This CNN article, “Brands can’t choose their customers. So what happens when extremists wear their clothes?” is a good reminder that you may be responsible for launching, shaping, shepherding, and protecting your brand, but you ultimately can’t completely control it.
This is why media and social media monitoring and rapid response preparation are critical. And the brand response isn’t always as easy as a decision-tree and canned statements.
Sometimes, but seldom, silence can work and take the wind out of the sails of the hatejackers’ efforts.
Swift counter-responses often are table stakes, and what you say early can set the tone — good or bad — for the rest of the unfolding situation. That’s why judgment, connection to the cultural zeitgeist, creativity, and experience are important for those on the front lines of communication and brand community building.
Compelling counter-content campaigns, strategic community investments and partnerships, new product lines, and/or events designed to lift up and amplify key groups and voices can help clarify, confirm, and advance brand values and thwart the ill intentions of offending parties.
Awhile back, I wrote a post about a similar situation when hate groups co-opted part of Finland’s brand identity, and how I saw a better way forward than a Finnish ad agency that recommended the country abandon one of its primary symbols and start over.
More than anything, you have to know what your brand stands for, and, just as importantly, what it will stand against. With a clear picture of those two things, the path forward in the face of an issue or crisis is a lot more clear, and easier to act on.