Edelman produces an annual gift to those who blog…the Edelman Trust Barometer. Authoritative and insightful, it presents a tailor-made opportunity for self-styled or wanna-be thought leaders to ply their craft. We are grateful.

Of course, it’s more than that. It is truly important data, based on 33,000 global interviews. It is also longitudinal—by stretching back 21 years, it lets us see how our world has changed.

It is also a great piece of content marketing, but if you are reading this, you already figured that out.

It also deals with the most important foundational idea in societal interaction: trust. We’ve all said that “it is all about relationships” to the point that it is reaching absurdity and the only thing keeping it from reaching absurdity is that it really is that “it is all about relationships” and therefore, it is all about trust.

Employers need their employees to believe them when they outline the new pension program. Customers need to believe that sales/marketing are making claims that will stand the test of time. The media needs to know that it is not being misled (as opposed to lied to) by PR Departments. (For more on this topic, see The Ultimate Guide to External Stakeholder Management.)

A lack of trust reduces the value of everything.

So the Trust Barometer matters and it matters to all of us. So here are five things I gleaned from the report—with varying levels of actionability.

1. Business is the only entity that is seen as competent and ethical.

   That’s really interesting. I’m going to use my next post to explore the implications of this construction, but suffice it to say that you have to do more than say the right thing and even think the right thing. You have to be able to execute it. The government and the media are in the incompetent and unethical quadrant.

2. We are lagging in trust in the US.

   Remember, the survey is global. People are 19% more likely to trust their employer in India than in the United States—even though employers are the most trusted entity in the US. Our trust fell 5% from May of 2020 to December, driven largely by those who voted for one of the Presidential candidates. The US is in the bottom third of overall trust. Also of note….China fell 10% on its index, the biggest fall ever for them.

3. The mass population has way less trust than the informed public.

   Perhaps the most valuable part of the barometer is the comparison between the informed public and the mass population. In PR we have always specialized in reaching people who are informed—who seek information, watch or read the news, read newsletters, etc. The fact is that in the US there was an 18% gap in trust between the informed public and the general population. And that is just a little over the global average.

4. Trust is local now.

   To me, this really matters. If you are a company with multiple locations, you need to communicate from your local representatives. And you need to reinforce that trust by creating relevance locally—how is your organization relevant to the people who live in this community.

5. Globally, nearly 60% of people think the media is actively misleading them.

   As bad as the problem is in the US, there are at least 10 countries (out of 24 in the survey) where it is worse. We have a global problem with trusting the media—-and in this case, not just their competence but their ethics.

One last note. We have to avoid the impulse to think that because we are trusted in business, we can see what we want with impunity. 2020 showed up the opposite. We can build trust, maintain trust and benefit trust only if we continue to earn it…and in the words of a Canadian politician, you are on thin ice at the beginning of the game.