Strange comments with unfamiliar symbols and odd phrasing showed up under your brand’s Instagram post. Your social listening tool logged the mentions but never flagged a risk. Without online risk intelligence to add context, those signals slipped through. Hours later, the chatter spread to niche forums and Twitter. By the time your team realized what was happening, the backlash had already escalated into a reputational crisis.
A surge in user-generated content and the rise of generative AI have made online risks faster and more unpredictable than ever. Basic monitors can track mentions, but they can’t interpret meaning, assess urgency, or recommend action. That leaves PR, communications, and other brand risk teams vulnerable to missing low-volume threats, coded language, and evolving narratives.
In our recent webinar with PRWeek, From Signal to Strategy: Turning Online Noise into Actionable Intelligence, Jerrod Lew, Manager of Crisis and Issues at Philip Morris International, and Emma Durant, Strategic Client Partner at Resolver, shared how leading brands go beyond social listening by using online risk intelligence for more proactive risk detection.
Read on for insights into how AI and human expertise combine to surface the signals that matter. You’ll learn what traditional tools miss, how top teams detect early risks, and how to move from keyword-based spike alerts to smarter, contextual intelligence.
Why speed alone isn’t enough in brand risk detection
The speed at which a minor issue can balloon into a full-blown communications crisis is breathtaking. Both panelists agreed that the old methods of monitoring online chatter simply don’t cut it anymore. As Emma put it, you have to be “on top of it all the time.” She pointed to a luxury brand whose holiday ad backfired when it echoed the Israeli flag’s colors just days before the Israel–Hamas conflict erupted.
Jerrod added that a single negative post can generate more than 1,000 shares and thousands of impressions in under an hour. That speed can put global brand on the defensive before most teams even see the alert. Traditional spike-based tools might flag the volume, but they lack the context to tell you why it’s happening or how fast it’s spreading.
Speed alone isn’t enough. PR, comms and other brand risk teams need early, contextual signals — not just faster alerts. They need alerts that explain the what, the why and the who, so you can decide immediately whether to escalate, investigate or let it ride. Online risk intelligence, blends AI-driven filtering, cross-platform monitoring and expert analysis to surface the right signals and context before whispers become headlines.
Beyond boolean and spike alerts: Finding low volume, high threat risks
While most traditional social listening tools rely on Boolean searches, sentiment analysis, and spike alerts to surface emerging chatter, the reality is: you can’t catch what you’re not looking for. These tools monitor mention counts and match content to predefined keywords. They’re effective at surfacing volume, but volume doesn’t always equal risk.
Jerrod reiterated how for PMI, even low-volume conversations — often dismissed as “noise,” — can signal significant threats. In other words “If it’s a concern for one of our customers, then it’s a concern for the business.” Emma shared a striking example: a surge of comments under a brand post that looked like background noise. On closer review, our human intelligence analysts identified gang-related symbols and coded language— risk signals that no algorithm could have flagged alone.
Volume-based alerts can flag anomalies, but only trained analysts can judge whether they signal a genuine reputational risk. There’s a divide between raw data and true contextual understanding. Traditional tools often miss this nuance: they track mentions, not meaning.
Resolver social listening and online risk intelligence service is designed to address this exact gap. We leverage bespoke AI algorithms to narrow millions of risk signals down to credible threats, while our human analysts bring domain expertise and judgement to know which threats require urgent attention.
This human-in-the-loop approach enables us to help partners detect low-volume high-risk threats before they spiral into crises.
Right-time, contextual intelligence makes alerts actionable
Risk alerts only work when they arrive fast, with context and delivered to the right decision-maker. It’s not just about what’s being said, but why it matters now, and who needs to act on it. That is the promise of contextual intelligence: timely and relevant risk signals that can help your brand trigger real-decisions. Key characteristics of this approach include:
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Prioritize impact:Once a signal is identified, triage is essential to distinguish true brand risks — such as security threats or reputational flashpoints — from the noise. Only those high-risk signals should be escalated and routed immediately to the people best equipped to respond. |
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Map risks to the right teams: As new threats emerge, workflows must evolve so that legal issues, misinformation or employee-safety concerns go directly to the appropriate decision-makers. This targeted routing ensures each alert lands with the team that can take swift, effective action. |
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Act on insight: Intelligence is only valuable if there’s a clear response protocol in place, otherwise teams waste time debating instead of doing. A predefined crisis plan lets you move from insight to action without hesitation, protecting your brand’s reputation and bottom line. |
Right-time online risk intelligence speeds up brand response. With expert-assessed context to guide crisis playbooks, teams can act faster and neutralize emerging threats before they escalate.
AI paired with human insight drives better risk detection
AI surfaces signals, but only humans can interpret them — and that context is essential for effective risk detection. That was the consensus from both expert panelists: risk detection does not work without the correct context. While AI flags and processes vast amounts of data to identify potential threats, human expertise transforms those raw signals into actionable intelligence. It takes real judgment to assess urgency, decode nuance, and determine what matters most to the business.
“It’s our team of experts that deliver the critically important analysis of the issues,” Emma said. With over 20 years of experience integrating cutting-edge AI algorithms into risk workflows, she made it clear that automation alone cannot interpret nuance or assess reputational impact.
Resolver’s human-in-the-loop model delivers decision-ready insights so teams can stop merely reacting and start responding with confidence.
3 steps to smarter brand risk response
You can’t always prevent a crisis, but you can detect risk early and act faster when it hits. Here’s what our panelists emphasized to help teams get ahead of reputational threats. According to both expert panelists, key actionable takeaways include:
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Score signals, not sentiment: Focus on threats identified through analyst validation and context, not just spikes in volume. Emma suggests a tiered alert model — instant top-line notices followed by detailed situation reports and ongoing updates — to keep decision makers informed without overload. |
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Train teams on real scenarios: Base your crisis-response playbook on past events, not hypotheticals. Ask each team to list its top crisis scenarios, like data breaches, misinformation or supply chain disruptions. Focus on these real threats so your teams get practice they can use when it counts. This approach boosts your brand risk monitoring and crisis response readiness. |
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Work with vertical experts: Use analysts who specialize in your sector to spot subtle, industry-specific risk signals. Weave your core brand narrative into alerts and drills to counter misinformation and guide clear, consistent responses. This method strengthens your online risk intelligence and safeguards your brand reputation. |
Together, these steps turn isolated alerts into a proactive, context-rich defense, empowering your teams to anticipate and neutralize threats before they escalate.
Get ahead of brand risk
Don’t let your brand get caught flat-footed. True readiness means more than deploying tools. To get ahead of online brand risks, PR, comms and risk teams need the right intelligence, at the right time, in the hands of the right teams. Resolver’s human-in-the-loop Online Risk Intelligence service makes that shift seamless.
