Who's Weaponizing Your Community?

Bots. Coordinated troll farms. Disinformation campaigns.

Sounds like election interference, right? Actually, I'm talking about the newest threat to brands: narrative engineering.

That is, the deliberate seeding and amplification of outrage by coordinated networks of inauthentic accounts—designed to look authentic, spread quickly, and then get carried further by real people.

What began as an election interference tactic is now being aimed at commercial brands with surgical precision, quietly emerging as the defining brand risk of the digital era—powerful enough to spark boycotts, move stock prices, and force companies into strategic pivots based on signals that were never real to begin with.

And most marketers don't even realize it's happening.

In today's newsletter, I'll break down how narrative engineering works, how it fueled two of this summer's biggest brand controversies, and why building what I call a Community Immune System may be your only defense.

When a Logo Change Became a Firestorm

Cracker Barrel learned the hard way just how powerful narrative engineering can be.

In August, the company unveiled a new logo eliminating Uncle Herschel—the iconic figure of a man leaning on a barrel—from its classic mark.

What looked like a brand refresh quickly spiraled into a full-blown backlash, and critics accused the company of abandoning tradition and caving to "woke" culture.

Loyal customers appeared furious, the stock price slid, and executives scrambled.

Within weeks, the company apologized and reinstated its former logo.

On the surface, it looked like a textbook brand crisis—albeit a very bad one. But the reality was far more engineered.

According to Cyabra, a social analytics firm that specializes in detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, a sizable portion of the outrage was driven by artificial amplification.

Cyabra’s forensic analysis revealed that out of 3,265 profiles discussing Cracker Barrel, 21%—more than one in five—were fake.

These weren't throwaway spam bots. They were sophisticated actors creating 916 coordinated content units that reached “more than 4.4 million potential views.”

Despite being artificial, Cyabra found measurable real-world impact.

The manufactured posts generated more than 3,000 genuine engagements, peaking between August 20–22—coinciding with a 10.5% drop in Cracker Barrel's stock, much of it triggered by signals that never represented genuine community sentiment in the first place.

A Three-Pronged Attack

The sophistication of the attack was striking.

Coordinated profiles pushed three specific synchronized narratives with surgical precision, each designed to hit a distinct cultural fault line, maximize emotional impact and trigger organic adoption by real users.

They did this by exploiting what I call PIPEs—Personal Identity Ports of Entry—tapping into identity markers like traditional values, southern heritage, and conservative beliefs that authentic communities already rally around.

The first narrative framed the logo change as a "betrayal of tradition."

Coordinated profiles positioned the rebrand as selling out to progressive values, strategically invoking Bud Light as a cautionary tale to maximize resonance with conservative identity markers.

The second narrative portrayed Cracker Barrel as a "collapsing brand."

Artificial amplification pushed hashtags like #BoycottCrackerBarrel and #CrackerBarrelHasFallen to create false momentum, painting the company as already in terminal decline before any real impact materialized.

The third narrative transformed CEO Julie Felss Masino into a personal symbol of failure.

Posts directly targeted her with gendered attacks, framing her as an out-of-touch progressive destroying traditional American values—turning complex business decisions into simple personal blame.

The hashtag strategy wasn’t just an accelerant—it was the engine. Cyabra found fake accounts repeatedly seeded emotionally charged hashtags like #BoycottCrackerBarrel, #CrackerBarrelHasFallen, #CrackerBarrelCEO, and #CrackerBarrelIsFinished, which unified the narratives and created the illusion of consensus.

The frequency, consistency, and synchronized distribution across fake and real accounts manufactured momentum, making fringe complaints appear mainstream. Crucially, the spike in hashtag activity overlapped with the 10.5% stock drop—demonstrating that this wasn’t just online noise, but a coordinated influence campaign with real-world financial consequences.

The American Eagle Echo

American Eagle faced a parallel—if smaller—attack just weeks earlier with the launch of its now-infamous 'Great Jeans' campaign starring Sydney Sweeney.

That campaign drew widespread attention online, but beneath the surface, coordinated inauthentic behavior was shaping the conversation.

Cyabra's analysis of 1,999 TikTok profiles revealed that 13%—about 272 accounts—were artificial. These weren't generic spam bots; they displayed coordinated behavior, posting similar language and timing their comments to maximize visibility. Many used non-human profile pictures, like avatars or AI-generated faces, making them harder for casual users to identify as inauthentic.

Despite being a minority of accounts, their reach was outsized. According to Cyabra’s analysis, artificial profiles collectively drove more than 77,000 engagements, enough to amplify harmful narratives and make them appear larger than they were.

As with Cracker Barrel, a small group of coordinated amplification was enough to manufacture momentum—turning fringe noise into mainstream outrage.

Inside the Disinformation Machine

These attacks aren't one-offs.

They're increasingly part of a growing, professionalized system designed to make manipulation faster, cheaper, and harder to spot.

Call it narrative engineering at scale.

Rafi Mendelsohn, CMO of Cyabra, explains the evolution: "Unfortunately we have been seeing [this phenomenon] grow in the last 12-18 months, aimed at brands, adopting some of the same tactics and approaches that we've previously only seen during election times. The adoption of AI tools by malicious actors has paved the way and lowered the barrier for the widespread adoption of such playbooks."

The same narratives surface repeatedly across different targets: "Betrayal of tradition. 'Woke gone too far.' Attacks on core values. Racist undertones. These frameworks are reused across industries and political contexts."

But as Rafi explains, the targeting goes deeper: "While culture-war flashpoints draw attention, the deeper issue is narrative vulnerability. Any brand with emotional equity can be targeted. Cultural themes just provide the easiest hooks."

As for who orchestrates these attacks:

"Sometimes it's ideologically motivated groups. Other times, it's coordinated networks exploiting controversy for monetization—like engagement farming or affiliate traffic. Increasingly, we see commercial actors weaponizing disinformation to target rivals. The threat landscape is hybrid, fluid, and growing more sophisticated."

Why Manufactured Campaigns Gain Real Traction

The effectiveness of these attacks comes down to speed.

"Inauthentic accounts don't need to be convincing, they just need to be first," Rafi explains. "Once disinformation reaches real users, even well-meaning ones, it shapes perception and spirals."

The playbook is simple: artificial accounts act as conversation starters, seeding narratives that real users then adopt and amplify.

By hijacking community momentum, manufactured campaigns create the illusion of widespread outrage before brands even realize what's happening.

But the fingerprints of coordinated manipulation are visible if you know where to look: sudden sentiment spikes within hours of a launch, repetitive phrasing across supposedly different accounts, synchronized posting across platforms, and identical narratives appearing all at once.

"Authentic backlash features nuanced debate and emerges gradually. Artificial amplification distorts the ratio of outrage to actual impact. For instance, the Cracker Barrel rebrand would have generated conversation, but coordinated profiles spun it into a cultural betrayal narrative overnight," Rafi notes.

The problem? Traditional social listening tools can't catch these patterns—they measure noise, not authenticity.

The result is that brands end up flying blind into manufactured storms, mistaking manipulated volume for genuine sentiment.

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When bots can hijack your brand narrative overnight, volume doesn't matter—immunity does.

The Community Catalyst helps companies ($35M–$300M) build authentic relationships that defend against manufactured outrage. I'm booking clients for late Fall. Reply CATALYST for details.

Turning the Tables on Narrative Engineering

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If the playbook is this sophisticated, how do brands fight back?

Rafi's guidance centers on a key principle: "Don't let bots set your brand strategy. The decision should come from analyzing authentic audience sentiment. If the criticism is real and aligned with your loyal customer base, adjust. If it's amplified by inauthentic profiles playing culture-war theater, stand firm. Reacting to a false signal risks undermining your credibility."

Defense starts before the attack.

On a regular basis, brands should run authenticity scans to understand their community baseline and examine messaging for what Rafi calls "vulnerable messaging"—flashpoints, polarizing language, or symbols that could be twisted into outrage. They should also set alerts for sudden sentiment spikes, especially within hours of a campaign going live. As Rafi notes: “If it feels too sudden, it probably isn’t organic.”

"Proactive monitoring and early detection are key to insulating real communities from being manipulated," Rafi advises. "Proactivity is protection. By the time a fake campaign is trending, you're already reacting."

When backlash does surface, the task is to separate signal from noise.

Brands need to investigate the accounts driving top engagement, looking for signs of coordination—similar phrasing, synchronized posting, or shallow account histories.

The principle is simple: respond to values, not volume. Focus on the feedback that reflects your true community, not the loudest manipulated voices.

"Crises inflated by artificial profiles rarely sustain without real user adoption. But ignoring authentic voices can cause long-term damage. Watch for spikes in negative sentiment above baseline, especially within hours of a campaign launch. If the top-engaged posts come from suspicious accounts, investigate."

Rafi cautions against the temptation to lean into outrage deliberately: "Short-term clicks aren't worth long-term trust erosion. Once you open the door to outrage marketing, you lose control of the narrative. Worse, you become a magnet for bad actors, coordinated attackers, and opportunistic trolls alike."

Community as the Moat

Narrative engineering exploits vulnerability. Authentic community provides the antidote.

This is what I call a Community Immune System—a defense mechanism born of trust, consistency, and shared investment. In an era of weaponized attention, that immune system may be the single most durable moat a brand can build.

As Rafi explains: “Authentic communities interact, reflect brand values, and engage over time, and don’t just comment. True community engagement is rooted in trust and consistency, not volatility.”

That’s what makes them powerful: real communities remember. They know how your brand showed up in tough moments. They carry the shared history, inside jokes, and lived experiences that fakes can’t replicate. When inauthentic accounts try to hijack the conversation, authentic members often push back instinctively—because they know what genuine engagement feels like.

The Bottom Line

Cracker Barrel’s reversal wasn’t sparked by loyal customers—it was sparked by a handful of coordinated accounts that made outrage look real. American Eagle faced the same dynamic, just on a smaller stage. Both prove how fragile brand trust becomes when manufactured disinformation bleeds into genuine discourse.

And this is not going away. As Rafi told me: “It’s not guaranteed, but it is, unfortunately, becoming increasingly commonplace.”

Here’s the tightrope: mistake manufactured outrage for reality, and you risk overcorrecting and eroding trust. Ignore authentic voices, and you miss what actually matters.

The only way forward is to know your community baseline before the storm hits—and invest in authentic relationships that act as a natural filter when it does. That’s your Community Immune System.

In an age of narrative engineering, it’s not optional. It’s survival.

My question to you: How strong is your Community Immune System right now? If a coordinated attack hit tomorrow, would your authentic community rally to defend you—or would they be drowned out by the manufactured noise?

Until next time,

-Sara

P.S. Check out Cyabra’s report on how fake profiles drove the Cracker Barrel controversy HERE and the American Eagle campaign HERE

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Most brands are chasing volume when they should be building immunity.

When coordinated attacks can hijack your narrative overnight, the question isn't how many followers you have—it's whether they'd defend you against manufactured outrage.

That's what I help brands build with The Community Catalyst: authentic Community Immune Systems for companies ($35M–$300M revenue) that filter out manipulation and amplify genuine advocacy.

When bots are writing brand stories, authentic relationships aren't nice-to-have. They're survival. I'm booking clients for late Fall. Reply CATALYST for details.