During the holiday season, the market typically focuses on companies’ year-over-year sales growth, profit margins, earnings reports, and inventory management as key indicators of performance and future outlook for the economy. But this year, attention has shifted towards a new challenge impacting businesses: politicization following the 2024 US Presidential Election and uncertainty around policy changes with a new administration.
Let’s look at a recent example. Earlier this month, a TikTok account with 200k+ followers posted a video listing a series of companies which allegedly did and did not donate to President-elect Trump’s campaign. That video went viral and has since been viewed more than 14 million times with almost 2 million likes. The video concluded with the text, “I HOPE we all understand the assignment for this Christmas season," suggesting that users take action against or in support of brands based on the video’s claims.
Following the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, politics is at the forefront of American consumers’ minds, regardless of political affiliation. We are increasingly seeing content alleging political giving or company stances on policy issues which can create the risk of significant backlash, manifesting in various forms, including brand boycotts, organized protests, and coordinated negative social media influence campaigns, all of which can severely impact a brand's reputation and revenue during the critical holiday shopping period.
So, what does it mean for the modern CCO? Proactive monitoring, anticipating threats, and intervening early to address disinformation campaigns and other forms of online risk are the only ways organizations can mitigate potential harm to corporate reputation, stakeholder trust, and business continuity.
Here’s a deeper look at the key ways companies can manage their risk profile and protect themselves in today’s uncertain and chaotic digital environment:
- Proactive Monitoring: Threat detection is the foundation of an effective mitigation strategy. You can’t protect yourself from something you don’t know exists in the first place. This underscores the importance of monitoring a comprehensive set of data sources that includes the alternative and niche social media platforms, communities, blogs, and forums where bad actors hang out. Traditional social listening tools won’t give you the full picture of where and how influence is happening.
- Stakeholder Communication: Stakeholder communication is evolving. With an increasing distrust in authoritative news and media sources, companies have to change how they’re communicating with their consumers, workforce, and other stakeholders in order to maintain trust in their brand. This means understanding what issues your stakeholders care about, how they’re engaging with those issues online, what messages do and do not resonate, and how they’re potentially being influenced by external factors.
- Context is Key: Volume, sentiment, and other insights gleaned from social listening tools are great for understanding your marketing campaign – but terrible for spotting online risk. Alethea’s experts can give you the context that tells you why you should care, or conversely, why you shouldn’t. Not every risk requires a response, and wasting time, resources, and C-Suite energy on low-level threats can pose a serious risk to an organization’s operational and business goals. Alethea’s Insights equip teams with data that brings clarity, greater certainty, and a predictive value to strategic risk management decisions.
We have seen a strong online appetite for content targeting private sector companies, and we don’t expect that to change. Companies must proactively invest in solutions that give them insight into how narratives and information move within the online ecosystem to enhance their ability to respond effectively when crises arise. This allows businesses to regain control over their narratives and protect their brands from the damaging effects of politicization. Armed with well-researched insights and data-driven solutions, stakeholders can make informed decisions to combat disinformation and misinformation threats, safeguarding their reputations and ensuring long-term success.
Book a demo with our team to learn how we can help you proactively manage your risk profile and protect against sophisticated disinformation threats.
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