'Reputation is the currency of this millennium'

I prefer being known and referred to as Avis though my full name is Anand Viswanathan," founder of imagequity, claimed to be Asia's first reputation management firm, says.

However, after talking to him for a few moments, one gets a feeling that as Anand, he conducts Bonzer (jolly good fellow) motivational programmes and as Viswanathan, he wants to be on top of the world.

The man who sports himself as the "Chiefdreamer" of his company has, so far, conducted over 1,250 Bonzer sessions touching 35,000 people across Asia and dreams to make imagequity as the world's number one reputation management company.

A brand evangeliser for several years now, Avis has traversed a long way from being a journalist to championing reputation management.

"Reputation is the currency of this millennium," Avis feels.

According to him, investment in a good name (reputation) will have a greater pay off as products, services, service quality, distribution, price, and even public relations and advertising become less differentiated among competitors.

In this context, he says, imagequity is offering Total Reputation Management Programme (TrM), which focuses on four areas in an organisation "� organisational behaviour, communication, marketing and corporate strategy.

"After all, what you do or don't do in these four departments impacts your reputation," Avis says, adding that reputational scandals occur because behaviourally there is no change.

He says imagequity focuses on enhancing the quality of internal experience and also external visibility of organisations. Since its establishment in August 1996, it has done this exercise in over 100 companies in India.

These include Pizza Corner, Polaris Software, Aviva, Sami Labs, Microsoft, American Express and Murugappa group.

Avis avers that imagequity is akin to Mckinsey & Company. However, there is a difference.

"Mckinsey just advises. We advise and also implement it. We take up build, operate and transfer (BOT) projects," he says though his vision is to make imagequity the "Mckinsey of business".