May 21, 2025
And just like that, your brand’s been hacked. Your Instagram’s full of dodgy crypto reels. The TikTok logins are in a spreadsheet last edited in 2022. And no one’s sure if Lucy from PR still has access… even though she left last summer.
A recent study by eMarketer highlights that 70% of marketers are concerned about brand safety on social media platforms, with 45% having experienced a brand safety incident in the past year. EMARKETER
Brand safety isn’t just ad adjacency anymore. It’s password hygiene. It’s access control. It’s what happens when your paid partnership goes rogue or your page gets flagged for spam.
According to the 2025 UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey, one in three medium-sized businesses reported breaches specifically involving social media accounts—and 44% said they were not confident they’d detect one.
This week, we’re getting right under the skin of the risks real brands are facing on social media right now. Influencer screw-ups. Platform chaos. Lockouts. Scams. And some properly bad headlines.
The ASA just put your influencer marketing on notice
According to the ASA’s latest findings, most brands are still failing the basics when it comes to influencer compliance. The regulator analysed TikTok and Instagram content from paid partnerships, and the numbers are shocking.
· 72% of TikTok influencer ads didn’t disclose they were ads
· 43% of Instagram posts missed clear ad labels
Source: ASA, May 2024
That means if you’re paying influencers without checking how they post, you could be next in the firing line.
What to do:
· Stop trusting that influencers “know the rules”. Many don’t.
· Add clear disclosure requirements into your contracts.
· Build in a review and sign-off process, don’t let them post blindly.
· Monitor the posts after they go live. If it’s not labelled, you’re liable.
A 2025 study from Impact.com found that non-compliance in influencer campaigns increases consumer distrust by 54%, and drops purchase intent by 38%.
This is about more than ticking ASA boxes. It’s about trust. Mislead your audience once and you’ll lose them for good.
The Dylan Mulvaney backlash wasn’t a one-off
Bud Light’s partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney became one of the most controversial influencer campaigns in recent years, sparking public boycotts, political backlash, and months of reputational fallout. And it’s still making headlines in 2025.
Source: NY Post, May 2025
Regardless of where you land on the politics, the marketing lesson is this:
· You need to know who you’re working with, and what they stand for.
· This isn’t about playing it safe. It’s about being prepared. If a creator has a controversial history, is outspoken on sensitive topics, or attracts divisive reactions, make that decision with your eyes open.
A study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found that 60% of consumers are less likely to purchase from a brand after it engages in a controversial influencer partnership.
Do your due diligence. Monitor public sentiment. And be ready with a comms plan if the backlash comes.
Meta and X need to be watched
Meta recently gutted its professional fact-checking team, relying more on “community moderation” tools that many say don’t work fast enough. Source: WSJ, January 2025
X (Twitter) has drastically reduced content moderation under Elon Musk, leading to a surge in hate speech, violent content, and misinformation. Major advertisers, including Disney and Apple, have pulled spend as a result. Source: Business Insider, May 2025
In fact, on X (formerly Twitter), a Kantar survey indicates that 26% of marketers plan to reduce ad spend in 2025 due to brand safety concerns.
This is brand safety in its rawest form. If your ads are showing next to hate speech or conspiracy content, the public doesn’t blame the platform. They blame you.
What to do:
· Review platform-specific brand safety tools (like inventory filters and blocklists)
· Shift budgets to more controlled formats (think whitelisted creators, direct buys)
· Avoid full automation unless you’re monitoring placements daily
· Have an escalation route, because getting help from Meta or X can take weeks
Marketing Brew reported that nearly 1 in 4 CMOs have had to pause campaigns on Meta due to brand safety concerns since its January moderation rollback.
Brands are losing access to their own pages. Still.
We’re seeing it more and more: social media teams can’t log into their own accounts. Pages are blocked. Content flagged. Admins gone.
According to a report by SpiderAF, 40% of brands have experienced unauthorized access to their social media accounts, with 25% resulting in significant reputational damage.
Sometimes it’s an algorithmic suspension (automated, with no explanation). Sometimes it’s worse: a full account hijack via phishing scam.
A well-known retail brand lost its Instagram for three weeks after a team member clicked a fake “Community Guidelines” email.
Another lost its TikTok permanently after using a personal Gmail to register and forgetting who owned the recovery address.
This isn’t rare. It’s daily.
You must:
· Use platform-native business tools (e.g. Meta Business Manager, TikTok Business Centre)
· Keep a living, centralised doc with recovery contacts, admin lists, MFA settings, and user rights
· Review admin rights monthly, and immediately remove leavers
· Assign multiple Super Admins across different teams or regions
If you don’t know who controls your logins today, you’re not in control at all.
Real brand accounts are getting cloned, scammed, and sold
Social phishing is rampant.
Fake pages cloned from official brand accounts are running “giveaways” that harvest personal data
Verified accounts are being resold on dark forums, with buyer guarantees to “spam safely”
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported a 65% increase in social media impersonation scams in 2024, leading to over $100 million in losses.
Your own followers are being tricked into giving away personal info under your name
Case in point: In April, several verified Instagram pages posing as fashion and skincare brands promoted crypto giveaways that scammed thousands. Meta took days to respond, and even then, only after news coverage forced their hand. Source: WSJ, May 2025
Your playbook:
· Use social listening tools to monitor for fakes
· Set up alerts for keyword misuse and brand impersonation
· Report and escalate suspicious pages (through a platform rep or agency)
· Educate your audience: regularly post what your brand will never ask for (like bank details or login info)
BrandShield data shows that fake brand social media pages increased 155% year-on-year in Q1 2025, with scams disproportionately targeting retail and financial services.
And yes, someone on your team needs to be checking the DMs and mentions, every day.
Real-time risk needs real-time response
If you’re not monitoring your brand reputation in real time, you’re playing defence with a blindfold on.
Social media doesn’t wait for your weekly catch-up. The response time for a potential crisis is measured in minutes, not hours.
If an influencer posts something problematic, can you pull the partnership within the hour?
If a customer posts a viral complaint, do you know how to escalate it internally?
If your own page goes down, can you reach someone who can help?
You need:
· A social listening dashboard monitoring sentiment spikes
· An on-call crisis contact (internal or agency)
· Pre-approved messaging for common incident types (hacks, outages, rogue posts, misfires)
If your comms team is writing statements from scratch under pressure, you’re already behind.
Oh, and if you want to know how AI can help, read this post on brand reputation management with AI
The essential brand safety checklist
Let’s keep this simple. These are your no-nonsense must-haves:
And if you’ve got a shared Excel doc as your “access system”, it’s time for an overhaul.
Every tweet, every Story, every collaboration (whether organic or paid) is an open window to your brand.
The question is: are you locking it behind real protection?
Or are you just hoping no one notices the cracks?
Need help fixing the cracks? This is exactly the sort of thing we do. Give us a call.