What brands can learn from the mechanisms of fake news — without falling into manipulation

Why Fake News Is Designed to Spread

A major MIT study tracked approximately 126,000 verified true and false stories shared on Twitter between 2006 and 2017. Fake news spread farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly. It also appeared more novel and elicited more surprise, fear, and disgust. According to MIT, false information was 70% more likely to be retweeted than true information. [4]

This result should not be seen as a universal law applicable to all platforms and all audiences. But it reveals an essential point: dissemination is not determined by accuracy alone.

Research on online sharing has shown that high-arousal emotions — notably awe, anger, anxiety, and excitement — increase the likelihood of content being passed on. Surprise, practical utility, and interest also play a role. [5]

Fake news often combines these elements with devastating efficiency. It compresses complexity into a single statement. It increases emotional intensity. It offers a culprit, a revelation, or a secret. It is designed to survive outside its original context.

Many brand messages do the opposite. They are technically accurate, but impossible to remember. They include every service, every value, and every nuance, until there is no idea left strong enough to circulate.

MUST WATCH — TED-ED VIDEO: Can You Outsmart a Troll (by Thinking Like One)?

In this five-minute animation, misinformation expert Claire Wardle puts the viewer at the heart of a disinformation campaign to show how misleading narratives exploit emotion, identity, and repetition. A useful visual complement to the mechanisms analysed in this article. [8] Watch the video →

Lesson 1: Make the Brand Message Easy to Retell

A strategy often weakens as the number of people signing it off increases. Each department adds a phrase. Each stakeholder protects a detail. The final message may be accurate, but it feels like the product of a committee.

The first ethical lesson to be learned from disinformation is that of compression.

A strong brand idea must be capable of being expressed in a single, clear sentence. Not because the business is simple, but because the audience needs an entry point into its complexity.

This sentence must bring together three elements: a recognisable tension, a point of view, and a reason to believe.

“We help businesses communicate better” is a broad formula. “We transform invisible expertise into visible business value” creates movement. It identifies a problem, suggests a transformation, and leaves room for proof.

Simplification only becomes manipulation when it removes information that would change the meaning of the statement. The goal is not to say everything at once. It is to make the central truth easy to remember and pass on.

Lesson 2: Use Emotion Without Emotional Blackmail

Information is remembered when it matters to someone.

This is why disinformation so often appeals to fear, anger, and disgust. These emotions create a sense of urgency and turn sharing into a reflex. But brands do not need to manufacture panic to become memorable. Research on virality also highlights the power of awe, inspiration, excitement, amusement, and human warmth. [5]

For an industrial company, emotion can arise from the pride associated with a perfectly mastered process. For a family business, it can come from the continuity across generations. For a consulting firm, it can lie in the relief of finally understanding a difficult decision.

The ethical limit is simple: emotion must reveal why the truth matters, not replace the truth.

A strong story can open the door. The evidence still has to walk through it.

Lesson 3: Gain Attention Through Genuine Novelty

The MIT study showed that fake news appeared more novel than the truth. This advantage is easy to understand. Reality has constraints. Fabrication has none. [4]

But novelty is not synonymous with invention.

A brand can create surprise by revealing exclusive data, showing an overlooked consequence, challenging a category cliché, or opening up the behind-the-scenes of a process that its competitors keep hidden. A familiar subject becomes fresh when observed with greater precision.

The weakest form of novelty is exaggeration: “everything has changed”, “this will revolutionise your industry”, “the old rules no longer apply”. The strongest is a precise observation that the audience had never seen clearly articulated before.

Brands do not need a more sensational claim. They need a sharper observation.

Lesson 4: Repeat the Truth Until It Becomes Recognisable

Repetition is one of the most powerful mechanisms of disinformation. Psychological research on the “illusory truth effect” shows that repeated statements can seem truer because they become easier to process — even when people have knowledge that should contradict them. [6]

For brands, this is both a warning and a lesson.

The warning is obvious: familiarity is not proof. The ethical lesson is that a truthful positioning must be repeated before it becomes associated with the brand.

Companies often abandon a message because the internal team is tired of it. The market may only just be starting to notice it.

Consistency is not about publishing the exact same phrase forever. It is about repeating the same strategic idea through different evidence: a founder's story, a customer case study, a product demonstration, an expert opinion, a data point, or a sales presentation.

Repeat the positioning. Renew the evidence.

Lesson 5: Create Belonging Without Naming an Enemy

Fake news rarely offers facts alone. It offers belonging.

It tells people who knows the “real story”, who does not deserve their trust, and whose side they are on. The content becomes a badge of identity. Sharing it signals belonging.

Brands also need communities, but a community does not require hostility.

A brand can gather people around standards, ambitions, practices, and values: craftsmanship over shortcuts, clarity over noise, long-term value over fashionable hype. This creates a recognisable “us” without inventing a contemptible “them”.

The strongest brand communities are united by a shared belief, not a common hostility.

For ambitious family businesses, this point is particularly important. Their most distinctive asset is often not a louder promise, but a deeply rooted way of working in which customers and employees can recognise themselves.

How to Integrate Ethical Virality into Brand Content

Research suggests that people sometimes share inaccurate content not because they believe it, but because their attention is focused on something other than accuracy. Simple reminders that refocus attention on accuracy can improve the quality of shared content. [7]

Brands should apply the same principle to their own publishing systems: make content easy to share, but make every major claim easy to verify.

Quick Checklist: Ethical Virality in Seven Steps

• State a central idea early on.

• Write a strong headline that remains faithful to the article.

• Use emotion to reinforce relevance, not to manufacture fear.

• Create novelty through an insight, evidence, or privileged access.

• Make the message easy to quote without stripping it of its meaning.

• Name sources, dates, experts, and methodologies when claims depend on them.

• Ask yourself: would this content remain honest if someone only shared the headline or a snippet?

That is the difference between designing attention and exploiting it.

The Real Competitive Advantage: Attention Built on Trust

Fake news can win a click, a share, or an hour of public attention. A brand must withstand the next purchase, the next conversation with an employee, and the next five years.

That changes the goal.

The goal is not to achieve maximum reach at any cost. It is to earn attention that builds recognition, understanding, and trust. It requires a message simple enough to be remembered, emotional enough to matter, distinctive enough to interrupt, and credible enough to withstand scrutiny.

In a saturated world, clarity is strength. But clarity without integrity is just efficient manipulation.

The best brands will not try to make the truth work like a lie. They will make it circulate with the same discipline.