“Stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready.”
It’s the kind of line that sounds simple until your brand is the one trending for the wrong reasons. In the latest episode of Sold Out Chat, hosted by our VP of Sales and Partnerships, Ron Vaz, and guest expert Kenya Woodard, the conversation moved past the technical side of security to something far more human: how organizations protect their people, their reputation, and their story when bad-faith actors try to hijack the narrative.
Every brand with any visibility eventually meets a troll. But as Kenya laid out, the difference between a brand that gets knocked down and one that stands firm rarely comes down to the attack itself — it comes down to the preparation, consistency, and internal unity that existed long before the first comment ever landed. This episode wasn’t just about handling criticism; it was a playbook for narrative resilience, crisis-ready communication, and protecting the humans behind the corporate account.
Key Takeaways
Tone Tells the Truth Not every angry comment is a troll, and not every troll sounds angry. Kenya’s framework starts with reading the tone and the evidence: is there a factual, play-by-play case being made, or is it accusations tossed out with nothing to back them up? Legitimate criticism is rooted in facts, even when it’s not friendly. Misinformation is rooted in nothing at all.
A Consistent Brand Is a Hard Target A troll can’t undo years of consistency overnight. Brands that have a long, steady track record — backed by real customer experience and earned third-party credibility — have a reservoir of trust that a single bad-faith attack simply can’t drain. The strongest defense isn’t built in the moment of crisis; it’s built in every interaction that came before it.
Facts Over Feelings, Then Walk Away When a response is warranted, Kenya’s rule is clear: counter with facts, not emotion, say what needs to be said, and then stop. The instinct to keep responding — to “win” the exchange — is usually what turns a small fire into a wildfire. A strong, fact-based statement is often powerful enough to stand on its own.
One Voice, One Script A fractured internal response is an open invitation for a troll to exploit. When every spokesperson, team member, and executive is aligned on the same message, there’s no daylight for bad actors to work with. The moment the public senses internal disagreement, the story shifts from “the brand is under attack” to “the brand is in chaos” — and that’s a much harder narrative to recover from.
Protect the Humans Behind the Handle Behind every corporate account is a real person absorbing the hits. Leadership has to recognize that people process online attacks differently — some can shake it off, others internalize it as a personal attack, especially when it’s coming from a bot they don’t even realize isn’t human. Building emotional resilience and mental wellness into company culture, not just during Mental Health Awareness Month, is what keeps teams from burning out during a crisis.
Know a Bot When You See One Practical due diligence matters. Ron’s field test — private account, no posts, following tens of thousands while being followed by almost no one — is often enough to identify a bot before wasting time or energy engaging with it. Kenya pointed to Dr. Michelle Ferrier’s TrollBusters framework for evaluating whether an account, a headline, or a source is legitimate before reacting to it.
Reclaim the Narrative Before It Becomes the Record Even after a troll moves on, search results and screenshots linger. The way to make sure the troll’s version doesn’t become the permanent record is to already have a well of positive, factual content and strong relationships — with customers, vendors, and media — ready to deploy. As Kenya put it, you cannot wait until the crisis hits to decide you want media relationships on your side.
Transcript
Kchristaihne Castillo:
Hey everyone, welcome back to Sold Out Chat. I’m K, the marketing coordinator here at Above Promotions. So today we are going beyond the technical aspects of security to explore the human side of business survival — how to protect your brand, your team, and your reputation when bad faith actors try to hijack your story. So to lead today’s conversation, we’ll hear from our very own VP of Sales and Partnerships, Ron Vaz. With over a decade of expertise in strategic planning, business development, and high-level B2B relationships, and as the acclaimed owner and lead photographer at Broadway Photography, he has a unique, sharp visual perspective on how brands project authority. Hi Ron.
Ron Vaz:
Hey K, how you doing today? All right, and to help us unpack how—
Kchristaihne Castillo:
I’m good, thank you. How about the two of you?
Ron Vaz:
I’m doing good. And to help us unpack how organizations can build a bulletproof narrative shield, I’m incredibly honored to introduce our special guest today, Kenya Woodard. Kenya is an award-winning, highly influential communications and nonprofit professional with more than 20 years of experience designing high-impact communication plans from ideation to execution. She’s a true subject matter expert in media relations, journalism, story pitching, as well as public relations. Welcome to Sold Out Chat, Kenya.
Kenya Woodard:
Hi, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ron Vaz:
My pleasure. All right, so let’s jump right into it. In a digital space, the line between a dissatisfied customer and a troll can sometimes feel thin. Strategically, how should a brand distinguish between constructive criticism that requires a narrative pivot and a bad faith actor who’s just looking to disrupt the brand?
Kenya Woodard:
I think the approach is to look at what’s actually being said. Is it grasping for straws — a lot of accusations that just don’t seemingly come together? Or is it a situation where, yes, clearly there’s some frustration or anger, but things are lined up in a way that feels like there’s a factual play-by-play going on? What’s the tone? Are they being very direct about what the issue is, or is it mostly some kind of inauthentic, out-of-the-sky nonsense that doesn’t feel legitimate? Do they have a legitimate gripe, and are they laying out a case where there may have been an injustice of some sort? Or are they just tossing things in the air and seeing where they land, mostly fluff that can’t be supported by factual evidence? Those are key in determining whether it’s a legitimate gripe or a troll situation.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah, I guess you’ve got to try to find the fact and the fiction in what they’re saying to you.
Kenya Woodard:
Yeah, the big buzzword these days is misinformation, and that’s clearly what trolls are trying to do — that’s the whole purpose. They want to misinform, and by whatever means it takes, they’ll do it. Whereas someone trying to raise awareness about an issue, it’s certainly not going to be a very friendly tone, however it will be rooted in factual information and evidence.
Ron Vaz:
Very true. Kenya, you’ve spent over two decades helping organizations find and protect their voice. You know the power of a strong, authentic story. How does having a deeply rooted, authentic brand narrative serve as a defense mechanism when trolls are hijacking your message or spreading misinformation?
Kenya Woodard:
That’s a really good question, and it’s rooted in consistency over time with your brand. If you are a very strong, long-standing brand, there are some things you come to be known for. It’s hard for a troll to come in overnight and take that away. It’s about being a brand that is consistent in what you’re doing, what you’re saying, and what the experiences are of folks who are engaged with your brand — because ultimately that reputation is built from people who have some interaction with your brand. For a troll to come along and try to knock that down, it won’t be easy because you’ll have way too much support and way too much history that speaks to you being legit. It comes down to being consistent over time and having support that can back up what you’re doing and saying. That comes in many forms — it can come from customer experience, but it also can come from earned media, from a third party outside your brand that has no connection to you and can lay out a case of who you are and what you’re doing. If you have a very strong and consistent brand, that can help protect you against trolls and misinformation. It’s not bulletproof, but it can withstand a good initial shock. It will be very hard to knock down a strong brand with one bit of misinformation out of the blue. Usually when brands fall victim to rumor and scandal, it’s because there’s been some holes found somewhere in the story of the brand. If you have that history and you’ve been longstanding, and you have folks within your organization thinking ahead about your long-term strategy to protect the brand overall — not just against trolls, but from many other factors — all of that can help be a shield against folks trying to tear you down.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah, so it basically boils down to a brand having to build their own foundation to protect themselves from trolls coming in to destroy what they’ve built.
Kenya Woodard:
Yeah, absolutely. And that can happen in a lot of different ways. One of the best ways is looking at what your relationships look like with the different factions that interact with your brand — your customer base, your stakeholders, your vendors. You want to strengthen all of those relationships because they function in different ways, but they can help you if you’re under attack.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah. And there’s an old adage: don’t feed the trolls. However, in today’s high-speed social environment, silence can sometimes be interpreted as admission of guilt. What’s the strategic framework for deciding when to fight back with facts and when to put out the fire?
Kenya Woodard:
Being a sports guy, I think the best defense is a strong offense… or wait—
Ron Vaz:
Other way around. Better offense, strong defense. Something like that.
Kenya Woodard:
Okay, thank you — yes! All of that to say, preparation is key. You have to have some forethought, do a little risk management: what would happen if X was to go wrong, or if this particular relationship was to break down? What are some ways we can protect ourselves from things spiraling into a cesspool we can’t dig ourselves out of? One of the ways you make sure you’re able to survive any kind of mishap is to build those protections early on. One of the things you don’t want to do is feed the troll — you don’t want to say or do anything that heightens the attack, that puts all eyes on the troll. The court of personal opinion is very strong, and people tend to gravitate toward the side that’s swinging hardest and fastest, because they look like they know what they’re talking about, even if they’re really just barking and saying nothing. You also want to be sure that whatever you’re doing to counter the attack isn’t helping the other side gain more favor with the public. It helps to look at these things before they happen. Then when you’re engaged in it, you want to figure out: is it true? How is it spreading? And is this really a major issue — does it really matter?
Ron Vaz:
Is it worth the time and energy to go back and forth with this individual?
Kenya Woodard:
Exactly. If you can say yes to one of those, you might be able to skate. If all three are yes, then you have to put a plan into effect where you’re countering what’s happening to your brand. That involves leading with facts — is this a factual thing they’re making a case about? Here are the facts. And my favorite point I absolutely want to make: do not take it personally and counter with emotion. Lashing out, name-calling — you don’t want that kind of pushback. Say what you have to say and leave it. What ends up happening sometimes is someone attacks, you make a statement, and then you feel the need to be right, so you come back with something else. Oftentimes when you hit hard and fast with the facts, just leave it — it’s usually strong enough to stand on its own. Whoever is attacking you, when you’re not feeding into it, has no choice but to retreat eventually.
Kchristaihne Castillo:
I’d also like to add — I think it would be great to make sure you have unified communication within your team, because if you don’t have that unity, communicating with each other on what to say and what to put out there, I think it costs you and can feed those trolls wrong information or things you didn’t have to say. So making sure all your teams are lined up is very important as well.
Kenya Woodard:
Yeah, you’re right. Ensuring that everybody’s reading from the same script — one band, one sound — and that no one feels compelled to say or do more outside of what’s already been decided is key. Because the one thing that can make a situation worse is if there’s some perception of division within your organization about how to approach it. If someone can needle you and find that one team member said something totally different from another, that’s an entry point for disaster. You want to make sure everybody is all in on the strategy and moving accordingly until things subside.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah, I think when you have more than one voice from an organization, that can muddy the waters, then things get misconstrued, emotions get involved, and that’s when name-calling comes into play — the worst thing that can happen.
Kenya Woodard:
Yeah, absolutely. Because remember, you can put it out, but you can’t take it back. The internet is forever, so you have to be really careful about how you respond, because that’s what’s going to linger. We see it all the time — people try to backtrack, organizations try to redirect. If you come out with a very strong, well-put-together response and everyone in the organization is behind it, no one’s talking out of turn, it tends to work out much more successfully than if you don’t.
Ron Vaz:
Right. I totally understand what you’re saying — everybody’s got to be pretty much cohesive, saying the same thing. You’re always going to have some outlier who may not agree with the path the organization is going with, but it’s about staying with what the organization is doing. And behind every corporate account is a human being.
Kenya Woodard:
Yeah, and you don’t want the chaos from the outside to start to create chaos on the inside, because then you’re fixing two things at the same time, and that can be bananas.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah, we’ve seen many organizations fail at doing that. A lot of corporate accounts, at the end of the day, are a human being running everything — often a social media manager or a founder. They’re the ones being the mouthpiece for the organization. How should leadership build emotional resilience into the organization’s culture so the team doesn’t burn out or lose morale when the brand is under attack?
Kenya Woodard:
It goes back to having a plan in place, a strategy. You have to think these things out and then find a way to make sure it’s a living document — you don’t just put it together and that’s it. You have to make sure whatever your strategy is, it’s consistently updated, because things change, especially anything involving humans. You want to make sure that what’s put together is clear and you’ve got the buy-in you need for everybody to get on board. A lot of times you’ll have plans in place, but some people are halfway in, some totally against it, and some all in. You have to bridge those different factions to get everybody to buy into it. And you have to recognize that people handle things differently — some can counter really nasty attacks, they can ignore it or go toe-to-toe. But for some people it really becomes a mental health thing, because they have a hard time separating the attacks from who they are as a person. They start taking it personally — why is this person attacking me? You have to figure out a way to make sure your plan addresses those folks most, because we assume everybody is built the same way, and that’s not the case. A lot of people are not in a place where they’re able to accept criticism or harassment from a stranger, and it may even be a bot programmed to say nasty things. A lot of people don’t understand that a lot of troll accounts aren’t even real people.
Ron Vaz:
Gotta love the bots.
Kenya Woodard:
Right, and then people are questioning, “Am I really engaging with a real person?” We can go in a whole different direction with that, but the point is, your plan has to address how people perceive themselves online and how they interact and engage with people online — and it protects their mental health.
Ron Vaz:
One thing I’ve told a lot of brands and even individuals — if you see a troll coming at you, say on Instagram, look at their account. Nine times out of ten, one, it’s going to be private; two, there’s going to be no posts on it even if it is private; and they’re following 70,000 people, but only one or two are following them. In cases like that, you know you’re dealing with a bot, and that’s when you just ignore it. It’s not worth the time, the energy, or definitely not the money it would take to deal with that individual. You ignore it and move on.
Kenya Woodard:
Right, and I’m glad you brought that up, because Dr. Michelle Ferrier — she studies online trolling, that’s her area of expertise, and she has a website, TrollBusters, where she has a graphic that takes you through the process of determining if something is real, fake, a troll, or a real person. She has tips: is it a news site, is the headline clickbait, is the writer a bona fide person you can attach this to? What’s the body of work on the account — is it just them replying, no original posting? What’s the evidence presented — is it misinformation or factual? Are anonymous sources being used, is the person hiding behind a fake profile? I was following one thread the other day, and the person being antagonistic had a profile picture of Strawberry Shortcake — one of the sweetest figures in the world — saying all these nasty things. Does the story hold up, and how is the information being disseminated — does it sound biased, is it swinging hard one way? That can help you determine if something’s valid, factual news, or twisted misinformation.
Kchristaihne Castillo:
I’d also like to add, about emotional resiliency within the employees at a company — I think it’s important that companies are proactive in helping their employees with their emotional well-being, checking on them, because you’re right, some people can’t handle it very well and take it personally. That’s why here at Above Promotions, whenever we have interviews with candidates, we always ask them how they take care of their mental health, because Ron and Ebony always want to know what they can do for us.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah, I think it’s great for employees to have their company’s back, but there’s a fine line between having the company’s back and taking it personally when a troll is attacking the organization.
Kenya Woodard:
I agree. I have a good friend, Kelly Abanda, who works in neuroscience, and she’s adamant that companies should build mental wellness into the fabric of the culture of the business. You cannot have a healthy, functioning organization if your employees are not mentally well — it doesn’t work. She encourages businesses to make it an everyday thing, not a special set-aside — not just Mental Health Awareness Month, where companies do an activity in May and then June 1st it’s all over, dropped like a hot potato. She’s adamant you need something ongoing and resourceful, where employees are comfortable telling each other and their superiors, “I’m not doing well in this area, I need some help,” and everyone is involved in ensuring mental wellness is a company-wide issue, not just something individuals handle on their own until it’s too late.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah, once the troll goes away, the people are still there. And once everything from the troll dies down, there’s still a lingering shadow of search results or social threads. What are the best strategic steps for a brand to reclaim its narrative and ensure the troll’s version of the story doesn’t become the permanent record?
Kenya Woodard:
This swings back to what we were talking about earlier — how you’ve decided to handle things, not in the moment, but thinking through what the plan looks like if X was to happen. It’s all in the initial response, how you’ve decided you’re going to face something. You have to “stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready” — highly recommended in this instance. You have to be a bit of a fortune teller, look into the future, and give yourself these “what if” scenarios that help you craft the way you’re going to respond to something. You also have to already be busy in a way that you don’t come off as desperate or hacking something together — you actually have a well to tap into, some really good, positive content that you can put in front of people to help you get ahead of the scandal or the issue with the troll. But this is all built into a strategy — you have to map these things out before something happens. Being proactive is very important. And once you’ve got that plan together and you’re going to execute, you have to make sure you’ve got key elements ready. One of those is being able to rely on the relationships we talked about earlier — those customers with really great reviews, or great emails about their experience with your brand. Use those to your advantage. You’ve got an arsenal you can pull from to help you survive and get over that hump, and it’s not just external, it’s internal too — your leadership can come out and offer a counter-narrative to the attacks. That’s why you have them on the team — you need your sharpshooters ready before the heavy artillery is pulled out. And because I work in media, this is where healthy relationships with your media partners let you cash in some chips. You cannot wait until something bad happens to decide you want that available to you. A lot of brands go wrong by waiting until something happens and then trying to pull the media in. Why be in a position where you’re scrambling when you’ve already created a plan that has media as part of your response? Really important to lay all of that out beforehand — something happens, you’re ready to go.
Ron Vaz:
Yeah. At the end of the day, it’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s when it happens. You make sure you have your positions and things in place so that right as it happens, you’re ready to attack and counterattack at the same time, and make sure everybody who sees your brand hears the message you want them to hear, not the message the troll wants them to hear.
Kenya Woodard:
Exactly. And that comes back to making sure your information, your content, is so strong and so rooted in facts that it requires the people paying attention to question everything the other side is coming out with — “I don’t know about that, according to this, and this was backed up by an outside third party, that’s not exactly how it works.” And the troll is left with nothing to really counter back with. Very important to have all of these things lined up prior to something jumping off.
Ron Vaz:
This is some incredibly great, practical, operational insight that every executive needs to hear. Kenya, thank you so much for breaking this down for us. How can we align our storytelling with brand defense to make sure we keep our defenses high?
Kenya Woodard:
That goes back to what we first talked about. When you’re consistent in what you’re doing and saying, and you have those different factions working for you — your customers, vendors, all these groups that can support you — when you have all of those pieces already together, it makes it easier to withstand an attack. It has to be something you’re consistently thinking about, because let’s be realistic, a lot of us don’t think about some things until they’re right in front of us, and by then it’s too late. You want to make sure you’re building a brand and setting up a narrative that’s as solid as possible, able to stand up and push back against an attack that has a lot of holes in it, making it impossible for anything to really land against you. That doesn’t mean it won’t feel, in some instances, like the troll is winning — like, “how is anybody falling for this?” If you focus on that too much, you’ll lose focus on what you should be doing, which is continuing to come out punching, building up your brand with content that shows, “ignore the dancing on the side, this is the real deal over here, and we can show you who we are because we’ve been doing it all along.” It’s a matter of getting your audience to revisit what they already know — there are patterns of excellence here. It’s hard to beat against that. Trolls will try, but ultimately you’ll come out victorious.
Ron Vaz:
All right, I’ll just stand on business. Kenya, thank you so much for your time — you’ve been great, and this has been incredibly insightful information. Okay, I’m throwing it back over to you for wrapping us up.
Kenya Woodard:
Thanks for having me.
Kchristaihne Castillo:
All right, thank you so much, Ron and Kenya, for such a powerful and timely conversation. To recap what we learned today: building narrative resiliency is just as important as securing your technical infrastructure. We covered three essential pillars — being able to distinguish honest, constructive customer feedback from coordinated bad-faith disruption so you can react with logic instead of emotion; understanding that silence can sometimes look like guilt, and knowing how to use a strategic framework to decide when to correct the record with facts; and lastly, ensuring that leadership prioritizes the emotional resilience and well-being of the communications team on the front lines, keeping company morale high during a crisis. When your organizational story is authentic and backed by consistent action, no digital noise can tear it down. If you’re looking to audit your own brand communications, align your storytelling, or pressure-test your crisis readiness, visit us at abovepromotions.com or connect with Ron Vaz and Kenya Woodard on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to check out our other episodes on YouTube and Spotify. Thank you for tuning in to Sold Out Chat — stay strategic, stay resilient, and keep winning.
Conclusion
Trolls don’t win by being right — they win by finding gaps: gaps in your consistency, gaps in your internal alignment, gaps in your plan. As Kenya Woodard reminded us, the brands that come out of an attack intact aren’t the ones that fought the hardest in the moment — they’re the ones that were already standing on a foundation of consistency, unity, and preparation long before the first troll ever showed up.
At Above Promotions, we help organizations build exactly that kind of narrative resilience. Whether it’s stress-testing your crisis response through our Strategic Insights Center or building the internal systems that keep your team aligned when it matters most through our Innovation Lab, we help you turn “the trolls are attacking” into “the trolls have nothing to work with.”
Ready to pressure-test your brand’s defenses?
Learn more about evaluating online sources from Michelle Ferrier’s TrollBusters
Watch the full episode on YouTube here
Book a Consultation with our Strategic Insights Center to audit your crisis readiness and narrative resilience.
Connect with Kenya Woodward on LinkedIn
Watch the full episode on YouTube here
- Book a Consultation with our Innovation Lab to audit your brand alignment and stay ahead of the curve.
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