Diana Marszalek 23 Sep 2021 // 5:17PM GMT
NEW YORK — Weber Shandwick has launched a multi-faceted offering designed to help companies better anticipate and mitigate the fallout from disinformation, a major threat to corporate reputations.
The AI-enabled Weber Shandwick Media Security Center is built in partnership with Blackbird.AI, whose technology detects threats of disinformation, giving the firm and its clients the opportunity to combat it proactively with custom solutions.
The center, staffed by a multi-disciplinary team, also offers education and training to bolster executives’ and comms teams’ awareness of disinformation and how it spreads. It will also leverage research from companies like Blackbird.AI and academic centers.
Peter Duda, head of Weber Shandwick’s global crisis and issues management practice, said disinformation is so destructive that it impacts companies’ financial, employee and organizational security in addition to reputation. “We are currently working with clients in healthcare, government and CPG as they battle a potentially harmful information landscape littered with bot created content, artificial distribution and erroneous stories that often spread undetected until they’re unmanageable,” he said.
Said CEO Gail Heimann: “As malicious content becomes more pervasive and more sophisticated, it presents an increasingly material reputational and commercial threat. The Weber Shandwick Media Security Center team works to understand the influence of questionable content on the attitudes and behaviors of customers, employees and other stakeholders. And, building on an already world class crisis and issues practice, aims and to better anticipate, manage and mitigate those threats.”