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Brand safety: Balancing risk and opportunity for your organization

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Imagine a seesaw with a flamingo on one side and a grizzly bear on another. How would you ever stabilize them? That is how most digital marketers feel when they ask me to help balance out business-first decisions and brand safety. What does that mean? Simply put, it’s the natural and growing conflict between the need to increase profits or market share and ensuring that marketing and sales efforts don’t negatively impact the positive attitudes of prospects and customers toward the organization. Simpler yet, it’s the balancing of opportunity and risk in digital marketing and sales.

Balancing out these strategic and operational issues can appear complicated at first glance. But the uncomplicated place where I tend to start with anyone who calls me is understanding the specific growth or market challenges facing the organization and defining digital policy and practices around sentiment analysis.

Brands from any and all verticals use sentiment analysis to understand prospect and customer reactions, opinions and behaviors toward products or services. But while the analysis methodology has long been used to measure the latest social media campaign, it can be used as the foundation for your broader marketing and sales efforts, telling you exactly how far and fast you can push your efforts without damaging your brand. So why isn’t everyone jumping on the bandwagon? Should you take the leap? Let’s examine some of the intricacies of sentiment analysis to ensure you can proceed with eyes wide open.

The challenge of quantifying reputational risk

It is straightforward to tie a one-off large-scale event to brand and reputation impact. Consider a news story about a data breach or an accessibility lawsuit impacting your organization. Obviously we can calculate the loss of revenue, cost of recovery, and potential legal liability. Weighed against the cost of mitigation, we can derive a clear understanding of the risk/benefit scenario and make a business decision on the most logical path forward. What is much harder to measure is how broadly and for how long the news stories will continue to cause trust issues and ill will with prospects and customers.

What I’ve found to be successful is to gather all (or as many as possible) mentions of the organization across any and all channels (e.g., news, social media, TV, radio, customer service recordings, customer surveys, user purchasing history, etc.) and use a text and data analytics engine to measure sentiment. That means identifying and categorizing opinions expressed in a piece of text in order to determine if the attitude toward the organization is positive, negative, or neutral. By tracking organizational reputation (and brand) in key demographics and markets, we can develop a solid set of sentiments that can help us track risks that impact hard-to-measure things such as influence, trust, and leadership. This approach allows us to quantify a reputational baseline. Against that baseline, we can measure trends over time or at specific events, and leverage an agile methodology to test how aggressively we can market and sell before we start to get close to a decline in that influence, trust, and leadership area. In other words, we can tell how far we can push before we encounter brand risk and start to negatively impact our reputation.

Getting the full picture

Creating a picture of your organization’s reputational risk goes beyond understanding how the entity is viewed in the marketplace. It requires the identification and quantification of the reputation of your products as well as those of your suppliers. That means understanding your entire digital ecosystem and measuring its brand risk in the context of your organization, products, and services. For example, I have a client that was involved in the AWS data exposure incident earlier this year. While the AWS relationship with my client wasn’t known well publicly, it still had a (marginal) negative impact on the brand.

Each vendor, agency or independent consultant is part of your ecosystem. So are boards of directors (past and present), brand ambassadors and influencers, and anyone else who touches your brand. You should map them all out and, based on a matrix of prioritization, determine who should be included in your full-picture analysis. After all, there is risk associated with each entity. Conversely, if any one of those entities is seen favorably, you can also benefit from such awareness and sentiment.

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Managing and capitalizing on event-based risks

Let’s continue this discussion with my AWS example. Understanding that there was a small, but real, brand risk, we decided with leadership to proactively reach out to users, and as news of the AWS breach began to spread, users were already informed of what the organization knows about the incident and what it was doing to ensure consumer data was protected. The reputational risk measurement indicated that we managed to contain the negative rollback on the organization’s brand. It also indicated to executives the level of effort to put into communicating around AWS and the incident in the future. Lastly, it allowed us to collectively understand what kind of risk we might have with AWS going forward and whether there was a return on investment (ROI) to be gained by moving to a different hosting environment.

The same approach that we used to determine the AWS incident risk and mitigate against it, devising a good response plan, could be used in a number of other scenarios to understand marketing and sales options for your organization. Consider for a moment the latest YouTube advertising scandal. Your organization could perform the same analysis used for the AWS sentiment analysis to understand impact on competitors and other operating companies advertising on YouTube. Based on the negative brand impact (if any), you could better understand the type of risk your business could incur and proceed to use YouTube advertising or, conversely, stop advertising in that channel.

Will you keep your finger on the pulse of brand safety?

By using sentiment analysis, you can keep your finger on the pulse of your brand safety risk and dial your digital marketing and sales activity up or down as appropriate, thereby delivering on the business’ bottom line. You can also minimize your exposure to brand-damaging events. With a measured approach, you can best balance your opportunity and risk and develop a better approach to marketing and sales. Moreover, you can develop the type of digital policies that will unleash creativity and innovation in the organization while keeping the business safe.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

Kristina is a digital policy innovator. For over two decades, she has worked with some of the most high-profile companies in the world and has helped them see policies as opportunities to free the organization from uncertainty, risk and internal confusion. Kristina has a BA in international studies and an MBA in international business from the Dominican University of California and is certified as both a change management practitioner (APMG International) and a project management professional (Project Management Institute). Her book, The Power of Digital Policy, was published in 2019.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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