e-Reputation is not Advertising

A friend asked me a few days ago what are (in my opinion) the fundamental differences between advertising and (online) reputation. Actually, this is a really good question!

Indeed, nowadays, many people are not very comfortable whenever they have to dissociate between those two notions and even tend to mix up both of them. To be short, I identify two main reasons to that:

• The fast emergence and sound adoption of the word '(e-)reputation' in our everyday life. Quite interestingly, such a process has been so fast that it's almost impossible to find today any satisfactory definition of what is e-reputation.
• The use of of a marketing-oriented terminology when dealing with the concept of e-reputation, e.g. 'personal-branding', 'promotion of yourself' and so on and so forth.

It seems then valuable to start the development of an answer by defining (concisely) advertising and e-reputation.

Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand. Source:Wikipedia

I would define e-reputation as a social evaluation made by electronic entities toward a specific electronic entity, where an e-entity can be an individual, a group of individuals or an organization. Such an evaluation rests on the publicly observable online history attached to the online identity of the e-entity evaluated, that is the entity's digital footprint.

Or, put differently:

• Advertising refers to the persuasion of an audience to take some action toward a specific brand's product/service by using the available means of communication (e.g. Internet, radio, TV...).

• e-Reputation refers to the perception of an audience toward a specific digital identity by observing the available digital data attached to this identity.

Then, we remark that:

• Advertising is the creation of an image (e.g. of a product) whereas e-Reputation is the meta-evaluation of an image (e.g. of a person).
• Advertising is action-oriented whereas e-reputation is belief-oriented.
• Advertising is a Flow of Capital whereas e-reputation is a Social-Capital, that is advertising depends on the quantity of available capital for a brand and aims money creation whereas e-reputation depends on the quantity of digital data available for an identity and creates Social Capital, or capital necessary to trust formation.
• Advertising refers to a passive role of the entities (i.e. from media to the audience) whereas e-reputation refers to an active role (i.e. from the entities to the media). Put differently, advertising targets an entity thanks to the use of a specific medium whereas, concerning e-reputation, it’s the entity which targets an online identity thanks to the use of a specific medium, the Internet.
• e-Reputation is a Capital/Stock and is so manageable whereas advertising is not.
• Advertising is primarily bounded by regulations whereas e-Reputation should be primarily bounded by ethics.
• more to come

To summarize advertising vs e-reputation:

1. Creation of an image vs meta-Evaluation of an image;
2. Action-oriented vs Belief-oriented;
3. Passive role of the entities vs Active role;
4. Flow vs Capital;
5. Not Manageable vs Manageable over a defined period of time.
6. Regulations vs Ethics.

Dear readers, your comments/ideas/suggestions are [as usual] very welcome!