Dubai-based Azizi Developments is protecting its social media channels and improving its brand integrity after implementing a solution from ZeroFOX.
Azizi Developments is the real estate investment arm of Azizi Group. Established in 2007 with headquarters in Dubai, the company’s diverse experience in the property market has led the value of its current portfolio in the Emirate to over AED 45 billion, with more than 200 projects in the pipeline.
Azizi Developments is a design and customer lead development company. This means a permanent dedication to understanding and meeting clients’ aspirations, developing distinctive homes that set the standard in contemporary building design and offering an unparalleled level of customer service.
Challenges
There were too many fake social media accounts, resulting in a loss in the conversion of social media leads into business. Another challenge was the management of content flow and there was lockdown on employee-led social outreach.
Taking control of the process
Head of Cybersecurity at Azizi Developments, Ankit Satsangi, took matters into his own hands and decided to find a way to put an end to the mushrooming of fake online profiles and properties.
A simple search for social media risk monitoring led him to the discovery of ZeroFOX – a company that also is a leader in Gartner reports.
SPECTRAMI implemented the system based on the proactive threat intelligence provided by Ankit, which offered ZeroFOX for comprehensive visibility on what Azizi aims to achieve beyond the typical attack life-cycle, adding context and priority to global threats before, during and after an attack.
With this insight, it took less than a day to set permissions, align keywords, tags, and other relevant information; Zerofox did a clean sweep of all the different properties that went against the corporate policy that Ankit and his team had set in place.
Taking control and shutting down all the delinquent accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram was the first step. Under Ankit’s watchful guidance, ZeroFOX efficiently and accurately targeted all the social platforms and reported every errant account that had been created along with contact information of the person responsible for the account.
The security team then efficiently dealt with the account by shutting them down with prejudice and contacted the owners with cease and desist notice. ZeroFOX has helped Ankit to identify any websites that were made outside of the official websites deployed by the company – which were immediately disconnected – and site owners were notified.
Azizi Developments is one of the leading private real estate developers in the UAE. The awareness of their brand and the projects they are associated with has increased exponentially over the last few years. This led to re-sellers, agents and employees trying to leverage the name of Azizi and their brand to improve their credibility within the market – especially on social media.
The voice of content used was not unified, the frequency was irregular and there were too many variations of the same profile floating around across the different social media platforms, thus cascading mixed messages to the end-user.
The online presence of the company was also tainted by the presence of multiple websites created by different stakeholders with the intent to promote themselves as the official representative of the brand and their offerings. The level of service and dedication provided was not up to the company mark as was discovered and this led to the overall brand image getting diluted in the eyes of the customer.
Through the entire process it was very evident that the brand of Azizi Developments was being tainted using social media dysfunction and misinterpretation – which led to missed leads. With this unified approach laid down by Ankit Satsangi and the team at Azizi, and a closer watch on any scattered approach outside of the official channels, this has dramatically changed over the past three months.
Customers are more satisfied with the interaction with the brand, social media leads are no longer being missed and are being converted into solid business and overall brand awareness was increasing due to a concerted effort on a single account versus a divided approach across different social presence.
Sandeep Jaiswal, Deputy CEO Sales and Marketing, Azizi Developments, said: “As smart cities expand, it is becoming more essential for real estate developers and investors to keep cybersecurity top of mind. A smart building can improve building and tenant efficiency but can also leave company information vulnerable to attacks. At Azizi Developments we have ensured that we have all the necessary cybersecurity measures in place for protecting our intellectual property, customer data and brand image.”
“Nearly 70% of customers go to an organisation’s Facebook page before making a buying decision and protecting brand reputation is a no-brainer for every modern marketing team. Identifying and removing fake or fraudulent social accounts is now a top priority. With ZeroFOX we have ensured that our customer Azizi Developments company-owned social media and online digital accounts are protected with automated remediation to immediately hide or remove sensitive content,” said Anand Choudha, CEO and President, SPECTRAMI.
The main benefits of the solution include increased control on social media channels, a unified platform to assess and manage digital footprint for the brand and improved lead generation and capture leading to increase in business development.
It has also resulted in an improved quality of interaction on behalf of the brand on social media leading to improved visibility plus increased confidence in the brand.