Fake news — intentionally misleading misinformation dressed up like legitimate news — is changing the way consumers look at brands. More importantly, it's changing how willing they are to trust them.

While fake news is most commonly associated with politics and celebrities, it can certainly affect your brand. Advancements of the web have enabled the sharing of dishonest reporting, fabricated content, and made-up stories. And how are we to distinguish these from the truth?

In this article, we’re discussing how fake news affects your brand perception and marketing strategy.

The Psychology: Why Fake News Works 

Misinformation isn’t new. When it comes down to it, consumers are unable — or unwilling — to discern fact from fiction. The human brain’s cognitive bias leads so many people to believe and then share fake news.

Enter the COVID-19 crisis, and consumers are relying more on search and digital media to discover the latest updates from brands. Whether it’s on your own brand website or through third-party touchpoints like Google, Apple Maps or Amazon Alexa, you need to make sure you’re acting swiftly to deliver accurate, thoughtful information. 

There has been an incredible shift in power from marketers to consumers, meaning if a consumer doesn’t agree with a brand’s viewpoint, they can choose to boycott that brand on social media. 

The Heightened Impact of Sharing 

Misinformation relies on human instinct of believing something must be true if millions of people are talking about it. In addition, the bandwagon effect causes many people to vie for social acceptance, over science and research saying otherwise.

In 2016, Coca-Cola experienced the harmful impact of fake news when a false story circulated swiftly on Facebook. The story claimed that the Food and Drug Administration had shut down a Dasani plant after discovering a parasite in the water. Coca-Cola called the report “false and inflammatory”, asserting there was no recall of the water bottle brand in the U.S.

Brands as Victims of Fake News

It can be all too easy for brands to become targets of fake news. Just prior to the 2016 presidential election, Pepsi stock fell 4% when a fake news story about Pepsi’s CEO, Indra Nooyi, telling Trump supporters to “take their business elsewhere” went viral. 

Other brands, including Starbucks, Ulta, New Balance, and Microsoft have fallen victim to fake news since the 2016 election. 

In August of 2017, Starbucks saw an image of a fake promotion offering discounts to undocumented American immigrants go viral. As a result, the coffee giant had to do serious damage control to halt the fake news scandal. 

Starbucks resorted to Twitter to debunk rumors about the #BorderFreeCoffee promotion, apologizing for the misinformation. Although the fake ad had been disseminated by a consumer, Starbucks faced backlash from angry consumers about the promotion with their name on it.

Other fake news stories claimed that an Xbox console killed a teenager and that Costco was ending its membership program.

Brands Need To Embrace Transparency 

As clickbait headlines continue to garner engagement and misinformation persists, brands need to be prepared to fight fake news. 

McDonald’s CMO, Alistair Macrow, revealed that the fast food giant had "suffered from fake news long before Donald Trump". The company continues to achieve consecutive quarters of growth, but nonetheless battles fabricated stories, which erode consumer trust about the media as a whole. 

Media trust has dropped significantly over the past few years, especially in younger generations. It’s one thing that fake news is being generated from blogs and relatively unknown media outlets, but it’s another that fake news is also coming from prestigious outlets and platforms. 

As a result, McDonald’s has opened up its company to scrutiny and invested more heavily on TV advertising to tackle misinformation threats head on. It has also engaged YouTube influencers to go behind the scenes and shoot content from McDonald’s kitchens.

Ultimately, all brands need to adapt their content strategies to meet a diminished public trust head on.

Final Takeaways 

It has now become clear to brands that fake news can threaten businesses, not just politics. To win the fight against fake news, brands need to become better advertisers. In a post-truth world, brands need to embrace independent voices and the power of influencers, engage their employees to positively represent their brand, and prioritize relevance over disruption.