Growing Brand Trust With Customers (Now That Institutions Have Lost Even More Ground)

This guide originally cited a 2018 Edelman finding that 48% of the public distrusted branded messaging. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer paints an even more fractured picture, but with a genuinely useful twist for businesses: while trust in institutions has kept eroding, brands specifically have become one of the few things people still trust more than government, media, or NGOs.

80% of people now trust the brands they personally use more than they trust institutions like government, media, or NGOs, according to Edelman’s 2025 “Brand Trust: From We to Me” report, and 71% of global consumers say brand trust is a direct “buy or boycott” factor in their purchase decisions. That’s a genuinely different, and in some ways more hopeful, starting point than the 2018 data this guide originally cited. The four original strategies, embrace honest reviews, keep a consistent voice, back up your claims, and stay available, remain exactly the right framework. Here’s what’s changed inside each one.

The trust landscape has gotten more fractured, not less

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, surveying nearly 34,000 respondents across 28 countries, found society has shifted from a “we” mentality to a “me” mentality, with trust increasingly concentrated among people’s immediate circles, their own CEO, fellow citizens, and neighbors, rather than institutions broadly. Nearly 7 in 10 respondents now fear institutional leaders are deliberately misleading the public, and the growing use of generative AI platforms was cited by 37% of respondents as one of the top factors eroding trust over the past five years. This is the environment the original guide’s core argument, that customers arrive skeptical by default, now operates in, just considerably more intensely.

Embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly: unchanged, and more urgent

This original advice remains exactly right, and given how AI-generated content has flooded the internet since 2019, it matters more now. Consumers remain skeptical of a perfect five-star rating, and displaying every review, not just the flattering ones, still signals authenticity rather than curation. For the fuller current picture on how review trust has evolved, including growing skepticism toward AI-generated reviews specifically, see our updated guide to using customer reviews.

Stick to your core brand voice: still true, now backed by clearer revenue numbers

The original guide cited a 2018 Lucidpress study on the cost of inconsistent branding. The updated 2026 figures from Lucidpress and Marq are more precise and still striking: consistent brand presentation increases revenue by 10% to 33%, and 68% of companies report that brand consistency contributed directly to revenue growth. What hasn’t changed, and arguably should worry more businesses than it does, is that 95% of companies have formal brand guidelines, but only 25% to 30% actually use them consistently across their organization, meaning the gap this guide identified in 2019 between having a brand voice and actually applying it remains just as wide.

Back up your content’s claims: unchanged, now essential given AI content volume

The original advice to research thoroughly or link to credible, expert sources remains exactly right, and it’s become a sharper differentiator now that a large share of content online is AI-generated and unverified. Original research, and content clearly grounded in named, reputable sources, stands out more now precisely because so much competing content doesn’t bother to, a dynamic that didn’t exist in the same way when this guide was first written.

Be available at all times: the mechanism has changed completely

The original guide’s Fandango chatbot example, a simple automated ticket-booking assistant, was genuinely cutting-edge for 2019. It’s now the baseline. AI-agent adoption in customer service organizations rose from 39% in 2025 to 66% in 2026, a 1.7x jump in a single year, according to Salesforce’s State of Service research, meaning the “always available” advice this guide gave is no longer a differentiator on its own, it’s an expectation. What still separates a trustworthy always-on presence from an annoying one is the same principle the original guide implied: genuine usefulness and a real, fast path to a human when the situation calls for one, not just the presence of a chat window.

Wrapping up

The original guide’s closing line, that trust is earned and built through experience rather than claimed, remains exactly right, and it may matter more now than it did in 2019. With institutional trust continuing to erode and AI-generated content adding a new layer of default skepticism, the businesses that consistently show real reviews, a coherent voice, well-sourced claims, and genuine availability are working with one of the few forms of trust that’s actually held up, and in some ways grown, over the past several years.

Frequently asked questions