Breaking Stigma: From Avoidance to Permission 

In the world of reputation strategy, there’s an itch we’re all tempted to ignore, a scratchy tag inside the corporate sweater. Eventually, it demands our attention. 

Meet: Stigma. 

As corporate affairs counselors, we spend a lot of time on ‘Big R’ Reputation strategy. Reputations are based on distinctiveness from other organizations, and we work towards establishing that distance from competitors. Stigmatization, though, tends more to broad negative categorizations of sameness across a category.  

It’s a different beast—persistent and pervasive—requiring a deliberate approach often within an integrated communications strategy.  

The Four Horsemen of Category Stigma 

Before you throw up your hands (or reach for a rebrand), let’s diagnose the beast. There are obvious, and more extreme, examples of stigmatized industries: think tobacco or firearms. And there are more subtle forms that many organizations experience. 

Stigma clusters into four archetypes: 

Dated/Uncool: Brands seen as stuck in the past, with legacy formats or aesthetics that signal irrelevance. Coolness just doesn’t last the way it used to. It’s fickle, and today’s tapped in brand is tomorrow’s also-ran.

Low Status/Quality: Products or services assumed to be cheap or unreliable, imposing a “social cost” on their users. Customers expect regret. 

Declining/Irrelevant: Industries viewed as shrinking or obsolete, even when their offerings remain strong. They leave stakeholders, investors in particular, yawning. You’ve lost attention. 

Harmful/Unethical: Organizations perceived to exploit, mislead, or harm people or the planet. Of course, the most likely to trigger boycotts or regulatory scrutiny. What is considered harmful or unethical isn’t static either. Social norms have been recently fluid enough that the definition for this is broader than ever. 

These stigmas overlap or evolve from one to another over time, compounding the job to be done.  

The CCO’s Playbook 

Here’s the upside: stigma isn’t forever. Know your audience and root causes, then move fast and smart. The playbook is simple, but the execution requires creativity and discipline. Change the context, show your value and prove it again (and again). 

Our framework distills the process of mitigating and then overcoming stigma into two clear phases with five moves to make. 

Phase 1: Stabilize & Normalize 

1. Stabilize & Normalize. The first step is to reduce stigma’s visibility and reclaim credibility. Depending on the type of stigma, and context around your industry, it may require: 

Recoding: Update design, language and user experiences to reflect modern standards, for instance.  

Separating Misperceptions from New Realities: Marginalize bad-faith narratives by providing transparent, factual information and correcting errors swiftly. 

Proving Usefulness: Demonstrate real value to high-impact groups through case studies and endorsements. 

2. Build Endorsement & Embed Value. Once credibility is stabilized, the goal shifts to turning skeptics into advocates: 

Engage Skeptics: Invite scrutiny, share data openly, and provide regular updates. Transparency transforms critics into fair commentators. 

Anchor to Shared Public Goals: Show how the organization advances broader values like safety, access or affordability, supported by independent audits or partnerships. 
 

Stigma isn’t a permanent sentence.  

Breaking stigma isn’t easy, but it is possible. With the right framework—one grounded in collective action, transparency, a commitment to collective value, and maybe a bit of swagger—organizations can not only overcome negative labels but also unlock new pathways for impact and reputation. 

We’ll explore this concept more fully in the coming months and continue to unpack how stigma forms and hardens, the characteristics of stigma and its impact on stakeholders, and more ways to counteract or prevent it. 

Mike Sacks leads FleishmanHillard’s corporate affairs practice in Chicago.