Top Ten Reputation Managers

Charles Lewington’s standing in the field has grown exponentially since he founded Hanover in 1998 on the back of a career in Downing Street (he was John Major’s press secretary) and political journalism.

He’s since grown Hanover from a staff of one to a team of 150 consultants in four locations around the world. It’s not resting on its laurels: it announced plans in April to double in size over the next five years.

In a world of disruptive technologies, political ambiguity and shifting markets, Lewington is prescient on how businesses are increasingly realising the need for high-level strategic consultancy to anticipate, advise and act on regulatory, legislative and reputational issues. On challenges for modern companies, he has told Spear’s: ‘The problem with cyberattacks is you don’t get much of a handle on the… data that’s gone missing quickly enough for you to go out and firmly tell the world exactly what’s happened.’

For crisis preparedness, Hanover has been delivering support beyond traditional media training, including integrated TV, online news and social media simulations to ‘illustrate how one feeds another at breakneck speed’. Lewington has also taken on the tech challenge, particularly in artificial intelligence. While companies are still mapping out the playing field they remain ‘at risk of a reputation gap, where their intentions and how they’re perceived don’t match up’.