The foundation of brand value is trust. Brand is a promise made by the brand’s owner that any product bearing the brand name will manifest the quality and spirit of the brand. In almost every case, brands spend heavily and over a long term in order to establish and maintain a brand image.
Brands tend to stand for something. Apple, for instance, stands for innovation and sleek design. Amazon epitomizes convenience. Coca-Cola: a classic, refreshing beverage. And Harley-Davidson represents freedom, rebellion and motorcycle culture. It takes a long time and a great deal of effort to drive home a brand value proposition. The above brands all boast loyal customers who would go out of their way to use those brands as opposed to others in the same business.
What would happen to the value of any of these brands if a targeted disinformation campaign were to launch even a moderately successful attack? According to the European Center for Studies and Initiatives in April of 2023, the global cost of misinformation and disinformation in finance, politics and healthcare alone is above $75 billion per year.
Can a company adequately prepare for disinformation attacks in order to minimize disruption? They can! I will outline how this approach might work below.
Misinformation vs. Disinformation
First, let’s be clear on the difference between misinformation and disinformation, even though one can be as damaging as the other. Misinformation is incorrect data, often of an errant, mistaken nature. It may be the result of confusion, or lack of research or proper care, but is not considered to be deliberate. Whereas disinformation is essentially lying on purpose with malicious intent. And while most disinformation these days relates to politics and cultural issues, especially where it may affect the voting public, it’s not hard to see how this can at some point bleed into the corporate world and manifest a threat to every company with significant brand equity.
Inexpensive to Attack; Expensive to Defend
These days, according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a bad actor can hire a team of hackers to deploy generative AI in order to build a portfolio of disinformation on any given topic. And the cost is mere hundreds of dollars per hire! So it has become frighteningly simple for disinformation about any company to spread quickly if not checked.
Let’s have a look at some of the ways disinformation could cost an organization real money. The first casualty, very probably, is the single most valuable asset that pertains to a brand: trust. A disinformation campaign can put a brand in a negative light, and if it’s done with enough persistence, it might convince a large segment of the buying public that they should no longer trust that brand. A report by iResearch indicated that up to 90% of consumers consider misinformation or disinformation a “very important” factor in determining what product or service they might buy.
Clearly disinformation can have an extreme negative impact on consumer trust.
Perhaps as important, fighting off disinformation can be costly!
iResearch, in their December 2021 report, indicated several non-obvious costs associated with disinformation attacks. Among these were:
- evaluation costs: how long will it take to determine the nature of threat posed by a disinformation attack?
- triage costs: how can a company move quickly to refute the disinformation and begin to restore confidence?
- opportunity costs: redirecting resources away from core business practices during a crisis can be unpredictable in both time, expense and company morale.
- third party costs: hiring crisis specialists such as communication experts and technical specialists can be expensive, and may be hard to come by in an hour of need.
- regulatory costs: confusion and mistrust may require the company to place extra effort upon making sure regulatory authorities are kept informed of the facts.
Perhaps most concerning of all, disinformation can be relentless, and it is rapidly increasing in frequency. Former US cyber security head Chris Krebs recently issued a stark caution to organizations: “You’ve either been the target of a disinformation attack or you are about to be.”
Forewarned is Forearmed
Clearly the cost of a disinformation attack can be damaging to morale, damaging to customer reputation, and damaging to profitability. Being caught flat-footed can make all of this extra costly. Does it make sense to prepare? As with any other type of possible calamity, it certainly does.
It’s important to note that a disinformation attack is often confused with a cybersecurity attack. And while cybersecurity if of paramount importance, it does not address disinformation. Hackers want to gain entry into internal systems in order to steal, or destroy, or generally wreak havoc. But disinformation attacks have little to do with internal systems, and everything to do with external perceptions. So while all of your internal systems might be safe, your external reputation may be under sustained attack by targeted disinformation.
The approach I recommend involves anti-disinformation training. Full disclosure: the training module I’m talking about was developed in Germany by a company called Prevency. My company, Verity7, partners with Prevency to deliver this type of training. The process is actually breathtakingly simple, and while we’re happy to work with internal security teams, the solution does not require access to any internal systems, nor do we require any specific knowledge of internal security procedures or protocols. Like disinformation itself, the training focuses on external disinformation attacks. It provides a way for teams to participate in a SAAS-based, sandbox environment in which “disinformation” has been prepared by a moderator. Participants, during the one to two-hour exercise, interact with the sources of disinformation as well as bot-players who simulate actual social media users. Prevency has built a robust, safe, stand-alone environment with simulated versions of social media tools where participants can game out response tactics in real time and take away learnings to deploy in case of an actual attack.
Of course there are other ways to be prepared. Download these guides to help ground you and your teams in the basics of disinformation, where it comes from, how it is developed and how best to fight it off. It is also true that today, most disinformation seems of a political nature, but companies everywhere are gearing up to fight for facts as opposed to untruths.
Disinformation can cause enormous problems for any organization as shown above. While it’s always a good practice to be prepared, it is also true that the cost of a preparation exercise will be dwarfed by any sort of even semi-successful disinformation attack.
Verity7 pioneers truth in media, arming organizations against disinformation. We assess threats, train through Prevency’s SaaS module, and provide a clear roadmap for preparedness. Elevate your resilience with Verity7 – where truth meets action.
