How to Protect Brand Safety on Social Media During Elections

Amid each election cycle, brands face increased challenges to safeguard their reputation. The political landscape creates a spike in social media activity, where heightened political opinions will likely reach brands’ platforms.

Brands must implement brand safety social media strategies to steer clear of potential pitfalls. This article will help brands understand the critical importance of brand safety during election seasons by outlining essential strategies to address the challenges that an election will bring.

What brands need to know about political advertising during elections

Regulations and emerging trends mean an evolving environment of political advertising, which presents both challenges and opportunities. These changes define how brands handle strategy and safety on social media during the election cycle.

As political advertising can shape public opinion, for better or worse, brands must understand how to navigate this dynamic environment successfully.

Regulatory changes

Platforms regularly update their political ad rules during election seasons — for example, identity verification, funding disclosures, or temporary ad restrictions.

For brands, this means a clearer understanding of the origins and expenditures of political advertising in the social media landscape.

Brands may need to comply with updated policies to ensure compliance with the new regulations during election years. These measures aim to enhance transparency, protect personal data, and ensure the integrity of political advertising across social media platforms.

Emerging platform trends

New trends are shaping the election landscape online, from programming advertising that allows more targeted and efficient ad placement, to data-driven campaigns that personalize messages and reach specific audience demographics.

Cross-media strategies enable advertisers to successfully use a mix of social media platforms, traditional media, and emerging platforms to engage with a broader audience.

These emerging trends mean that political advertisers can reach voters and tailor their messages more efficiently, saturating the social media ad market even more.

Brands with no political affiliations can use these advanced advertising techniques to make their marketing campaigns more efficient and brand-safe as the election season crowds the ad market.

Why elections magnify brand safety risks

Elections magnify brand safety risks for all brands as the potential to appear alongside controversial or potentially misleading political content rises.

Understanding the main challenges that magnify brand safety risks during elections can help brands develop the right strategies to navigate a complex social media landscape.

Increased risk of association with polarizing content

Brands face higher risks of association with controversial or misleading content during election months than throughout any other period, as surrounding content can be polarized.

Brands must ensure their advertisements do not appear alongside inappropriate content to maintain their brand integrity. Associations can lead to backlash from consumers who may disagree with the political stance or content that appears alongside the brand ads.

Brands can be strategic in their ad placement by avoiding certain platforms or types of content that are known for being controversial during election season.

Misinformation and deepfake technology

Deepfake technologies use AI tools to create realistic, but fake, images, videos, or audio. Those technologies present risks for spreading misinformation, private information violations, and potential security threats.

Misinformation and deepfake technologies can mislead consumers with false information that could damage brands associated with the fake content. Brand vigilance is key to taking fast action on any misinformation that could impact brand image.

Competition for ad space and rising costs

Election cycles drive up political ad spending and make it harder for nonpolitical advertisements to secure prime ad spots without significantly increasing their marketing budgets. Crowded ad space can dilute the effectiveness of any brand campaign message.

Brands must be creative and strategic in their marketing approach to remain impactful, visible, and effective in such a crowded and expensive ad environment.

Enterprise pressure for 24/7 vigilance

Enterprise companies have changed the expectations for risk management and oversight to a continuous model. These expectations aren’t just for securing the cybersecurity perimeter but extend to the brand reputation and associations.

Social monitoring tools and 24/7 notifications protect brand reputation by alerting the social team to potentially polarizing topics, hashtags, or profiles that interact with or mention the brand.

Brand safety guidelines for election cycles

Strategies to avoid risks to brands should be tailored to brand profile, as not all brands present the same level of risk of association with political topics.

Documenting brand safety social guidelines for election cycles and updating these regularly as political landscapes evolve can further reduce the risk of unwanted associations.

Low-risk brands

For brands that don’t typically post about politics or avoid this type of content, it’s best to maintain this stance. Low-risk brands shouldn’t start posting about politics now.

These brands should exercise minor caution, monitor overall sentiment, and be prepared to pause or adjust content if necessary. They should keep an eye on audience conversations via social listening and be ready to make changes as needed.

At-risk brands

Brands that have been associated with hot political topics — unwillingly — are considered more “at risk” and should consider “going grey” during peak political race weeks to avoid being further associated. This means pausing all creative content and proactive engagement on all platforms.

Instead, their resources should be directed toward customer service or customer care. These brands should exercise significant caution and increase monitoring and social listening while preparing a crisis management plan.

Brand suitability vs. brand safety

Within the brand social guidelines, consider defining the types of posts, topics, and associations that are acceptable for the brand, and those that put the brand at risk.

Detailed brand safety guidelines outline the topics that are off-limits, helping social media professionals restrict content from showing alongside that content.

Brand suitability takes a more nuanced approach to social policies, providing restrictions for negative content topics and suggesting positive topics that professionals should actively seek out and associate the brand with.

Core strategies to protect brand safety online

Brands can implement actionable social media strategies to mitigate risks and ensure brand safety throughout the political season. Here are our top six best practices for election seasons.

Implement real-time monitoring and crisis management

Social media monitoring can help brands detect and address any potential threats on social media before they escalate. As a proactive approach, 24/7 brand monitoring helps manage crises quickly and effectively, from comments and tweets to forums and online reviews management.

Brands should implement a crisis management plan that extends to all social platforms with continuous monitoring to ensure their team can respond quickly and know how to take action appropriately if any issues arise.

Establish & update brand safety guidelines

Guidelines prevent social media ads from appearing near controversial or polarizing content. During such a politically charged time, creating and enforcing those guidelines maintains brand integrity and consumer trust.

Guidelines should highlight clear criteria for ad placement, such as the safe environment where ads can appear, as well as controversial and polarizing platforms or content to avoid.

Brands should regularly review and update their brand safety guidelines to adapt to the evolving political environment and social media policies and include criteria for suitability, not just safety.

Leverage human + AI threat detection

AI tools and machine learning can help brands identify risks such as deepfakes and misinformation before they cause reputation harm. These tools analyze vast amounts of data (videos, texts, and images) to detect potential false information that employees can check for accuracy.

Brands should also consider integrating social listening tools into their AI and machine learning threat detection strategy. Social listening enhances threat detection by monitoring conversations across social media platforms and identifying sentiment and emerging trends.

And human oversight ensures that nuanced topics or posts aren’t overlooked, thereby enhancing brands’ ability to protect themselves against online threats.

Adopt contextual targeting for safer ad placement

Contextual ad targeting helps brands avoid placing ads near potentially sensitive content on social media platforms. This strategy ensures brand ads are shown in a relevant and safe context to reduce the risk of negative associations.

Contextual targeting focuses on the content, rather than audience demographics to improve ad relevance and engagement while protecting brand reputation, and campaign placement reviewed during each election cycle to ensure ongoing alignment.

Diversify media spend across safer platforms

In such a political environment, brands should allocate their ad spend across social media platforms that regulate or restrict political ads during election cycles.

Those measures promote transparency and legitimacy, reducing misinformation risks, and brands should diversify spend across platforms to maintain reach while minimizing risks.

For brands, a diversification strategy reduces exposure to political messaging and maintains a neutral brand image. This safe diversification still helps reach a broader audience, while minimizing the risk of associations with controversial content.

Brands should keep in mind that some platforms can present brand safety concerns as conflicting narratives can spread rapidly, while short-form content platforms can push election-related trends viral quickly.

Engage in transparent communication with your audience

Transparent communication reinforces brand values and neutrality. During politically charged times, transparency builds trust with the audience without dividing that audience.

Brands should update their audience on their brand stance and action while being open to their audience’s feedback.

If political discussions happen on their platforms, brands can allow those conversations, but they also have the right to take action by hiding or deleting comments (hiding is preferable) if discussions become heated. This strategy helps foster positive relationships with customers and the online community.

Stay ahead of political risks: Partner with ICUC

ICUC helps enterprise brands navigate election cycles with 24/7 monitoring, social listening, and compliance expertise. Schedule a consultation, or download our Brand Safety Checklist today.