Engage Responsibly is an education initiative that drives understanding of online hate and how you can use existing platform tools and other available mechanisms to make online safer and more welcoming for everyone.
Forty percent of Americans have experienced online hate. Expressions of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, and other forms of targeted harassment against vulnerable groups and individuals is turning corners of our social media spaces toxic. Engage Responsibly built educational materials and curated resources to inform businesses and consumers how to reduce online hate, and create a safer and more inclusive digital space for everyone.
Built for Impact
Engage Responsibly is led by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and supported by capability contributors ANA Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM), Brand Safety Institute, Ogilvy, Publicis Media, and Pernod Ricard who conceptualized, seeded, and donated the initiative to the ANA to scale. Engage Responsibly is an education initiative with a turnkey approach to tackle online hate, built collaboratively with social media platforms and industry organizations and supported by major brands and businesses of all sizes, non-profits and SMB representation, including partnership with the Better Business Bureau to scale to its six-million-strong SMB network. In addition, Global Alliance for Responsible Media provided input on educational assets and definitions.
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.