Weathering the Misinformation Storm.

Written by Verity Barr – Board Director

Ever feel like you don’t know what to believe any more? From hoaxes to phishing; from lifehacks that seem too good to be true to health claims that verge on the downright dangerous, to calls to boycott a brand or cancel a person based on fact that turns out to be fiction . . . we’re swimming in a sea of misinformation and it feels like the water is getting muddier. 

The rapid development of AI is only adding to all this. We see photos that aren’t really photos, hear voices that aren’t really voices and read ‘news’ about events that haven’t even happened yet (I give you Luke Littler winning the darts world championship before he’d even played in the final). 

What’s the impact of all this fake content? Is it changing our perception of the communications we’re exposed to? As consumers, are we shifting from being brand aware to brand wary? 

Working with YouGov, we tested that hypothesis with 4,000 members of the public. The results were very telling. 

61% of the people we asked said they’d seen information about a well-known brand on social media that they suspected was false. 70% had seen something they thought was misleading, and over 60%, something they believed was just outright dishonest. 

Critically, a third of our respondents said the social media content they see is important when it comes to buying a company’s products or services. When we drilled a bit deeper into that, we could see the impact was even more significant for one age group in particular. 61% of females aged 18-24 years and 46% of males in the same age group said social media content impacts their decision to buy.  

It’s clear that the content we see shapes the decisions we make, so, in a world where anyone can post anything and brands are struggling to control what’s being posted about them, where do we go from here? 

As consumers, we’re increasingly seeking brands whose reputation is sound, whose quality is guaranteed and whose messaging and content we believe. 

As a result, brands need a deeper understanding of their customers than ever before. They need to dig into the data to build a detailed picture of who they’re selling to – or who they need to influence – and then tell their story in a way that resonates directly with it. 

They need to build trust by creating meaningful content, they need to speak with authority, be accountable for their behaviour and align their values and standards with those of their target audiences. Or in other words, authenticity is key. 

And they need to protect their reputation at every turn. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail . . . forewarned is forearmed and all that. Balance the negatives with more positives and build a bigger, better share of voice.  

It might not stop the nonsense, but it will go a long way to building the reputational capital that brands need to weather the misinformation storm. And it will create stronger, deeper links with the audiences that matter . . . which, as we all know, goes a long way to shoring up the bottom line.