Jakarta city centre at sunset. - Photo: Jakarta Post/ANN
CORPORATE reputation is no longer an abstract concept in Indonesia.
In an era of instant headlines and viral outrage, it has become a measurable asset, shaping how companies attract customers, investors and even employees.
Yet many Indonesian firms still treat communication as something reactive. A tool for crisis, not a pillar of strategy.
This gap matters because reputation increasingly shapes investment, policy and sustainable development.
In a country that aims to attract green and digital capital, reputational risk can translate directly into financial and social cost.
The question is no longer whether communication influences performance, but how companies use it to align words with action.
A recent backlash against mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia’s sponsorship of music festival Pestapora in Jakarta shows how easily that alignment breaks.
The attempt to appear progressive and connected to youth culture instead reignited questions about environmental and social practices.
The reaction was swift because Indonesians saw a gap between message and reality and in a hyper-connected society, that gap rarely stays private.
The lesson is not simply that companies must avoid controversy. It is that reputation now sits at the heart of how the public understands corporate power and responsibility.
In the past, strong financial results or large-scale philanthropy might have been enough to secure goodwill. Today, credibility depends on communication that feels consistent and transparent.
This evolution mirrors Indonesia’s broader economic story.
As the country pursues sustainable growth through its Sustainable Development Goals agenda and energy transition, communication has become a form of soft infrastructure.
Credibility, transparency and empathy are no longer “public relations values”.
They are prerequisites for trust, both domestically and internationally.
According to DataReportal’s 2025 Indonesia Digital Report, over 212 million Indonesians or roughly 75% of the population, are now online, with three hours spent daily on social media.
More than 80% say they trust peer commentary and online reviews as much as traditional news.
This means corporate reputation lives entirely in public view, evolving through constant dialogue between businesses, consumers and civil society.
State-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina learnt this the hard way when a massive corruption scandal involving fuel import manipulation surfaced earlier this year.
Investigators estimated the cost to the state at nearly 194 trillion rupiah.
The revelations triggered public anger and raised uncomfortable questions about governance.
They responded quickly with internal reviews and public apologies, but the episode reminded Indonesians that reputation damage is not only a matter of communication. It’s a question of accountability.
Once trust is broken, rebuilding it requires far more than press releases.
What distinguishes companies that recover from those that do not often comes down to coherence between values and action.
Contrast that with organisations that remain silent until public pressure mounts.
In the age of screenshots and citizen journalism, silence rarely signals professionalism. It often reads as evasion.
Indonesian consumers, particularly younger ones, now expect empathy and speed. A recognition that reputation is built through conversation, not control.
Scholars have long argued that corporate reputation relies on three pillars: credibility, reliability and responsibility.
In Indonesia, those pillars are still taking shape.
Credibility means speaking truthfully, not only when things go well.
Reliability means consistency across markets, languages and platforms.
Responsibility means engaging honestly with the environmental, social and ethical concerns that shape public opinion.
When one of these pillars weakens, the others cannot hold the structure for long.
This evolution also challenges how companies think internally.
Communication cannot remain the domain of marketing departments.
Every employee is now part of the story.
Starting from frontline staff who handle customer complaints to senior executives who comment publicly. Internal culture and external messages must reinforce each other.
As management scholar Charles Fombrun once wrote, reputation “resides in the minds of stakeholders”.
Those minds, today, are connected through algorithms and screens.
Kleon Battersby in his 2021 study Corporate Reputation: The Currency of Communication expands on this idea, describing reputation as a form of “social capital” built through ongoing dialogue rather than one-way messaging.
Battersby argues that in today’s attention economy, communication is not merely a support function but the medium through which credibility is earned.
The study’s insight resonates strongly in Indonesia, where digital participation is high and audiences are quick to reward sincerity but even quicker to detect inconsistency.
The implications reach beyond branding. As Indonesia deepens its participation in global supply chains, its reputation increasingly affects investment and partnerships.
Foreign investors now weigh governance and transparency as much as market potential.
A well-communicated sustainability record can open doors, while an unresolved controversy can close them.
To be sure, the country’s communications landscape is maturing. Universities now offer courses in corporate reputation management.
The Indonesian Public Relations Association has called for national standards of transparency and accountability.
Media literacy initiatives are slowly encouraging companies to see audiences not as targets but as participants in shaping perception. Still, progress is uneven.
Many local firms remain hesitant to address criticism publicly or to engage in dialogue.
The instinct to protect rather than explain remains strong. Yet the direction is unmistakable. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
Winston Simbolon Tumanggor is a senior associate at RooneyPartners, a New York–based communications firm. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
