The push for corporate visibility has inadvertently turned virality into a modern-day metric of relevance. For many organisations, “going viral” is celebrated as proof of brand visibility, audience resonance, and market penetration. This drive for virality has led organisations to go to great lengths to ensure virality is achieved.
While some organisations have successfully leveraged the winds of virality, for others, it has exposed them to reputational damage, stakeholder backlash, and crisis‑level scrutiny.
A recent incident in Nigeria illustrates this perfectly: a video from a private company event somehow made it to the streets of social media and sparked a heated debate that went on for days. The bone of contention? How a junior employee addressed the number one executive in the company.
Underneath the uproar and noise, the video generated a deeper question for CEOs and organisations: How should organisations balance virality with protecting corporate image and executive credibility?
The Double-Edged Sword of Virality
When strategically deployed, virality can be a powerful accelerator for any organisation. With virality, organisations can:
- Drive strategic conversations in areas where they have expertise
- Boost brand awareness across markets and demographics.
- Generate leads and commercial opportunities.
- Break into new audiences with creative storytelling
While virality definitely has positive benefits, it can come with huge risks and costs if it is not handled with care and wisdom. This includes:
- Stakeholder distraction from core organisational priorities.
- Unwanted attention that can taint corporate image when a backlash occurs.
- Escalation into a crisis if not managed properly.
- It can water down perception and the credibility of the organisation’s executive.
- Loss of goodwill or license to operate in extreme cases.
How Organisations Should Respond to Viral Backlash
When pursuing virality as a goal, organisations must recognise that the potential for viral backlash is real. Before the viral backlash occurs, it is important to have a plan to respond to it. Here’s what to do if an organisation finds itself on the other side of virality.
1. Decide on a response strategy.
Don’t have a reactive response to a backlash unless it is one that has the potential to spiral into a crisis. In that case, you will have to trigger your crisis response protocols. For non-crisis situations, observe sentiment, plan your response, and determine who speaks, when, and how.
2. Monitor conversations and sentiment.
Never ignore a viral backlash situation. It can easily escalate from social media dialogue to a reputational issue. Use media monitoring tools to track narratives, monitor sentiment, identify trigger points, and determine when to activate your issues or crisis management protocols.
3. Activate your issues or crisis management protocol.
Every organisation should have a documented issues and crisis management playbook. This should contain your response protocols, with a detailed outline of the steps to be taken when organisational assets, reputation, licence to operate and stakeholders are threatened.
4. Unpack and Learn.
After the dust settles, conduct a structured post‑incident review. Analyse what happened, why it happened, lessons learned, and what must change. Doing this will help the organisation to be better prepared when another viral backlash occurs.
Protecting Corporate Image Beyond Virality
Virality should never overshadow an organisation’s core responsibility, which is to protect its corporate reputation. To do this, it is important for the following guardrails to be in place:
- Have a policy around the use of social media in the workplace. Clearly define what is acceptable and what isn’t.
- There should also be a policy for amplification of internal content on digital platforms. A review and approval mechanism should be in place to ensure the company doesn’t unwittingly share content on its digital channels that leads to a backlash.
- Always be crisis-ready. In the current volatile social and digital environment, organisations should be proactive about crisis and issues management.
- Strengthen corporate communication and narrative, as these will serve as key anchors to protect and preserve reputation during a time of backlash.
- Not every trend deserves brand attention. Sometimes, virality can be a distraction. Organisations should stay focused on their vision and always be strategic about how they communicate and show up in digital spaces.
Virality can bring great benefits, but it can also cause much harm. When seeking to go viral, organisations must therefore ensure that the pursuit of visibility never compromises credibility and corporate reputation.
