I Trust You. But Why Should I Buy You?

Back in 2022, I wrote a blog called In Brand We Trust, prompted by that year’s Edelman Trust Barometer and one finding in particular: business had become the most trusted institution globally.

At the time, 61% of people trusted business, putting it ahead of NGOs, government and the media. My argument was simple: trust is an incredibly valuable asset for any brand, but it can’t be claimed. It has to be earned by consistently delivering what you promise.

Four years on, I thought it would be interesting to go back to the research and see what had changed. I assumed, given everything that has happened in the intervening years, that trust would have fallen further. It hasn’t.

In the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in business has actually increased from 61% to 64%. Business remains ahead of NGOs, government and the media, and is still the only one of those four institutions to fall within Edelman’s ‘trusted’ category.

So, perhaps surprisingly, this isn’t really a story about trust disappearing. What seems to have changed is where we place that trust, and how willing we are to extend it beyond the people, organisations and opinions we already know and understand.

Edelman describes this as a ‘crisis of insularity’. Globally, 70% of people say they are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone who differs from them in their values, sources of information, approach to problems or background. In the UK, that rises to 76%.

Social media may be reinforcing this, making it easier to surround ourselves with people and opinions that reflect what we already think and creating an increasingly comfortable echo chamber. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Edelman found less than 30% of us in the UK regularly get news from sources with a different political perspective.

This narrowing of trust makes the role of brands particularly interesting. Unlike governments, the media or even ‘business’ as an abstract concept, brands are part of our everyday lives. They’re in our homes and our pockets; we wear them, eat and drink them, drive them and rely on them for everything from managing our money to entertaining us. We actively choose them and experience them, and when they consistently meet our expectations, we learn to trust them.

But trusting a brand doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll buy it. That is where another part of the 2026 research gets interesting. Edelman highlights the importance of relevance alongside trust, and for me it is the combination of the two that really matters. I might trust a brand completely, but if it doesn’t offer anything I need or value, why would I buy it? Equally, something can look like exactly what I need, but if I don’t trust the brand behind it to deliver, I’m probably going to look elsewhere.

Put simply, trust gets you onto the consideration list; relevance gets you onto the shopping list.

This is something we spend a lot of time thinking about when developing a Brand Arrow®. We ask a deceptively simple question: why should I care about your brand? What is it about what you offer that matters to me, meets a need or gives me a reason to choose you?

That is where relevance starts. The job of the brand is to turn that understanding into a clear and compelling promise. Then you have to keep it, consistently, because that is where trust comes from.

Trust is built through what you do and how you do it: the product, the service, the people, the experience and the values that shape your behaviour. As I argued in 2022, values matter, but only when they move beyond words on a wall and become visible in what an organisation actually does.

Four years on, the principle remains the same: trust has to be earned. But I would add something in 2026. Trust might get you considered, but relevance gives people a reason to buy. Understand what matters to them, build your brand around something genuinely relevant, make a clear promise and then keep it.

Because I may trust you. But you still need to tell me why I should buy you.

To explore how a clear brand strategy can help build trust, get you onto the consideration list and deliver measurable results for your business, drop me a line at bruce@thebrandarrow.com.

I’m now celebrating my 17th year running my Brand Strategy consultancy, as well as regularly speaking at conferences and lecturing at business schools, I teach brand management on the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s diploma course and am an accredited speaker with the Vistage CEO network. 

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 and Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 Special Report: Brand Growth in an Insular World.