How to Protect Your Brand’s Reputation
Whether you call them influencers, creators or ambassadors, they are hard to avoid these days in marketing strategy conversations. Estimates vary but according to Sprout Social, in 2025, the total global marketing spend on influencer marketing will reach $39.33 billion. The nuances on how creator marketing is used are complex, but when used with some skill and judgement, few disagree it can drive business growth in an exciting way.
The problem facing brand marketing executives is that the choice of partner can also backfire spectacularly. I’ve heard executives tell us about sales falling dramatically when the choice of working with a creator is criticized online. This backlash can be for any number of reasons. People who were offended by a post a long time ago can go online to criticize a brand for associating with the influencer, reminding them and the world of the original offensive post. Mistakenly they can assume the creator’s values match the brands. Consider for a moment some of the risks posed by people who promote themselves as possible ambassadors for brands as observed by us in the last six months:
- Lots of authored, liked and shared pornographic material, including material featuring the subject
- Racial slurs and the use of blackface
- Frequent use of ableist slurs such as r*tard
- Frequent use of homophobic slurs such as ‘d*ke’ and ‘f*g’
- Posts made in reply to other online users telling them to go kill themselves
- Posts advocating sexual assault in attempted comedic tones, e.g. I hope you get raped by some ugly hoe!
- Threats to a makeup brand they deemed racist, e.g. Count your days!
- Mocking accents of other nations
- Criticism of named brands for taking advantage of black creators
- Posts defending terrorists or making distasteful references/jokes about terrorists
- Posts wishing that Donald Trump had been assassinated
- Advocating violence during Black Lives Matter protests
- Calls to burn corporate oligarchs and encourage followers to find and harass them
- Public use of illegal drugs
Most of these posts are on Twitter aka X, whilst most of these creators sell their services to brands on TikTok or on Instagram. Sometimes we find that they also have TruthSocial accounts or OnlyFans channels. Perhaps their views can be found on Facebook or on older platforms like Tumblr. We’ve found that micro influencers, those with 10,000 or 20,000 followers, who many assume to be low risk, tend to post riskier content than the global tennis stars or Hollywood actresses who know that their every word is being scrutinized by millions. Yet it’s the authentic voice of micro influencers that today’s marketing teams seem to want most. I’ll never forget reading one middle-aged hairdressing influencer saying she wanted all Asian immigrants to be deported or killed on the day of an ISIS terrorist atrocity and then went back to posting about hair coloring. Would you want to partner with her? even if it was a post from years ago how do you know what she would say when provoked again?
We’ve been reviewing influencers/creators/ambassadors for brands since 2017 and have run over 10,000 background checks. Today, we offer a comprehensive review of every post they make on most of the major platforms, including TikTok and Reels, using AI and automation. We tailor what we look for depending on the brand sensitivities, but generally we are looking for discrimination in any form, agitation for violence or conspiracy theories/misinformation. Ours is an investigator-led approach, checking that we include undisclosed platform accounts, performing additional manual checks and providing concise reports rather than data dumps. We do this with staff who are based in the same country as the client, so that nuances are not missed. Clients managing large influencer programs can take advantage of our online management platform for their requestors, approvers and to track the progress of reports. We can provide short reports the next day after they are ordered, and for only a few hundred dollars.
Clients who use our influencer vetting service understand more about the influencer before they contact them; so they walk into the relationship with open eyes. Sometimes the brand’s values and the influencers values align. Sometimes a brand might ask an influencer to delete an old derogatory post and apologize for it, thereby neutering any potential controversy. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking an influencer to be careful with their comments about a particular issue. Sometimes the brand just walks away.
And it’s not just marketing executives who use this service, we’ve also provided this service to TV shows, lawyers and sports franchises. Don’t be cancelled because of associating with the wrong influencer! See the risks in advance! Stay ahead with Kroll!
