Counter Negative Campaigns
The Risk
A negative campaign against a company can generate various risks to the company, far greater than the attack on its reputation. Financial, regulatory, compliance, and political risks, just to name a few.
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Some of the global companies we've worked with found themselves defenseless against a damaging negative campaign. Some made grave mistakes while trying to face reputational attacks trying to harm the company, its brand, products, and CEO. Some tried to just end the event quickly, some tried to appease the malicious actors, and some just couldn't decide. They all failed.
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Why did companies fail?
They approached the reputational attack with the usual and familiar set of tools: PR, lobbyists, and strategic advisors. Acting without a well-established, proven methodology and with no critical intelligence to understand the threat, will not secure your reputation the way you need it to be protected.
Case study: Negative campaign
A Fortune 500 company faced threats that a severe negative campaign would be launched against it. Malicious actors started attacking the company's reputation on different social media platforms, instant messaging apps, and the public sphere.
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The company's executives directed the external PR advisors to provide immediate solutions to mitigate the attacks on its reputation. However, it failed to do so due to a lack of intel and awareness about the different players. If that was not enough, the company primarily lacked the methodology to counter such negative campaigns.
challenge
detect
Implementing a CMA (collect, monitor, and alert) web intelligence protocol.
While collecting open-source intelligence (OSINT) on the various campaign's fragments, "game-changing" information was detected, which the company was never conscious of.
Continuous monitoring revealed additional activities in languages and regions unfamiliar to the company.
Immediate alerts were provided to the company's senior management to allow for quick responses and effective risk mitigation.
analyze
Using the ALFA© mapping model for negative campaigns enabled us to come up with quick yet efficient identification of the different aspects of the harmful campaign.
The ALFA© four-dimensional model (Actors, Locations, Fields, Actions) assesses the interconnections between the actors generating the campaign, the geographical locations they are operating from, the fields of risks, and the exact actions involved in the campaign.
PROTECT
The company executed countermeasures to counter the negative campaign, including using the detected "game-changing" information in various social media platforms and main media outlets.
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The alerts provided to the company were later used as building blocks for forming an online reputational risks dashboard.
SOLUTIONS
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Negative campaign was halted
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Reputational risks were mitigated, avoiding significant financial losses and widespread media coverage