. weren't identical, each contained the same comprehensive list of potential beliefs; respondents were asked to check all items they thought described the university.

There were two patterns to check in the responses:

* The strength of agreement with each descriptor, considering all groups combined, and

* The consistency of agreement for each descriptor, considering each group separately.

Simply put, the administrators needed to know which beliefs about the university, if any, formed a consensus or core image--the strength part. They also needed to know if the image was shared from group to group the consistency part.

I won't bore you with detail on how we determined "high" versus "low" levels of strength and consistency. Suffice it to say there are several things to consider; especially competition and your own organization's history. It's largely a matter of informed judgment. An image assessment doesn't necessarily have to involve complex number-crunching to be useful.