This article was based on the interview with BrandShield CEO Yoav Keren on the dark side of digital engagement by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
As marketing leaders, we live in a world of quantifiable metrics and strategic initiatives. We obsess over customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, share of voice, and the delicate art of building brand equity. We architect complex customer journeys, optimize digital funnels, and invest millions in creating experiences that foster trust and loyalty. But what if a significant portion of that investment is being siphoned off by an invisible, relentless competitor who uses your own brand identity against you? This isn’t a hypothetical exercise; it’s the rapidly escalating reality of digital brand protection. The threats have moved far beyond the occasional counterfeit seller on a third-tier marketplace. We are now facing an industrial-scale operation of brand impersonation, AI-generated scams, and sophisticated fraud that targets the very customers we work so tirelessly to engage.
This is not an issue to be relegated to the IT security or legal departments, filed under “cost of doing business.” The modern battlefield for customer trust and revenue is being fought on fraudulent websites, deceptive social media ads, and deepfake videos that are becoming terrifyingly convincing. To ignore this is to allow the erosion of brand reputation, the direct loss of revenue, and the inundation of customer service channels with the fallout. In a recent conversation, Greg Kihlström spoke with Yoav Keren, CEO and Co-founder of BrandShield, about why this digital dark side is a core strategic concern for every CMO. The conversation underscored a critical shift: brand protection is no longer just a defensive tactic; it’s a fundamental pillar of customer experience and a prerequisite for sustainable growth in the AI era.
The CMO Mandate: Reclaiming Ownership of Brand Protection
For too long, the responsibility for tackling brand impersonation and digital fraud has been siloed, often landing in the laps of legal or cybersecurity teams. While their expertise is crucial, this organizational structure misses the fundamental business impact. These threats aren’t just technical or legal infractions; they are direct attacks on marketing’s most vital assets: revenue, reputation, and customer relationships. When a potential customer is diverted to a scam website, that’s not just a security breach—it’s a lost sale and a permanently damaged perception of your brand.
Yoav Keren makes a compelling case for re-framing this issue as a core marketing responsibility, detailing three distinct ways these scams inflict damage. It’s a pragmatic, bottom-line argument that every marketing leader needs to internalize.
“When someone runs a scam or an impersonation or a fraud or a counterfeit sale that is related to your brand, it is basically a competitor to your revenues… One, it hurts the bottom line. It’s clear… you’re losing customers that were supposed to buy from you to a scammer. The second thing that is, I think, even more important, and that is the reputation… when someone falls for a scam, they blame the brand… The third impact on the company is customer service. In many of these cases, the customers will call your customer service and will ask, where’s my stuff, you know, where’s my money?”
Keren’s breakdown transforms an abstract threat into tangible business costs. The lost revenue is the most direct hit, a competitor that requires zero R&D and simply hijacks your marketing spend. The reputational damage is more insidious and potentially more destructive, poisoning the well of customer trust and devaluing years of brand-building efforts. Finally, the strain on customer service creates a negative feedback loop; your teams spend valuable resources managing the frustrations of people who were never your customers in the first place, pulling focus from the legitimate customer base you’re trying to serve. This is a marketing problem, plain and simple, and it requires a marketing-led strategy to address it.
The AI Arms Race: When ‘Buyer Beware’ Is No Longer Enough
The conventional wisdom used to be that a savvy consumer could spot a scam. We trained ourselves and our customers to look for typos, shoddy website design, or suspicious URLs. That era is definitively over. The proliferation of powerful, accessible generative AI tools has democratized the ability to create high-fidelity deception at an unprecedented scale. Scammers no longer need to be skilled designers, copywriters, or even fluent in the language of their targets. They now have an AI co-pilot that can do it all for them, instantly and at virtually no cost.
This technological leap fundamentally changes the dynamic of trust and responsibility. Marketers can no longer place the onus on the consumer to differentiate a real campaign from a sophisticated fake. The fakes are simply getting too good. Keren highlights how this new reality renders traditional consumer education obsolete and why brands must take a more proactive, technology-driven stance.
“With the explosion of AI and the tools that are now available in the hands of scammers… it is extremely hard even for a sophisticated user to understand what is real and what is not. And this is the issue… We are stepping into a very different era where this is something that has nothing to do with education and you cannot throw the responsibility on your customers. Hey, if they fell for that, it’s their problem. That’s irrelevant. Because you’re going to lose their trust, you’re going to lose their revenue.”
This is a critical mindset shift. The tools of deception now include perfectly grammatical marketing copy in any language, photorealistic images that mimic your brand’s aesthetic, and deepfake videos featuring celebrity endorsers or even your own executives. This arsenal allows bad actors to create not just a single fake website, but thousands of them, targeting specific demographics with tailored ads on social media. The only viable response is to fight fire with fire. Platforms like BrandShield leverage their own AI models to patrol the vast digital landscape, using predictive analytics to identify threats before they launch, analyzing content for fraudulent signals, and automating the enforcement process to take them down quickly. It’s an ongoing AI arms race, and sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option.
The Expanding Threat Surface: It’s Not Just a Big Brand Problem Anymore
There might be a temptation for leaders at mid-market or emerging brands to believe this is a problem reserved for the Nikes and Sephorras of the world. Historically, that was largely true. Scammers focused on the largest, most recognizable brands for the biggest payoff. However, the same AI-driven efficiency that makes scams more sophisticated also makes them easier to deploy against a much wider range of targets. The economics of fraud have changed.
The cost and effort required to spin up a convincing counterfeit storefront or impersonation campaign have plummeted. This means that any brand with a degree of customer loyalty and online presence is now a potential target. Scammers are playing a numbers game, and the field of play has expanded exponentially. As Keren points out, this threat is becoming ubiquitous, and a lack of awareness is one of the biggest vulnerabilities.
“While this used to be a problem just of the bigger, you know, well-known international brands… phishing, impersonation, scam, counterfeit are becoming a problem of almost every company. And it is going to be a problem of everyone… If you don’t have a monitoring tool like BrandShield that proactively goes out there, you don’t know what’s happening… unless you have something that is on an ongoing basis, monitoring and enforcing against this, you’re being hurt and you’re not even aware.”
The chilling reality is that your brand could be actively impersonated right now, bleeding customers and eroding trust, and you might have no idea. Scammers operate in the dark corners of the internet, on temporary domains and transient social media accounts that are difficult to track manually. Proactive, automated monitoring isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity for any brand that values its digital identity. The success of your next product launch or holiday campaign could be significantly undermined by a fraudulent competitor you don’t even know exists, bidding against you for your own customers using your own brand assets.
The message from this deep dive is unequivocal: digital risk protection has earned its seat at the marketing strategy table. It is no longer a peripheral function but a central component of brand stewardship in the 21st century. The work we do to build brand value is too expensive and too important to leave unguarded. Allowing scammers to operate unchecked is akin to investing in a beautiful retail storefront but leaving the doors unlocked and unattended overnight. The damage they inflict directly negates the positive impact of our marketing spend, creating a drag on ROI that is as real as it is difficult to measure without the right tools.
Ultimately, embracing brand protection is about ensuring the integrity of the customer experience. Every touchpoint, every ad, and every transaction should be authentic. When that authenticity is compromised, the trust that underpins the entire brand-customer relationship begins to crumble. The modern marketing leader’s mandate has expanded. It’s not enough to simply build and promote; we must also defend. By integrating proactive threat intelligence and enforcement into our strategic planning, we can protect our investments, safeguard our customers, and ensure that the brand we’ve worked so hard to build is the one our audience actually experiences.
