<b>The spike that meant nothing</b>

<b>The spike that meant nothing</b>

It was 6 a.m. when the alert fired: mentions of a mid-size pet-food brand had jumped 400% overnight. The on-call comms lead's stomach dropped. Crisis posture, war room, the whole reflex.

Then someone checked the language distribution before drafting a single statement. The surge was almost entirely Portuguese, traced to a Brazilian meme account that had used the brand's name as slang for a popular dog breed. Zero relation to the product. Sentiment on the spike: 88% positive, all jokes.

The near-miss was the lesson. They'd nearly issued a clarifying statement to a problem that didn't exist — which would have manufactured the actual crisis. Real brand-relevant mentions that day: up 6%, normal.

The takeaway: a volume spike is a question, not an answer. Segment by language, source, and sentiment before you reach for the megaphone — the cure is often worse than the phantom disease.