Protecting your brand in the age of generative AI

Imagine a deep fake video supposedly of your CEO making a market-moving statement going viral on the web.

Or an AI-driven social campaign at high volume questioning your company’s ESG claims.

What if a national news organisation falls for a fake website denigrating your brand, or press release supposedly distributed in your company’s name?

Forgive the hyperbole, but all of those scenarios are possible right now, and they have become more simple to roll out at scale with the ubiquity of generative AI.

As those working alongside me at Formative will attest, I’m no AI doom-monger, but – as a former journalist and now content creator for more than a decade – I’m well aware of how easy it is to trash a reputation or send a share price into freefall. I’m not the only journalist / former journalist concerned about this – according to research by  the global news publishing body WAN-IFRA the biggest worry in newsrooms is “that AI tools might propagate “misinformation or poor content quality, with 85% listing it as a major concern”.

Meanwhile AI-driven content farms are already pushing fake news content into social feeds and aggregated news channels – albeit primarily to drive traffic and therefore ad revenue rather than solely for misinformation gains. But a misinformation content tsunami is – let’s face it – likely as we near any major election in any corner of the globe.

Marketers and communicators are already using generative AI within their output – many without guidelines or consideration of privacy and veracity. According to research carried out by Frontify, 93% of CMOs say that as use of AI grows, protecting their brand has become even more important to them. Never has brand been more important as a safe harbour for reputation –

“For b2b businesses, brands are an essential and powerful asset.  Brands are markers of trust, which is so important in every single industry.  The sources of such trust – including strong values, deep expertise and consistent excellence – are brought to life by b2b brands.” (Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons)

But how best to achieve that protection in an environment where spoofers and miscreants can create content potentially as ‘professionally’ as your comms and marketing team?

It’s time to reinforce and defend your comms and content ‘single source of truth’.

This means the establishment and reinforcement of a consistent, reliable, and authentic representation of your brand’s storytelling, messaging and values across your primary proprietary website. So if the worst does happen, you’re more strongly positioned to reinforce your message of clarity or denial, including outreach from your key execs.

This is not about the redundancy of the omni-channel journey, nor for the death of multi-channel amplification. Simply that now seems as good a time as any to return to the first principles of profile and reputation-building.

How can you reinforce and defend your comms SSOT and de-risk your future comms?

Reinforce your narrative

Double down on story-telling and delivery of brand-led messages on your proprietary site(s). Build your audiences with associated social campaigns and promotion to ensure you have a raft of people already receiving your messaging to reach out to in the event of issues with misinformation.

More quality story-telling with clear and demonstrable proof points will also deliver more search success, especially in the dawning age of genAI. Referencing and data supporting your insight should be front of mind. For Google, the message remains the same when it comes to content:

“Google’s ranking systems aim to reward original, high-quality content that demonstrates qualities of what we call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness… Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.”

Create deep and narrow pockets of insight on those platforms where you are in firm charge of your messaging. Why build your house on rented land? As ever, use social to amplify, but not as the heart of your messaging strategy.

Knowledge Deep Dive

Demonstrating the depth of your knowledge and insight with external-facing insight and shareable stories is more important than ever. In an environment where less of our content is trust-worthy, your branded content provides vital signposting.

AI tools will soon allow us to aggregate and surface proprietary brand content quickly. By creating your own Foundational Model you can aggregate your stories, thinking and insight into one accessible website content hub.

As well as providing your instant SSOT you are more likely to drive success in today’s AI-driven search environment. You can build your own tool if budget and time allows, but plenty of tools are emerging in the market, and those are likely to expand in the coming months. Management consultancy Accenture advocates: “A middle way is to boost an existing foundation model by fine-tuning it with your own data and building your own prompt and application layers on top.”

News brands are already citing ‘depth of context’ as a way in which they themselves can build trust in the age of misinformation. As brand journalists we can take lessons from the newsroom. Here’s the guidance from global news agency, Reuters, in a recent report on building trust in news:

“… there’s a lot of complicated information out there, the numbers can be overwhelming. It’s the job of the journalists to distil that information and communicate it in an accurate, compelling way that is easily understandable to audiences.”

The Reuters report encourages news organisations to use infographics, data and maps to reinforce and demystify the images and stories they are delivering. Again, businesses can learn much from this guidance. Just delivering data out of context won’t explain or demystify an issue – context and background information can help with that.

Expertise wins

Double down on story-telling and delivery of brand-led messages on your proprietary site(s) will also deliver more search success, with integrated content SEO becoming more important (multiple AI SEO tools, such as Frase, are already available and can support with this – increasingly AI tools will be built into your browsers to deliver similar functionality).

Whilst reinforcing your story through content, don’t swamp the market with messaging. We know that with GenAI the amount of information on offer to audiences will only rise. High quality content – created, curated or reviewed by a knowledgeable human with specialist expertise in your sector – is important for the moment if you’re leveraging ChatGPT data or using similar LLM tools that are trained on the open web.

Differentiation is going to be important, as is credibility and quality of output. Referencing and credentialising your facts, data and insight will become even more important. What is appealing for me about Bing as an AI-supported search tool is the referencing it delivers within the search function. Sourcing our facts – and ensuring they are from trusted sources – will become more important as we face ‘truth challenges’.

Re-humanise

As digital marketers, we already know that authentic leadership delivers better results (see BCG’s report on Leading with Purpose for the statistics); Google search prioritises the expertise of writers and content authors – along with how they are delivering their expertise on the page.

It’s time to build the brands of your people – not just the senior tier, but those who are the engine room of your business. These brand ambassadors and B2B influencers can drive engagement and empathy for your b2b brand. Personalise what you can with your own people and your own brand voices. If your messages have a human voice they are more likely to be received as authentic; although we know that fake videos are inevitable, the more your own corporate ones exist, the more easy it is to credentialise your own.

Find real-life stories that illustrate your depth of impact and double down on the areas and values that you believe in. Messages that deviate from those values will be easier to spot as false. You should also seek out opportunities to grow your ‘social proof’ – these could be in the form of case studies (this person already bought our work) in any format or personalised testimonials (this person truly believes in us and is willing to stake their own reputation on us). Whenever you reflect or outline your work and impact, demonstrate with data and detail. What did you deliver and why did that make a difference?

Lean on your network

Meanwhile, use AI to scan quickly for critical and challenging voices.

Defending your reputation will mean encouraging community building and engagement from internal stakeholders and communities more than ever. B2B brands, just like consumer brands, will need the strength of the ‘hive’ to deliver and amplify.

So start building networks now that amplify your own trust position – through your own stakeholders and staff, as well as partners. Start using the platforms and tools so readily available to promote your internal talent; it’s time to build the profiles of your executives through personalisation of messaging and outreach.

By establishing a “single source of truth” across web content and reinforcing that on social media channels, companies can maintain stronger brand recognition within an ever more complex and busy information environment.

Where possible, comms should shift audiences back to the main website, keeping that primed and updated to reinforce your messaging and facts. Creating this focused approach to digital brand storytelling will allow brands to more effectively counter misinformation that could emerge as generative AI makes deep fakes more readily available and simple to produce.

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About the author: Gay Flashman is the CEO and founder of Formative Content, and the author of ‘Powerful B2B Content – Using Brand Journalism to Create Compelling and Authentic Storytelling’. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.