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.