When Visibility Becomes a Liability

During my military career as a public affairs officer, I spent several years supporting the special operations community. That experience reinforced a lesson that can feel counterintuitive in communications: More visibility is not always better.

We certainly understood the value of public communication, but we also knew that it had to support the mission. We did not seek attention simply because we could get it. In some circumstances, maintaining a smaller public footprint better served operational objectives.

Corporate communications may operate under very different rules and obligations, but the underlying principle travels well: Visibility is a means, not an end.

Communicators routinely measure awareness, impressions, share of voice and media attention. Usually, we naturally want those numbers moving up. But should every organization want maximum brand salience? 

The answer may depend on what the organization does, whom it serves and who ultimately bears the consequences of its reputation.

When the brand becomes the issue

Consider Flock Safety. Flock provides automated license plate readers and other law-enforcement technologies to law enforcement agencies and communities. The company has grown rapidly, reporting in 2026 that its network included more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states.

Its growth has also produced intense scrutiny involving privacy, data sharing, immigration enforcement and government surveillance.

Now, Flock is hardly the only company selling license plate recognition technology. Competitors include Motorola Solutions’ Vigilant, Rekor, Axon and others, yet Flock has become unusually prominent in the public debate. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union calls its campaign against automated license plate readers “Get the Flock Out,” even while acknowledging that multiple companies operate in the market. In July, competitor Rekor published a piece titled “Beyond the Flock Backlash” while promoting its own approach to privacy and data governance.

I do not want to suggest that branding caused Flock’s controversy. I believe Flock’s enormous footprint, network architecture and business practices provide obvious reasons for heightened scrutiny. 

But the recent media coverage and public outcry suggest something important for communicators: A company can become so recognizable that its name begins functioning as shorthand for an entire industry category, and is that always the goal? 

There is research suggesting that salience matters when negative attention develops. In their 2020 Journal of Marketing study, “When Does Corporate Social Irresponsibility Become News?” Samuel Stäbler and Marc Fischer analyzed more than 1,000 corporate transgressions across 77 news outlets in five countries. They found that salient and strong brands could receive coverage from 39% more media outlets.

Salience did not create the underlying event. It amplified its visibility, and that distinction matters.

The risk is that once a company becomes the most recognizable name in a controversial category, attention to the category can begin flowing disproportionately through that brand. Privacy concerns about automated license plate readers, for example, may increasingly become framed as concerns about Flock. That does not mean the company is responsible for every criticism of the technology. It does mean that greater recognition can expand the reputational terrain the company must manage, and potentially the terrain its customers must manage as well.

When customers inherit the brand

Consider what we’ve seen in many cases, that a vendor’s reputation may travel with its product.

For Flock’s law-enforcement products, the economic customer is not the average citizen driving past one of its cameras; it is the agency or municipality buying the system. But the public remains a critical stakeholder.

When residents object to an automated license plate reader, local officials may have to explain not only why they chose the technology but why they chose Flock. 

That means the customer may effectively purchase more than hardware and software. It may also inherit some of the vendor’s reputational environment: scrutiny, expectations, activist attention and political controversy. 

History offers an imperfect but useful comparison.

During the Iraq War, Blackwater became perhaps the most recognizable name among private security contractors working for the U.S. government. Its reputation was driven by far more than branding. Blackwater had substantial operational exposure, and the 2007 Nisur Square killings created legitimate and lasting controversy.

Other contractors also operated in Iraq and faced controversies of their own. Yet “Blackwater” eventually became something larger than a company name. 

The company was providing services on behalf of the U.S. government in an environment where legitimacy, trust and public perceptions directly affected broader strategic objectives. Iraqi citizens did not necessarily experience contractor conduct as an isolated corporate matter. 

Writing at Brookings shortly after Nisur Square, Peter W. Singer argued that private security contractors could fulfill narrow protection contracts while undermining the broader counterinsurgency effort to win Iraqi public support. The reputation of the contractor could become entangled with the reputation of the government that hired it.

Blackwater eventually abandoned its famous name. But the name proved remarkably difficult to abandon culturally.

Again, Flock is not Blackwater, and automated license plate readers are not armed security operations. The analogy is about reputational relationships, not equivalence.

Both cases raise the same strategic question: What happens when a service provider becomes so salient that its reputation begins creating consequences for the institutions using its services?

Think beyond maximum visibility

None of this means companies in sensitive industries should hide. Promotional restraint and transparency are not the same thing. Organizations dealing with consequential technologies or public institutions may have an even greater obligation to explain their practices, provide evidence, engage stakeholders and demonstrate accountability.

Nor can we know from outside Flock whether its high visibility is intentional or whether company leaders consider the trade-off worthwhile. Strong brand recognition may produce substantial benefits in sales, recruiting, credibility and category leadership.

The lesson is simply that communicators should treat visibility as a strategic variable. Before pursuing greater salience, leaders might ask:

• Who actually needs to know our brand, and why?
• What organizational objective will additional visibility advance?
• Who are our customers, and who are the stakeholders affected by their decision to use our product?
• Could our reputation create additional scrutiny or risk for those customers?
• If our brand becomes the public symbol for our category, are we prepared to carry the category’s controversies along with our own?

For Nike or Coca-Cola, widespread consumer recognition sits at the heart of the business model. For a specialized company selling sensitive technologies or services to governments, institutions or other businesses, however, the calculation may look different.

For the professional communicator, the goal should always be the right visibility to support the organization and its mission.