We are all playing the Reputation Game, whether or not we know it. In the prevailing climate of social media, acquiring the reputation you desire, and avoiding the one you don’t, could be a matter of life or death. Global consultants David Waller and Rupert Younger reveal the key mechanisms that make and break our reputations.

They illustrate with case studies of international figures such as Putin and Pope Frances, and interviews with the famous and the infamous alike, from Hilary Mantel to Jay Z to Bernie Madoff.

David Waller is a partner in FTI, a global consulting firm executing strategic communications programmes for international companies, financial institutions and governments, having earlier founded his own agency, Chancery Communications, after leaving the FT in 1997. He has also held senior roles at Allianz and Dresdner Kleinwort and was a senior consultant at The Maitland Consultancy.

Rupert Younger is founder director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Corporate Reputation, where he researches how reputations are created, sustained, destroyed and rebuilt. He is also a co-founder of the Finsbury Group, the global strategic communications firm headquartered in London.