Why is Brand Protection Important in PR? Useful Tips and Strategies

PR thrives on trust. But in today’s digital chaos—where AI-generated fakes, brand impersonators, and viral backlash spread faster than press releases—trust is fragile.

That’s why brand protection has become a core PR function. It’s not just about managing reputation after a crisis, but preventing one in the first place. With the right tools and strategies, PR teams can monitor threats, spot misinformation early, and keep their brand narrative under control.

In this guide, you’ll find practical tips, real risks to watch for, and the tech that helps modern PR pros stay ahead of the damage.

What is brand protection?

Brand protection includes all actions a company takes toward preserving the integrity of its identity. This includes the name, logos, taglines, its tone and voice, the way people talk about it online, and how their audience feels about the brand in general.

You may think this mostly involves guarding trademarks, intellectual property rights, or even intellectual property infringement, but that's not entirely true.

Nowadays, complete brand protection includes things like:

• Real-time monitoring of your brand online, including mentions across news, online outlets, magazines, social media platforms, and forums
• Consistent messaging across all channels that the clients can see, such as websites, press releases, Amazon storefronts, NGO one-pagers, etc.
• Rapid crisis management to prevent excessive brand abuse and keep the narrative under control when something puts you in boiling waters
• Impersonation defense, especially from deepfakes, fake social media accounts, people spreading misinformation, and doing general consumer harm

If there's one sentence you should remember from this list, it is its key message: your public relations, legal, marketing, and customer service efforts should all be on board when it comes to your brand reputation.

🎯 Their ultimate goal? Continuous support to help you remain a trusted brand with honest consumer engagement. This is something that will multiply consumer trust for decades.

Why is brand protection important?

Many enjoy the fact that, thanks to social media accounts and the way media is done now, brands can grow faster. You know, overnight millionaires (and I'm all for it).

However, that kind of speed of light can also generate a lot of vulnerability due to misinformation, unauthorized use of a brand's materials, brand abuse, and counterfeit trade.

Without a strong brand protection program, even the most popular brands on the market can suffer significantly. That includes both financial and reputational damage.

Top risks when brand protection fails

If your brand protection efforts aren't really thought through, you're putting your business at risk in so many ways:

• Loss of customer trust – if your dear audience sees fake accounts, counterfeit products, and then peeks at your site only to discover misaligned messaging between all social media accounts, you're down several points already in their book.
• Legal action and revenue loss – if you've failed to make sure your intellectual property rights such as trademarks, domain names, and product images are secured, it can lead to really (and I mean really) expensive disputes, lawsuits, and dips in revenue. There are dozens of small companies that forgot about it and had to close their business in the long run.
• Damage from bad actors – think of things like digital brand abuse, illicit trade, and trademark infringement such as fake listings on online marketplaces. Couple that with threats on the dark web, and swift action is not optional but essential.
• Unauthorized use of brand assets – whether someone uses your logo without permission or sells your products without a license, this can not only hurt your sales but also confuse consumers. I know you may think that people will know explicitly which website is real and which is fake, but to be quite honest here, many people are not tech-savvy and will not know. Plus, impersonators can get really, really good at what they do.
• Cyber threats – things like phishing, ransomware attacks, and similar. Well-known brands have entire teams that deal with these sorts of events. But hey, before you say they have the budget for that kind of brand protection (which is true), you can always do everything you can to replicate their brand protection efforts yourself.

When brand protection fails: the Burger King example

On March 8 2021, Burger King's UK branch came out with a campaign intended to promote a new scholarship program for women, aimed at increasing the number of female chefs in the culinary industry. Sounds great, right? Yeah, well... their slogan said "Women belong in the kitchen".

This isn't a joke. So many people have perceived it sexist, especially given the context of International Women's Day. Brand protection experts must have had a field day with this one.

The engagement on that tweet has lead to widespread criticism, quickly outpacing any explanations anyone might have said.

Moving forward, Burger King UK eventually deleted the original tweet and issued an apology where they've acknowledged their error in not providing context upfront. However, the damage has already been done.

💡 P.S. In case you'd like to find out how PR pros manage crises beyond the general advice, this article spills the tips they don't usually talk about with others (with many more examples).

3 key brand protection strategies that work

Damage control is cool, but have you ever heard of building a smart, proactive brand protection system that decreases threats and increases trusts? Exactly.

Here are three most effective brand protection strategies:

#1: Put PR at the forefront

A strategic, well-organized public relations team does more than just build organic visibility. They help protect the brand from crises, misinformation, and brand abuse before it grows into something bigger they can handle. A strong PR strategy can help:

1. Establish a consistent brand online, including messaging, narrative, and mission
2. Build long-term relationships with key journalists and industry partners
3. Highlight positive press and diminish unfriendly noise, such as social media backlash
4. Take immediate action against brand abuse like spam comments, trolls, and threats
5. Monitor the industry in various ways, including using advanced tools for collecting mentions

💡 Beyond that, PR teams can also flag 🚩 potential unauthorized use of messaging, product visuals, or trademarks. This kind of alignment is crucial if you're in spaces like e-commerce, where bad actors can engage in illicit activities connected to selling counterfeit products.

By collaborating early and often with legal teams, they can help you to prevent brand abuse and protect your intellectual property.

#2: Respond quickly to digital brand abuse

Brand abuse doesn't discriminate, so it doesn't matter if you work for a small company, or for well known brands. Both are vulnerable to sudden crises.

Whether it's a poorly written social media post, a leaked memo, an email that was never supposed to be analyzed through the public eye, or the discovery of counterfeit goods on popular online marketplaces, you need to protect your brand reputation. While not all crisis management tips make it into textbooks, here's what PR pros actually do when things go left.

But, what can you do now to protect yourself from all of these?

1. Draft pre-written responses for different threat scenarios, like unauthorized use of assets, leaked sensitive information, patent infringement etc.
2. Choose the right platforms, channels, people, and keywords to monitor. That way, you have full visibility into where the issue that arises began in the first place.
3. Create clear, actionable steps for how to respond in a crisis in case it's not covered in the pre-written responses you provided. Make sure to state who is responsible for what.
4. Make sure top management has full visibility on your brand protection strategy. Make sure they understand their approval is needed, so that everything is ready for when you need to quickly respond. Early detection is cool, but what happens when it will take you several days to get a "yes" from all of your superiors?

#3: Monitor your brand anywhere and everywhere

Most brand protection solutions fall short because they haven't incorporated a good media monitoring strategy.

Prowly's Media Monitoring isn't only useful for tracking mentions from your pitching efforts. It can also aid you in a full, comprehensive brand protection strategy.

Let's take a look at some of the activities you should be doing:

#1 Monitoring multiple channels including online, print, and broadcast

That way, you can monitor your brand holistically everywhere.

The sources you should track include news outlets, magazines (both online and print), broadcast, Reddit, and other forums.

#2 Setting up automated alerts for important mentions

I'm sure you'd want to know when something happens, right away.

💡 If you're getting dozens of comments within an hour, Prowly will send you an email alerting you that something is going on. Same goes for other types of alerts, depending on your needs.

#3 Analyzing sentiment

Sentiment analysis is great, and we know that. What's even more useful is monitoring sentiment in different places.

For example, try setting up queries for different social media platforms and compare whether or not your brand is more liked on one platform versus the other.

💡 With Prowly, you can gather concrete data and filter it by engagement, sentiment analysis, number of mentions, share of voice, and many more.

Curious to see how Prowly helps brands stay ahead of digital brand abuse and protect their reputation? Start your free 7-day trial. No strings attached, no credit card needed.

Top brand protection solutions and tools

To make sure your brand reputation is where you want it to be, it's time to explore the tools that can give you control, clarity, and the power to act fast whenever you need to.

The best tools allow you and your team to collaborate closely, prevent digital brand abuse through effortless media monitoring, and enforce all the essential components of a good strategy in day-to-day life.

Here's a quick comparison of leading brand protection tools:

These platforms help brand owners and coworkers protect their business by finding mentions that can reveal unauthorized use of assets, track sentiment, and all the other components that go into brand reputation management.

Curious to learn more? Dive into a complete breakdown of the best reputation management software options out there. Or simply...

Why consistency in messaging matters?

Imagine some of your online platforms are filled with content for Gen Zers, talking about the environment, ethical practices, and consumerism.

Then, other digital platforms you manage are completely disconnected: there, you often run ads that say things like "the right time to buy is NOW" or "don't miss out on this event of a lifetime." See the divergence?

The way your (or your client’s) brand shows up in Instagram posts, press releases, chatbot responses, sales materials, and more is a series of touchpoints that together tell the world who you are. If they don't sound aligned, it takes away from your brand's credibility.

And fragmented brands harm consumer trust. Therefore, don't forget to include consistent messaging in your brand protection program.

Brand protection isn't easy, but it's worth it

Protecting your brand is hard, but if you don't do it, no one else will. The better, stronger, and more interesting your brand becomes, the more attractive it becomes to bad actors who want to tarnish what you've achieved.

They won't just target your logos or write some spam comments. Now, with artificial intelligence and machine learning, they can do some real damage. By ignoring brand protection solutions, you're not just risking a small dip in your revenue: you're risking your entire brand.

To end it all on a positive note, there are ways you can do your best to prevent it: media monitoring solutions, pre-written responses, internal frameworks on how to handle things when they come up. Prevention is better than reaction.