How Truthiness, Fake News and Post-Fact Endanger Brands and What to Do About It

Publications

Download

Suggested Citation

Berthon, P., Treen, E., & Pit, L. (2018). How Truthiness, Fake News and Post-Fact Endanger Brands and What to Do About It. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 10(1), 18-23

Year

2018

Authors

Pierre R. Berthon,
Emily Treen,
Leyland F. Pitt

Publication title

How Truthiness, Fake News and Post-Fact Endanger Brands and What to Do About It

Publication

NIM Marketing Intelligence Review

Download

Pierre Berthon, Emily Treen and Leyland Pitt

Brands can interact both directly and indirectly with fake news. In some instances, brands are the victims of fake news and, other times, the purveyors. Brands can either finance fake news or be the targets of it. Indirectly, they can be linked via image transfer, where either fake news contaminates brands, or brands validate fake news.

To control the risk of negative image transfer, the authors propose technical actions to address false news and systemic steps to rethink the management of brands in order to inoculate against various forms of “fakery” and to reestablish stakeholder trust. Systemic solutions involve a rethinking of brands and branding. Too often, brands have become uncoupled from the reality of the offerings they adorn. But brands are not ends in themselves, they are the result of outstanding offerings. They can act as interpretive frames, but they don’t unilaterally create reality, as many seem to believe. Brands should not be seen and managed as objects but as perceptual processes.

Authors

Pierre R. Berthon, Professor of Information Design and Corporate Communication, McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley University Waltham, MA, USA, pberthon@bentley.edu
Emily Treen, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Leyland F. Pitt, Dennis F. Culver EMBA Alumni Chair of Business, Beedie School of Business , Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, lpitt@sfu.ca

Share Publication

Copy link

Here you can find more exciting articles of this issue.

To the entire issue

In an increasingly risky socioeconomic environment, management needs to proactively consider brand-related risks. To understand brands as …

In today’s world, knowing more about a brand can make people think worse of it. Rather than helping a brand, increased familiarity can …

The physical and social realities, mental biases and limitations of being human differentiate human brands from others. It is their very …

To minimize the potential loss of market share and profits, it is important to understand factors that drive cannibalization. Key brand …

Understanding consumers’ ways of thinking can help identify strategies to limit brand damage and elicit more favorable reactions from …

If company revenues fluctuate, the resulting volatility makes it more difficult to project the company’s future revenues and earnings and …

Whether it be the NFL, Dove, Wells Fargo, VW or countless others–managers need only open a daily newspaper to see how things can go …

Like a stock portfolio, each relationship type offers a brand higher or lower growth opportunities and risks. The type of relationship is …

Scroll to top

Other articles of the MIR issue “Brand Risk Matters”