Influencing policy (training slides from Fast Track Impact)
Brandjacking
1. Brandjacking and what steps should
companies take to safeguard against it.
Presented by –
Ronil Sinha
Sairam Ramkumar
Saurav Chaudhury
Shreya Sharma
Valene Varela
3. WHAT IS BRANDJACKING?
Brandjacking is an activity whereby someone
acquires or otherwise assumes
the online identity of another entity for the
purposes of acquiring that person's or
business's brand equity
The term combines the notions of 'branding'
and 'hijacking', and has been used since at
least 2007 when it appeared in a Business
Week article
The tactic is often associated with use of
4. TYPES OF BRANDJACKING
1) Identity
impersonation
Facebook and
Twitter are breeding
grounds for fake
profiles
impersonating
celebrities and even
regular people
Done to gain
personal information
of users
5. TYPES OF BRANDJACKING
2) Cyber-squatting
When someone buys a URL (website
address) in anticipation that you'll want to buy
it off them at some point in the future
Buying up URLs in the names of new limited
companies or extensions that existing
successful organisations did not have the
presence of forethought to secure (such as
.org, .com, .co.uk, .net) can be very profitable
Definitely considered to be immoral
profiteering
6. TYPES OF BRANDJACKING
3) Phishing
Technical cat-burglars
raid your database
and glean personal or
financial data that they
can then use against
you or your customers
Biggest motive ->
credit card information
Secondary motive ->
To steal passwords
and access accounts
Private information is
7. MOTIVE BEHIND BRANDJACKING
A brandjacker may attempt to use the
reputation of its target for:
Free publicity
to malign the reputation of its target
“innovative marketing”
The effects on the original brand-holder
Financial loss
Credibility loss
8. SOME HIGH PROFILE HIJACKINGS –
BURGER KING
Burger King’s official
Twitter handle
@BurgerKing was
hijacked and
adorned with
McDonald’s
• Apparently their password was “whopperr123”
branding on
• A faction of Anonymous claimed responsibility
February 18
• After more than an hour, the handle was
suspended
9. SOME HIGH PROFILE HIJACKINGS –
BP
During the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010
the Twitter handle @BPGlobalPR gained a huge
following – almost 10 times the number of followers
of the official @BP_America account – and
frequently parodied their response (and lack
thereof) to the disaster.
10. 8 STEPS TO PREVENT BRAND-
JACKING
Sign-up for leading social media sites, which
includes all well-known sites along with the
ones which apply especially to the Line-of-
Business e.g. Media, Entertainment , Travel.
List out all brand names that need to be
protected – company name, product-names,
characters, spokespersons, other IP and sign-
up for user names using each of these brand
names. Wherever possible, create user
communities on a site.
11. 8 STEPS TO PREVENT BRAND-
JACKING
Define the company department which is
responsible for brand presence on Social Media
and entrust them with active site-monitoring and
creation and promotion of user communities
around the brands.
Engage customers, fans and users actively and
positively on social media by having logos for
approved fan sites, customer service sites and
regular status updates. The goal is to create a
sense of close-knit community to gain positive
12. 8 STEPS TO PREVENT BRAND-
JACKING
Always plan for the future. All products, brand
names, characters or other public names that
affect the IP of the organization should be
registered everywhere before they become
public.
Supervise employees who are using the brand
names or other IP in social media to keep a
positive image, avoid misleading acts, and
ensure that the marketing and legal
departments are always kept in the loop.
13. 8 STEPS TO PREVENT BRAND-
JACKING
In case of an IP infringement, the fight to
recover brand rights should be a low-key effort
and the offender should be treated tactfully &
facts should be validated extensively to prevent
negative publicity and a potential PR disaster.
Finally, the single most critical tip to prevent
brand-jacking is “ETERNAL VIGILANCE” of the
Intellectual Property on the Internet.
14. COMPANIES WHICH DID IT RIGHT -
COKE
Coke has the highest brand equity among all
the companies world wide. Every year it
spends billions of dollars in order to maintain
its brand value
According to the page data Coca Cola fan
page is the second most popular page on
Facebook with over 3.3 Million fans, only
second to Barack Obama
However, this page wasn’t created by Coke,
but by two Coke fans in Los Angeles, Dusty
Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski.
Instead of acting against brand jacking – the
officials at coke contacted them to partner
with coke to manage their page
Facebook made the decision to either close
the page or let Coca-Cola take it over. Coca-
Cola instead proposed an alternative: Let the
creators keep the page but share it with a few
of Coca-Cola’s senior interactive folks…
15. PINSTAGRAM
Some times brandjacking helps both the
parties. One of the latest example for this is
the new application that is created –
Pinstagram
Pinstagram is a hybrid application that is half
social pinning site Pinterest, and half photo-
sharing app Instagram
The simple combination of the two apps has
created an entirely new offering, while
hijacking both brands.
instagram gets downloads as people
respond to its unique product, while
Instagram and Pinterest receive more traffic
as a result.
“Pinstagram has jacked Pinterest and
Instagram in a way that’s complicit with the
other two. It’s a homage to the other brands,
and it’s useful to both brands as it drives
16. HOW TO SURVIVE A BRAND HIJACK?
Notifying our customers immediately
Reporting the phishing site to the company hosting
it
Putting out a press release
Well defined plan to help affected customers
Proper communication within the organization
Filing a report to the Internet Authority of the
respective country
17. SHELL’S STORY
Generally oil companies get targeted by environment
activist groups such as Greenpeace
Shell was also not spared
Problem for Shell was such activist groups took over
Shell’s social media space
The fake pages started getting more attention than
Shell’s original pages
How did Shell react to this accusations against some
oil spills?
Analyzed the situation, by not allowing itself to be the
center of trolls