Safeguarding Brand Trust in the Deepfake Era: Panel Discussion - III at 23rd IT Forum

The third panel discussion titled - Safeguarding Brand Trust in the Deepfake Era was moderated by Gyana Ranjan Swain, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA. He set the stage ready by discussing how deepfakes and data privacy threats erode trust and democratic processes. “This issue has been plaguing us since the entry of AI and other innovative technologies. Malicious use of personal data is fueling realistic misinformation, and manipulating public perception towards a particular person, entity or an issue. This challenges digital integrity and informed discourse and demands urgent solutions.

The panellists who joined the discussion included Arvind Saxena, CMO- NEC India; Ritesh Dhawan, Marketing Head (India)- Redington Ltd.; Sanjay Chaudhary, Head of Enterprise Marketing- SAP; and Vinny Sharma, Marketing Director for APJ & MEA – Securonix.

From L-R: Gyana Ranjan Swain, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA; Arvind Saxena, CMO- NEC India; Ritesh Dhawan, Marketing Head (India)- Redington Ltd.; Sanjay Chaudhary, Head of Enterprise Marketing- SAP; and Vinny Sharma, Marketing Director for APJ & MEA – Securonix

VINNY SHARMA
MARKETING DIRECTOR FOR APJ & MEA – SECURONIX

On recounting her first instance with deepfake, Vinny explained how a WhatsApp message from her company CEO, Nayaki Nayyar got her thinking if it was a real or a fake one. “On seeing the CEO’s WhatsApp profile picture, I opened the message where she was asking for some information. She was not supposed to touch base with me directly as there was no ongoing project. Had there been any project, she would definitely reach out to me. It was not late before realizing that somebody was impersonating her in the pretext of extracting some information, and this started happening with multiple colleagues of mine. So when such instances happen, is a normal consumer aware about it or do they know how to react to it, that is a big question that comes up.”

RITESH DHAWAN
MARKETING HEAD (INDIA)- REDINGTON LTD

Ritesh cited an instance of deepfake of his own. “A couple of months back, there was a rock concert happening in Mumbai. The place was packed with more than 1500 people with very high security and we were allowed to carry along very few things inside. So in the outer periphery of this stadium, there were some food and refreshment stalls put up. Out of the seven or eight different stalls, there was one particular stall which was selling coffee and it had a very relatable, circular green logo with the mermaid in the center. The logo drew a very major reference to a certain big global coffee brand and we instantly knew it was not genuine. Five out of 10 people walking into that stall were ready to buy a coffee or a beverage over somebody which is not impersonating any brand. And I think that speaks volumes about consumer behavior and how this whole deepfake industry is feeding over global brands creating over millions of dollars and resources.”

SANJAY CHAUDHARY,
HEAD OF ENTERPRISE MARKETING- SAP

On the growing cases of deepfake Sanjay said, I feel that as a marketer, you have three ‘Rs’ to manage – the third R, which we sometimes keep as number one, is Revenue, but that's a byproduct. The other two ‘Rs’ are Relationship and Reputation. Reputation plays a very, very important role and if that trust or relationship is compromised, then you will have a difficult time to rebuild that. So there is a huge implication of any form of reputation damage that can impact the brand in the long run. So it is very critical to make sure that you protect your brand reputation above everything else. Deepfake was so common in the political scenarios, among celebrities, but this has now started to happen in the B2B space as well. Imagine the implications a fake earning call or a fake interview of an analyst will have on a company. There is no denying that you cannot control this but you can keep smarter and smarter to prevent this. There will come a point of time when humans will not be able to match the machines but we have to use these machine to counter these threats.”

ARVIND SAXENA
CMO- NEC INDIA

In this digital age, with the threat always looming over one’s head to manage brand validation and customer trust, Arvind said that NEC has always been innovating, and the company’s values and culture has always stood the test of time. “For us, security, specifically cyber security has been placed across all possible channels of communication as risk number one and we have stitched together the required SOP or a guidebook to guide us along. Marketing or branding, communication, content creation till yesterday used to be limited to just a bunch of a few. Today we understand that everyone who owns a smartphone is a pseudo marketer and they have the same set of tools, which can be played around. Sensing this as a risk, we therefore believe that in order to stay ahead of threats like deepfake, we can simulate some of these scenarios in our own environment.”