Data-Driven Strategies to Revive Your Brand Equity

For personal brands, influencers, and small businesses, a single error devastates more than a few likes and clicks. It can interrupt content monetization, sponsorships and consumer trust overnight.  Now, the traditional crisis cleanup strategies fail to resonate with social media audiences because, they analyze whether this is an isolated event or a representation of the business itself. Gone are the days of simple “notes app apology’s”, the longevity of your brand relies on controlling the narrative, aligning your brand, and finding your flow.

Step 1: Control the Narrative Dynamics

When a scandal happens, some may feel that it is best to take a step back and not address the situation. As the negative comments and videos begin to grow, the chance you get to share your perspectives gets smaller. Now you have a negative light shining on you for all the internet to see. It’s important to address issues head-on to get ahead of it to balance feedback from the public.

Being proactive is amazing, until its not. Be sure to put time and effort into your response, otherwise it can be seen as rushed and inauthentic to who you are. Taking a moment to calculate your next steps will benefit you in the long run

Step 2: Choose Your Strategy

Ushering immediate apologies may seem to make more sense in the moment but, research shows that an apology can increase the negative perception you have been receiving. This is known as mortification, which is a state of extreme embarrassment or humiliation. There is power in bolstering your value, reminding your audience and brand partners of your accolades and engagement can shift the spotlight back to your core identity. It’s also important to avoid using “ignorance” as an excuse for your mishap, your audience can lose trust due to you not “knowing any better”.

In a study published in the Journal of Public Relations Research, authors Derina R. Holtzhausen and Glen F Roberts investigated a major crisis to see how official statements impact media coverage. By tracking media reports, they wanted to determine if traditional apologies repair broken images. This is what was discovered…

“Story balance and mortification (take responsibility and apologize) also yielded a statistically significant relationship. In this instance, mortification produced 25.0% of positive stories and 58.3% of negative stories. When mortification was not used, it produced a balanced story in 48.8% of cases. This indicated mortification was not a good image repair strategy for the subject.”

This data showed that saying “I’m sorry” resulted in negative public narratives 58.3% of the time. If you want your community to move past a mishap, you can’t rely on an apology alone, you must show that you have implemented change.

Step 3: Use ‘Separation” to Protect Your Business

If you are a small business owner or work with content creators, isolating the damage of a crisis will work in your favor. Start by bolstering what makes your brand unique, this will help build trust. If possible, you should cut ties from the specific employee, business partner, or vendor that caused the issue.

Once you have shown that you are actively correcting your mistake, that will shift the conversation away from the isolated situation to high level changes to your business operations, content and policies that you have implemented.

Step 4: Fence Your Brand Off from Industry Contagion

Often when a scandal or mishap hits a specific niche side of the internet that you may be a part of, many people begin to wonder if that issue is unique to you or encompasses the industry. This is why it is important to understand your niche, if you don’t have a track record of being “cancelled”, then a one-time issue is easier for your audience to handle compared to repeated behavior.

However, if you are a part of a niche that is already under fire for previous scandals, this will cause your audience to believe that the whole niche is untrustworthy, causing a decline in engagement and revenue. Reviving your brand after backlash doesn’t have to be hard, as long as you are communication your protocols, being transparent, and realigning your standards, you are on the path to a new brand outlook.

Let’s look into Vital Farms. This pasture raised egg supplier faced scrutiny after a viral video accused the company of greenwashing and not following the eco-friendly policies they stand for. This issue affected the whole niche, causing consumers to question whether the entire organic food industry was a scam or not. Vital Farms turned their image around by Photo By Ad Age framing the crisis as a misunderstanding of large-scale ethical farming and used data to isolate themselves from the industry wide controversy: not by ushering a simple apology.

The Future of Your Brand

Reviving your brand as a creator and entrepreneur is a constantly evolving process. While it may be strenuous, its beneficial to break ties with those that position your brand in a negative light. The key to this is making structural changes, refining policies, and controlling the narrative. Now that we have covered ways to revive your brand equity, what are some ways you will realign your business if you face a crisis?