As AI-generated deepfakes and misinformation reshape the digital landscape, Ibrahim Hasan of McCann Content Studios MENAT explains how brands can safeguard credibility, detect manipulated content early, and build social strategies rooted in trust, cultural intelligence, and responsible AI use.
With deepfakes and AI-manipulated content becoming increasingly sophisticated, how is FP7McCANN helping brands keep their social channels a space people can trust?
Honestly, this and “AI Slop” are two of the defining cornerstone challenges of our industry right now. The tools to fabricate reality are now more accessible than the tools that fact-check it, and brands are caught in the middle of that. On one end, you want to ride the AI wave because it’s pivotal; on the other, everything that has been done with “Likeness” so far has been a sensitive topic.
What we’re doing at Content Studios and FP7 McCann as a whole is helping clients build what I’d call an infrastructure for trust. Not just creative output…but the systems, the voice discipline, the community protocols that make a brand feel like a real, accountable entity rather than a content machine. All terminology aside, we simply follow the rule of “If it will place the integrity of the product, brand, or creator in question, no matter the ease of AI in the process, kill it.”
If you can’t defend what you’re putting out, or why you’re putting it out, it probably shouldn’t go out. In a world where anyone can make anything look real, the brands that will win are the ones that don’t need to manufacture credibility, because they’ve been building it consistently.
That means we’re also having harder conversations with clients about what responsible AI use looks like internally. Where it helps us move faster and smarter, great. But the human layer of judgment, that doesn’t get automated. Not on our watch.
What patterns or signals does your social team watch for to catch misleading content before it goes viral?
Anyone can watch impressions spike. What we try and teach our teams is to be trained to read behavior, how a piece of content is moving, who’s pushing it, and whether the conversation forming around it feels organic or engineered. The bigger risk than deepfakes today is the conversation around them, how bots and bought metrics can help make a stunt or conversation feel nuanced, when in reality is a lot of digital fluff packaged to make a piece of content or campaign feel like it has impact. You would be surprised at the number of brands (even major ones) out there that are activating comment bots and shares to uplift their organic and on-page metrics.
Misleading content almost always has tells. Engagement that’s disproportionate to reach. Repost patterns that don’t follow normal audience logic. Visuals or captions designed to trigger a reaction before the brain has time to process context. Comments that feel like they’re performing outrage rather than expressing it.
We’re also watching source credibility and sentiment at the same time, because viral moments rarely happen in isolation. There’s usually a broader conversation or narrative that gets hijacked.
We call it context spotting, and it matters a lot more than trend spotting right now. The way we share these with clients is with initiatives like our newsletter, Culture Vulture, and reactive trend-spotting dashboards set up with our partners at Pulsar.
As creators, you push boundaries every day — but how do you ensure your campaigns inspire without unintentionally fueling misinformation?
Pushing boundaries is part of the job. But there’s a difference between bold and reckless, and the line really lies in basic critical thinking from a brand POV.
We pressure-test every idea before it goes near production by asking three simple questions:
*Is the message clear without the context we have internally?
*Could this be screenshot-clipped and misread? Are there no-brainer ways this could miss the mark?
*Is the impact we’re going for worth the risk of misinterpretation?
The campaigns I’m most proud of aren’t the ones that were most provocative. They’re the ones that were most rooted in culture. I think if you need ambiguity as a crutch, then the idea itself is sort of fragile.
I can’t answer these questions without acknowledging the times we’re living in. Currently, we’ve seen so many brands miss the mark with the entire conflict. Every reader seeing this sentence will have an example of a bad brand execution come to mind. For us, we’re working on some interesting projects recently, given the regional context, and all of them are based on how brands can help quietly, not how they can “be relevant”, or how they can “be seen”. I can’t reveal too much, but it’s mainly through active participation in pure-play CSR, rather than opportunistic branding.
Again, not to shrug off the work that goes on in the background, it really is sometimes about you asking yourself the most fundamental questions as a marketer before sharing a provocative piece out there. Give people substance, not just spectacle. If all we’re doing is manufacturing a reaction without earning it, we’ve failed.
In a world where audiences are skeptical of what they see online, what approaches do you take to make campaigns feel genuine and meaningful?
The era of manufactured emotion is over. Audiences across this region, and globally, are sharper than ever. They can smell inauthenticity through a screen.
What actually works right now is starting from a place of real human insight. Not research slides. Not focus groups. Actual cultural observation. What are people dealing with? What do they actually find funny, moving, or worth sharing?
From there, authenticity is a strategic choice, not a visual style. It shows up in how we brief creators, whether they are being given genuine creative latitude or are they just a delivery mechanism? It shows up in community management. Is there a real human voice on the other side of that comment section? It shows up in whether the brand has a credible reason to be part of a conversation, or if it’s just gate-crashing.
We work across more than 12 markets, from the UAE to KSA to Egypt, and the cultural fluency required to make something feel real in each of those contexts is serious work. Generic doesn’t cut it. Neither does lazy localization.
How are you guiding clients to future-proof their social strategy and stay ahead of reputational risks, especially with AI-generated content on a meteoric rise?
Future-proofing isn’t about a magic ball prediction, but more about building the muscle and systems in place to respond to it.
What I always tell clients is this: you can’t content-calendar your way through a reputational crisis. Sometimes you really need to keep quiet and ride it out. Instead of posting a statement, you need governance structures, listening, and a team that knows how to move with speed and judgment simultaneously. That’s why I don’t believe in crisis protocols staying in social playbook PPTs, rather in actual workshops for this particular scenario.
On the AI side specifically, the risk isn’t just external deepfakes and manipulated content. It’s also brands inadvertently producing AI-assisted content that feels hollow, generic, or culturally off, and eroding trust slowly rather than all at once. We’re helping clients define clear internal policies: where AI accelerates good work, and where human creative and cultural judgment is the non-negotiable layer.
The brands that will come out strongest aren’t the ones that anticipated every threat. They’re the ones who built the internal readiness to handle what they didn’t see coming.
Given the current geopolitical situation in the GCC, how does your team advise brands on balancing timely engagement with sensitivity to complex regional contexts?
Context is everything in social media. I can’t say that enough.
The instinct to “stay relevant” and jump into every news cycle is understandable, but it’s also how brands get themselves into trouble fast. We always ask clients: what is your actual right to engage here? Do you have a genuine perspective to add, or are you just trying to be seen?
Sometimes the most strategically sound decision is restraint. Silence is underrated. What matters more is that when a brand does speak, it speaks with intention, proportionate to the moment, grounded in empathy, and consistent with who they’ve been.
Our teams work market by market across the GCC, and I want to be clear, this region is not monolithic. Consumer sentiment in Riyadh moves differently from Dubai, which moves differently from Beirut. The cultural, political, and emotional frequencies are distinct. You can’t run a one-size-fits-all playbook and expect it to land.
Sensitivity here isn’t a checkbox. It’s a competency.
What guidance do you share with clients now on social media strategy and execution, considering the regional uncertainties?
Three things, practically speaking.
First: stay close to your audience, not just what your coworkers are telling you is trending. In uncertain periods, your analytics dashboard will tell you what performed, but it won’t tell you why your audience is quieter, more cautious, or suddenly engaging differently. You need sharper qualitative listening. That’s where real intelligence is right now.
Second: build for adaptability, not just efficiency. Content that’s too rigid, too pre-scheduled, too campaign-locked — becomes a liability the moment the context shifts. You need room to pause, refine, or redirect without the whole plan collapsing. Give your social teams the guardrails and the authority to make those calls in real time.
Third: presence for its own sake is not a strategy. In complex periods, brands that show up with genuine value, something useful, something culturally aware, something honest, will build more long-term equity than brands that just keep the content machine running because they’re afraid of silence.
It’s not about being everywhere. It’s about being worth something when you are.
