Topic: Social Injustice

Pharmaceutical companies know the bottom-line effects of a wide range of corporate risks. The last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the race to develop vaccines upended all normalcy in risk management for pharma communicators. Health topics dominated online and offline conversations on a global basis and medical misinformation was rampant and uncontrolled. This digital chatter ushered in a new, disruptive normal as our Communications Leaders Risk Survey: Pharma Edition reveals. These pharma communications professionals are stepping up to the challenge, however, and seeking risk intelligence solutions to protect their global enterprises and proactively mine digital chatter to identify an issue before it escalates into a full-blown crisis.

Brand catastrophes—those memorable, monumental events that incur tens of millions to billions of dollars in combined costs and losses—have drawn most of the attention of risk and resiliency experts in the global business community. Until recently.

Whether your brand is at risk is not a question of “if”, but “when”. The corporate risk landscape has become a free-for-all where actors originate or accelerate their agendas online through digital chatter to manipulate consumer activism, socio-political divisiveness, social justice action and protests, market disruption and volatility, environmental crises, and the fallout of the global pandemic.

When the World Economic Forum (WEF) came out with their Global Risks Report 2021 earlier this year, it highlighted the need for a greater focus on improving risk readiness as a way for organizations to build resilience. In their view, many organizations’ approaches to risk mitigation looked “increasingly outdated,” adding that “in a world of accelerating challenges, static annual documents need to make room for continuous horizon-scanning for early indicators of change and associated timelines for action.”

Like two sides of the same coin, digital chatter is a vehicle for certain groups to intentionally or unintentionally harm a brand, and also a vital source of intelligence for communications leaders to stay ahead of issues and mitigate crises.

Don’t like the weather? In some places they’ll tell you to wait five minutes and it’ll change. The risk landscape isn’t all that different. It changes constantly and the rising frequency of unknown risks makes it difficult to predict when a storm will hit.

Sports exert a powerful influence on life, imparting values such as teamwork, perseverance, and fair play for those who participate and spectate. Pro sports have continued to step up and shine a bright light on the ongoing international movement for anti-racism and social justice.

Leadership is challenging in the best of times. Now, faced with a prolonged pandemic, an economic downturn, nationwide social justice protests, and unprecedented political divisiveness, even the most sophisticated brand leaders are struggling to navigate turbulent waters.

In response to the recent shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, NBA players, at the end of August, boycotted playoff games as a sign of respect and protest.

Consumers want brands to take a stand on ending systemic racism and other social injustices. According to a survey by Edelman, the global public relations firm, more than three-quarters (77%) said it is “deeply important that companies respond to racial injustices to earn or keep their trust.” Almost half (48%) said how a brand responds to the racial injustice protests has a big effect on their likelihood to purchase from it, while 37% will buy or boycott a brand, based on its response.