It’s been a rough year for Tesla and Facebook.
In the Axios Harris Poll released on Wednesday, Tesla watched its corporate reputation ranking slip 39 places from third place in 2018 to 42nd this year. Facebook, which had been in the 51st spot in 2018, fell 43 slots to 94th in 2019. Once again, Wegmans and Amazon led the corporate reputation rankings. Last year, Amazon was tops and Wegmans second. This year, they’ve swapped positions and now Wegmans earned the best corporate reputation.
The rankings are based on polling data from more than 24,000 American adults on their opinions of the “most visible companies” in the U.S. Only the top seven companies earned “excellent” corporate reputation ratings. Despite its decline, Tesla’s ranking was still “very good.” Facebook landed in the “poor” reputation set.
Tesla’s decline was due in large part to CEO Elon Musk, Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema suggested in an interview with Axios on Wednesday. He told the news outlet that Musk’s behavior last year, including announcing on Twitter that he was considering taking the company private and smoking marijuana on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, among other controversies, proved to be a drag on Tesla’s corporate reputation.
“This is sort of a cautionary tale for when your CEO is a celebrity,” Gerzema told Axios.
Facebook’s ranking decline could have been affected by the company’s troubled 2018 that saw CEO Mark Zuckerberg taken to task by lawmakers on Capitol Hill over privacy concerns and ongoing fears of Russians using Facebook to interfere in U.S. And international elections.
Still, despite those concerns, Facebook couldn’t come close to matching the U.S. Government. With a reputation score of “critical,” the U.S. Government has the worst reputation of any organization.
Neither Tesla nor Facebook immediately responded to Coins2Day‘s request for comment.
