New Deloitte Book Offers Strategies for Defending Against Brand Sabotage in the Era of Social Media

Jonathan Copulsky's "Brand Resilience" identifies seven crucial steps to brand risk management

News provided by

May 10, 2011, 09:05 ET

NEW YORK, May 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- As true and false information spreads rapidly across the vast social media landscape by disgruntled customers, competing companies and employees, even the most venerable brands can be leveled in a flash. "Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High Speed World," the new book from Deloitte's Jonathan Copulsky, shows why brands are more fragile and exposed than ever, outlining seven key steps organizations should take to defend their brands against the risks of acts of sabotage.

For more than 30 years, Copulsky, a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, has helped organizations build their brands as a chief marketing officer and strategic marketing advisor. In this book, he argues that companies often invest heavily in building their brands, but fail to establish detailed brand defenses. By neglecting to play an aggressive defensive game - a Risk Intelligent™ approach to brand management - organizations leave themselves vulnerable to attack and rapid brand value erosion.

"Protecting a brand today is like fighting an insurgency: enemies are hard to identify, weapons are improvised, and the threat of friendly fire looms," says Copulsky. "Brand stewards need to learn to think like counterinsurgents, constantly developing and adapting their brand defenses to stay one step ahead of brand saboteurs. Brand risk has always been a threat; but, the Internet, social media and search engines now memorialize brand damages forever, just one or two clicks away."

Written for marketing and sales executives, risk managers, executives and board members across industries, "Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High Speed World" consists of 11 chapters filled with dozens of case studies of well known and not-so-well known brands and the actions their organizations are employing to detect, manage, prevent and mitigate brand sabotage.

Copulsky's seven key steps to manage and avert brand damage are:

Assess your brand risks: Identify the factors that can threaten a brand, including understanding source and potential impact.
Galvanize your brand troops: Educate employees — as well as vendors, business partners and other external parties that represent the brand — so that they are actively engaged in detecting, preventing and responding to brand risks.
Establish your brand risk early warning systems: Build sensing capabilities by identifying patterns in risk, so if there are early warning signs of problems they can be dealt with as early as possible.
Repel the attacks on your brand: Formulate and execute an action-oriented response plan in the event that a brand is compromised.
Learn and adapt your brand defenses: Step back and identify lessons learned, making sure they are embedded in training and processes going forward.
Measure and track your brand performance: On an ongoing basis, evaluate progress in managing your brand risk and building brand resilience.
Expand popular support for your brand: Broaden your internal and external bases of support, including your "volunteer army."

Additional information, as well as excerpts from the book are available on www.deloitte.com/us/brandresilience.

As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.