The ANA’s Engage Responsibly is a movement to drive understanding and action that drastically reduce online hate speech by 2025.
Forty percent of Americans have experienced online hate.* We know it’s a problem. We also know that we all have a role to play in stopping its spread. That’s why Engage Responsibly takes an all-in approach, harnessing the collective power of businesses, social media platforms, individuals, and NGOs, empowering everyone to be part of the solution for combating online hate, with a focus on education and tools for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and individuals.
Built for Impact
Engage Responsibly is led by the ANA in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and capability contributors the Alliance for Multicultural Marketing (AIMM), the Brand Safety Institute, Ogilvy, and founder Pernod Ricard, which donated the initiative to the ANA to scale it. In March 2022, more than 90 major companies pledged to Engage Responsibly, driving awareness and momentum in advance of bringing the initiative to SMBs and individuals later in early 2023.
*Source: Anti-Defamation League
Led by the ANA
Created inside the GARM Education Working Group
Founded, seeded, and chaired by Ann Mukherjee, Chairman and CEO, Pernod Ricard NA
Over 90 companies pledged to Engage Responsibly, including many major brands
Scaling to Businesses and Consumers
Engage Responsibly is designed to educate and empower consumers and businesses of all sizes, including harnessing the unique power of SMBs. As the largest business segment on social media, SMBs are a fragmented but expansive collective, poised to have tremendous impact. Engage Responsibly will look to scale to SMBs and consumers in different ways:
- Partnership with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to scale Engage Responsibly to its SMB network of over six million, including 400,000 accredited businesses
- SMB and consumer campaign, developed by Ogilvy, to launch in the coming months, driving reach, awareness, and engagement
In addition, Engage Responsibly has a robust measurement plan in place to measure engagement and impact over time.
Driving Understanding and Action with Education and Tools
With a focus on education for businesses — especially SMBs — and individuals, Engage Responsibly provides resources that democratize responsible media practices and tools, the same ones that many large corporations use, offering them as a turnkey, no-cost solution to SMBs. Engage Responsibly also offers a robust, curated resource library for educational and support resources for confronting online hate.
The Engage Responsibly curriculum includes numerous video education modules with English- and Spanish- language options and closed-caption capability for accessibility. Among the topics covered are actions that can be taken, including how to report online hate speech on each of the major platforms, protect one’s online presence with technology, use counterspeech, and invite others into the Engage Responsibly movement.
For further information about Engage Responsibly, visit EngageResponsibly.org.
Go Further
2023 ANA Brands for Humanity Conference
At this inaugural two-day virtual conference, presented by the ANA Brands for Humanity Coalition, attendees learned how today's “forces for good” — both brands and nonprofit organizations — are using their voices and influence to establish real impact and consequential change.
Beyond Profit
In this recording of Beyond Profit, a podcast of the ANA Center for Brand Purpose, Anita McGorty, Engage Responsibly’ s EVP, joins host Ken Beaulieu to discuss why humanity is under attack online, what we can do to combat hate, and support a safer environment for our businesses, consumers, and society.