Forum Post: Wall Street finally pays attention to OWS . . . or not.

More than half the Wall Street exec's interviewed in a recent independent survey said that OWS has had a real impact on their business, this according to ECHO Research, a global research company. Commissioned by Markovsky + Company, a PR and investor relations firm, Echo interviewed 150 marketing and communications executives at large to mid-sized publicly-traded and private financial institutions including major banks, brokerage and asset-management firms, and insurance companies. More findings of the survey include:

71% believe OWS will last past the November elections.

74% believe that increased regulation of the financial services industry will help their firms improve reputations and trust with customers faster.

96% said their firms invited negative public perception . . . by their actions or inactions.

Article: http://www.echoresearch.com/us/articles-events/latest/item/155-id.100663959.html

But, whether this research has impacted the CEOs and power brokers of these firms is another matter. According to Robert Reich, who needs no intro here, the bigwigs mostly see this as a PR problem. Scott Tagney, executive VP and head of financial services at Markovsky said, "There has been a shift in priority (since '08) from recovering and stabilizing to focusing on customer satisfaction, employee communications, and improving public perception."

Not surprising that their priorities mention nothing about reform. There is a bit of a silver lining however, at least in my opinion. According to the ECHO research site, they are "a global reputation analysis, media measurement and stakeholder research specialist" that enables "clients to measure how they are viewed, accurately and impartially, and to protect their brands and reputations." One of the tidbits I found on their site was this: "The average value of reputation as a percentage of market capitalisation has increased across the FTSE100 (the London Stock Exchange's top 100) has increased from 17% in 2007 to 33% at the start of 2012. It increased across the FTSE250 from 17% (2007) to 20% (now)." What I read in that tidbit is that public perception of a particular industry or business has more of an impact on that industry's bottom line than it had previously. Maybe people are starting to pay attention? One can only hope.