Watch: A conversation on Axios Harris Poll 2021 rankings

On Wednesday, May 26, Axios media reporter Sara Fischer and editor-in-chief Nicholas Johnston unpacked which brands have become America's favorites and how the past year has impacted their reputations, featuring The Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema, 3M senior vice president of communications Brian Henry, MDC Partners chairman and CEO Mark Penn and The Stagwell Group vice chair Ray Day.

• John Gerzema on the notably low rankings of social media companies in the Axios Harris Poll: "The big winner this year was probably Apple on the basis of their privacy...But basically, we saw the decline of social media platforms...We had all kinds of controversy around the platforms obviously this year."
• Brian Henry on how businesses and brands should continue to build resilience: "The lessons learned over the last year can't just be that we now know what PPE stands for. It is that we are smarter as a global community to stay ahead of, respond to and be ready for the next pandemic."
• Mark Penn on who drives the reputation of companies: "Investors don't drive corporate reputation, more or less. What drives corporate reputation in this survey is much more of the consumers who see and use the products...They want to know that it's consistent in what it stands for."

• Ray Day on how companies can improve their overall reputation: "The price of entry is to have strong products and services...I always think of reputation as an equation. It's the sum of your company performance, the way you behave, and then how you communicate or market that determines whether your reputation goes up or whether it declines."