FIR #472: The Evolution of Trust

New research reveals that B2B decision-makers have increasingly recognized the importance of trust. The study also showed that companies that measure trust as a board-level KPI are over three times more likely to report more substantial profits than those that don’t, yet only 22% of companies state that trust is a board-level KPI.

In this brief midweek episode, Neville and Shel analyze the data and explore opportunities for communicators to enhance organizational trust.

Links from this episode:

• IPA | New IPA/FT global study reveals trust is a powerful business driver
• 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz (00:01)
Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 472 of Four Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz.

@nevillehobson (00:08)
And I’m Neville Hobson. A new study from the Financial Times and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, the IPA, explores trust, not as a vague ideal, but as a measurable strategic asset. And their findings are quite compelling. Trust, the report shows, is now one of the most powerful drivers of profit, customer acquisition, brand strength, second only to product or service quality. But alongside this, the research highlights a growing trust gap.

the space between what customers, clients and partners expect from brands and what those businesses are actually delivering. That gap has real commercial consequences, reduced loyalty, slower growth, weaker brand equity and ultimately lost revenue. So what can businesses do about it? The report outlines five key pillars of trust, competence, reliability, integrity, intent and communication, all of which can be measured and managed. It encourages businesses to treat trust

as a board level priority, not an afterthought. What’s interesting is that these pillars combine both rational and emotional dimensions. Trust, after all, is as much about how people feel as it is about what they know. And in B2B settings, where buying decisions are complex, involve multiple stakeholders, and carry career level risk, trust becomes a critical shortcut to action. There are clear parallels here with Edelman’s 2025 trust barometer.

which painted a similarly stark picture of declining institutional trust, anxiety about misinformation and widespread concern over AI. In fact, Edelman reported that 85 % of respondents to their survey worry about losing their jobs to AI. The FT and IPA report picks up that thread and takes it further, showing that while many companies are adopting AI, very few business decision makers actually trust the content it generates.

Just 9 % of those surveyed said they trusted generative AI. And 92 % said that if a company misuses AI, would have a profound negative impact on their trust. What emerges is a strong case of putting trust back at the center of how we plan, communicate, and lead. For communicators, that means treating trust not as a reputational buffer, but as a long-term asset, something to measure, manage, and embed across every part of the brand experience.

When I first looked at this report’s findings, I thought that surely there cannot still be such a trust gap as we’ve been talking about trust gaps for years. Clearly there’s still work to do and questions to answer. Here are two. What role should communicators and marketers play in closing the trust gap? And how can we align intent and action in a way that actually strengthens trust rather than erodes it? Shell, thoughts?

Shel Holtz (02:57)
tons of them. First, I’m just stunned that we’re still talking about this. We’ve been talking about this on the show for as long as we’ve been doing the show, but it predates that. I I remember when the IEBC Research Foundation produced one of those academic level studies on trust. And that was supposed to be a catalyst for everybody to be able to resolve all of this in their organizations. And here we are.

@nevillehobson (03:06)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (03:22)
Yeah, there are certainly a lot of reasons that trust remains an issue. think people don’t trust each other if they are on opposite sides of a polarized political equation, for example. I think, as you mentioned, not being able to trust the authenticity of content that you see or even people that you see is problematic. So, yeah, I think…

For communicators, there is a lot that we can do. And in fact, we may be the drivers of this in some organizations where it’s not already being taken seriously. And I have to tell you where I work, it’s already a board level issue. And there are task forces and committees that have been convened.

by people at the highest levels of this organization to identify the things that drive trust, both internally and externally. There are actually separate committees looking at each of those. There have been surveys and studies, and it is based on the recognition that trust is a driver of business. There are jobs that we win that we are convinced that we are winning, not only because we submitted a great proposal.

but because we have worked with a client before and we built trust on the previous engagements. And that’s why we tend to hammer this idea of every opportunity you have to build trust with a client on a project, you do that because that’s going to help us maintain that client and get that repeat business. But if you’re in an organization that’s not taking that approach, that is not

dealing with trust at that board level, I think it’s up to the communicator to point out why it should be a board level issue or an executive committee level initiative to connect the dots between that trust gap, which can also be looked at as an integrity gap. If you look at the definitions, I what is the definition of trust? I remember in that IEBC Research Foundation study,

I think they said that the simplest definition of trust is the belief that somebody will do what they say they will do. Comes down to that. What is integrity? It’s that say do gap, right? I say one thing and do something different. If there’s no integrity, there’s no trust. So I think elevating this issue to that senior leadership level so that they start to see it as a strategic imperative and as an asset.

an intangible asset. We’ve had intangible assets before, reputation and goodwill have both been counted as intangible corporate assets that are factored into a value of an organization, say during an acquisition. So yeah, the start is making sure that the leadership of the organization takes it seriously and then it’s driving it into the organization, sharing examples, making sure that

People understand when you won business the role that trust played in winning that business and in equipping employees with the information, the knowledge, the tools, and the resources that they need to understand how to build trust both internally and externally. This should be top of mind for every communicator and every organization.

@nevillehobson (06:46)
sense. You mentioned your company has trust aboard level attention to KPI, let’s say. That’s interesting because take a look at some of the findings of this survey. That’s a big one. It says that companies that make trust aboard level KPI are three times more likely to report strong profits, 75 % more likely to gain competitive advantage.

But only 22 % of the companies surveyed for this particular port track trust at a board level, only 22%. There’s some other really interesting elements just to mention in the context of what you were saying there, Sheld. The trust gap is widening is one that struck me as kind of interesting. Particularly industries they cite, finance, insurance, tech, cybersecurity and property show the largest gaps between expected and delivered trust.

business news media ranked highest for trust outperforming all other sectors, including retail and utilities. Trust is a critical commercial advantage. We discussed that right at the outset here. It ranks as the second most important factor after product or service quality, driving business performance, sales, profit and acquisition. It’s now used as a marketing effectiveness metric in the IPA’s effectiveness data bank, having climbed from sixth to second place.

over 20 years. There’s others. Human connection still matters. This I found most interesting. 69 % disagree that trusting technology is the same as trusting a human. That’s an interesting one. Only 9 % of the respondents said they trust content generated by generative AI. 92 % said misuse of AI would profoundly impact trust. Those were highlight numbers that I mentioned in the introduction earlier.

I could kind of riff on this for quite a long time, Shell. some really interesting stuff here. Media context affects brand trust. I found that finding quite interesting. Gatekeeper media, as they describe it, example, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, significantly boost perceived trustworthiness of advertisers. That makes complete sense to me. Trustworthy. 60 % said they are now more likely to trust a brand when advertised in trusted media.

only 14 % trust UGC platforms with their personal data versus 75 % for FT. That is most interesting to me because they more likely trust a brand when advertised in trusted media. So that would say, I would say if you’re looking there at social network platforms that are jockeying for attention, dollars and growth compared to traditional media, puts those in the distrusted media bucket straight away by that definition.

X being the prime candidate. I mean, you look at this, you can see some clear signs of where you need to pay attention to. And this overall picture of trust, I think the interesting thing is, and this to me is linked to the board level KPI interest of what trust means to them. We are in a climate, a huge climate of exceptionally big distrust and indeed mistrust.

exemplified by which you see across every aspect of science of human society, of those in positions of power and influence to set the examples are not doing that. And we can think of a handful of business people who we could say, you know, no wonder trust is down the toilet with people like you in charge of things. Your behavior is affecting that.

So trust is multi-dimensional, it goes on to say. Again, there’s lots more here, but I think in terms of what communicators need to do, the report talks a lot about what businesses can do. And indeed, that’s quite appropriate in the level of detail they go into. Our interest is really on the audience for this podcast, the communicators, and what they need to do. So

It’s something that this report concludes by saying, treat trust as a core competence, we’ve kind of checked that one, some companies doing your company being an example, prioritizing. Right, right.

Shel Holtz (10:52)
It’s a core value. one of our five core values in addition to

being a plank of the strategic plan. So I mean, don’t know how much more seriously you can take it.

@nevillehobson (10:59)
Right. Well,

you got it. And so you’re you’re a standout example. No question. Prioritize ethical, reliable communication. And that I don’t know why people struggle with that, Shel. I sense many, many people, many communicators struggle with that because it’s not kind of enshrined in what the company says they’re about. But that doesn’t matter. You know what you need to do in that context. I think that’s how I would see it. Choose trusted media strategically.

Embrace AI responsibly with clarity, measure trust and the game measurement. We talked to Richard Bagnell a couple of weeks ago in an interview about the Barcelona Principles 4.0 and this whole area of measurement and evaluation of communication. And there you have something there. Measure trust and act on what it tells you. that, yeah, I mean, what more can you say to that? So there’s

I think much clarity here in the level of detail the supports go into to dig out the nuggets of things that are quite easy to say, OK, fine, here’s my list of takeaways I want from this, and this is how I’m going to execute on this. And that, to me, is a good way to start if you’re not doing it already.

Shel Holtz (12:10)
Well, measuring trust is important, but so is reporting the results of those to your employees because they’re not going to be able to move the needle if they don’t see where the needle is. being proactive about trust, I think, is vital. We need to talk with employees in particular about the consequences of failing to build trust. it kind of comes down to this idea of building a culture of trust.

@nevillehobson (12:12)
Right.

Shel Holtz (12:36)
And I know yet you’re also building a culture of respect and a culture of recognition and all the cultures of that we have in the organization, but they weave together to create this common culture. But if we have a culture of trust in the organization, I think it becomes a lot easier to do things like the steps that you’re gonna wanna take in order for people to feel confident that the generative AI

outputs that you are creating for say your advertising or your marketing or other communications are authentic and trustworthy. I’m not gonna suggest the tactics for that. It would be different for different organizations and based on the kinds of outputs that you’re producing. But having that culture of trust would say, okay, we need to come up with a way that will serve our audience as they are evaluating

the trustworthiness of this content. And yeah, it could be just the long-term building of trust that you’ve undertaken. It could be resources that you point people to where they can see how this is done. And of course, the better you get it using generative AI, the harder it’s going to be for people to say, hey, that’s generative AI. I don’t trust that. I have this conversation all the time. If you can tell it was written by AI, was

poorly prompted and inadequately edited after that.

@nevillehobson (13:55)
Yeah.

There’s a lot to take away from the Shell, think. A to pay

attention to. There’s lots of communicators who can grab at here that are easy to understand and digest. And I would argue not that difficult to see how you could execute on something from this report as part of your own approach to creating a climate trust in your organization.

Shel Holtz (14:20)
Yeah, and there are books on this. I think there’s one called Business at the Speed of Trust that I read during a management training program that was excellent. And even though it predates a lot of the technologies, the principles are very sound and transfer very nicely to the modern business environment. And that will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

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