Fighting Brand Abuse on Social Media

Akino Chikada

Portfolio Marketing Director

MarkMonitor

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Agenda

• Social Media Today

• The Challenges of Social Media

• Best Practices

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Brand Protection in an Omni-Channel World

• A customer’s brand experience is expected to be authentic and seamless across all channels - both online and offline

• A negative experience in a single channel can impact your brand’s online effort

• Fraudsters with intent to commit a scam will do so on any channel that allows them to go undetected, especially when unsuccessful elsewhere

Create an all encompassing brand protection strategy across all channels

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Social Media Continues to be Relevant

• 80% of consumers’ purchasing decisions are influenced by their friends’ social

media posts. (Social Media Week)

• 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with

a brand are likely to recommend it to others. (Ambassador)

• 2.56 billion global mobile social media users, equaling 34% penetration;

globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day (We Are

Social).

• Consumers promote messages about your brand, almost as ambassadors

(coupons, discount offers, sales, outlet promotion, quality, user experiences)

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Social Media in Numbers

• There are 3.03 billion active Social Media users

• 91% of retail brands use 2 or more Social Media channels

• 81% of all small and medium businesses use more social platforms

Social Channel Number of users

Facebook 2.072 billion users

Twitter 330 million users

Instagram 800 million users

LinkedIn 500 million users

Google+ 111 million users

Pinterest 200 million users

Snapchat 178 million daily users

YouTube 1.5 billion users

Reddit 234 million users

WhatsApp 1.3 billion users

Flickr 90 million users

Wechat 1.12 billion users

Weibo 600 million users

Airbnb 150 million users

Periscope 10 million users

User Count on Social Media

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The Challenges of Social Media

• Promotion and proliferation of websites selling counterfeit

• Impersonation / Fan pages

• Fraudulent links – e.g. phishing pages

• Fake special offers

• Freedom of speech

• New Social Media sites, with vast adoption

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Online Shopping Behavior

34%Say they have been duped into

buying fake product

86%Consumers believe brands should

be doing more

91%Claim they would never buy a fake

https://www.markmonitor.com/download/report/MarkMonitor_Online_Barometer-2017-US.pdf

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Counterfeiting

• Counterfeiters see Social Media as a haven

• “Likes” & “re-tweets” spread the word

• Establishment of fan pages / impersonating pages which includes links to

counterfeit products

• Counterfeiters transact on Social Media sites, or outside the site via PayPal

• Credibility and removed incredulity by using your IP

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Counterfeit Example

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Fraud

• Phishing scams: where a fraudster is looking to steal credentials

• Inserting themselves in a conversation

• Impersonation

• Hashtag phishing scams

• When it comes to fraud, it’s not always clear how a fraudster will monetize on stolen credentials; but it’s a serious issue that impacts consumers directly

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Fraud Example

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Is Impersonation Hurtful?

• Moves transactions away from authorized and legitimate pages

• Don’t have fewer likes on your official page, than an impersonator

• Dangers

• “Likes”, “Re-tweets” proliferates their message

• Counterfeits and diverted goods sold to unsuspecting consumers

• Reputational damage impacts your brand, and is proliferated by free speech on Social Media sites, including those outside the one where the infraction occurred

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Impersonation Example

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Fake Special Offers

• Speed of spread is outstanding

• Not easily identifiable as a scam

• Brand owner cannot track where the offer has been placed and it can disappear quickly; another springing up

Consumer invariably blame the actual brand when it fails to deliver

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Fake Special Offers Example

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Freedom of Speech – Don’t Fight It

• What’s wrong with freedom of speech? - Manage disparaging remarks through appropriate channels

• Product and company opinions enhance your own knowledge of your customers

• Only defend your brand selectively- Don’t be seen as the big brand, picking on the little person

• Monitor, and only take careful and discrete action

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New Social Media Sites

• The challenge of Social Media is often where to look next

• Proactively defending yourself on new sites, establishing themselves quickly

Best Practices

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What You Can Do for Your Brand

• Create a policy for Social Media

• Internally for staff

• Externally for partners

• Have a strategy for where you want to be seen and understand how much ‘official’

exposure you have

• Get your page verified on Social Media platforms

• Proactively register your brand on new Social Media sites

• Monitor what is happening on Social Media in your name, regardless of who is doing this

- know your presence

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Your Partners on Social Media

• Establish a policy you can both work with for Social Media

• Establish a template for affiliates representing your brand on Social Media

sites.

• Ensure traffic is sent to your own homepage for eCommerce or approved

affiliate destinations

• Monitor their sites to ensure links to sites selling counterfeits, or sites which are

unaffiliated and seeking traffic, do not post links

• Your partners reputation is your reputation

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Concluding Remarks

• Protect your consumers by proactively monitoring and enforcing against brand

abuse (counterfeit, impersonation, fraud, fake promotions, etc.)

• Make sure your partners are compliant with your social media guidelines

• Don’t just monitor one platform, or one channel – take an omni-channel

approach to brand protection