Josh Dougherty is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder and CEO of A Brave New, a Seattle-based branding agency that crafts bold & memorable healthcare brands. They have specific expertise in healthcare technology, employee health & wellness programs, and hospitals & providers. Josh has 15 years experience building new brands from scratch, refreshing existing brands and building strategies to bring those brands to life in the market.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing, but more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered, and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to another episode of A Brave New Podcast. I am excited to have a conversation today about trust. And the reason that I think this is such a fascinating topic for us to talk about is that brand and the ability to build a bold and memorable brand is all about trust. And, so, this is really relevant for us to talk about, especially in the healthcare space because without trust, we don't have much. Regardless of whether you focus on health tech, if you offer a point solution or some solution in the employee health and wellness area, or if you're in care delivery. In each of those spaces, without trust, we don't have much. And if our brands lose trust, it's really hard to earn it back.
And so today, that's going to really be the focus. And the way that I want to dig into this is by talking about one of the surveys or studies that comes out each year that I find to be super, super valuable. It's named the Trust Barometer. It's put out by Edelman every year. Talked about it on our podcast and in blog posts over the years. But if you're not familiar with the Trust Barometer, it's an annual survey completed by Edelman. There's over 33,000 global respondents to this survey in 28 different countries, and it's really, in my mind, one of the most authoritative sources when it comes to opinions about trust and how people are feeling about trust in the marketplace. And so today, I want to dig into it and look at it both from the perspective of what are the major findings from this year's study that came out in January. As well as, how do those findings translate over into the healthcare space where we do our work as an agency in branding?
And before we dive in, I think the interesting thing to point out today is that everyone, because of the world we live in, has a trust problem. And this is not any fault of your own, really. It's a fact of life because of the situation we live in with an unstable world, lots of changes going on. And that's what the Edelman Trust Barometer this year really pulls out. But I want to dig into that today as one of the main areas that I'm going to focus on, highlighting some of the most salient insights from the study so that you're equipped with a solid understanding of how people are feeling and what's happening in the market.
In the second portion of our conversation, I want to spend some time talking about what the unique challenges are that flow out of this crisis of trust for healthcare companies, especially in the areas that we work in health tech, employee health and wellness, and then hospital and healthcare providers. What are those unique challenges that you face if you're finding yourself working in those spaces when we consider the crisis of trust that we're living in?
And then, finally, not just to talk about findings and challenges that we face, I want to also spend some time talking about what are the actions healthcare brands can take today to build trust and loyalty with customers, buyers, patients, in the midst of this environment. So we'll go from talking generally about what's kind of the trust environment today to specifically how do those challenges translate to healthcare, and then finally talking about action points at the end.
But let's dive in then and talk a little bit about what are those key findings from the Trust Barometer. Now, if you go and download this report, which we'll add a link in the show notes, you can go and do that. You'll see that there are tons of different findings. But here we have, I want to highlight, I think, let's see six things. And I want to give you a sense of those things, why I pulled them out, and what's most interesting about them.
So the first is this idea that trust is a minority position in the United States market today. So you might feel this. You feel we have an adversarial news cycle. There's a lot of polarity in our culture in general, there are different sides. People have trouble finding common ground. And so I think at our core, we all sense this with what we're living through on a day-to-day basis. But the Trust Barometer really helps to quantify this. It says that in the general population only 47% of respondents in the United States trust business, government, media, and non-profits. So out of the gate, this means that the majority of people are starting from a place of mistrust. They don't assume that you're telling the truth or that you're in it for their good. And this is a hard place to start. And I'm going to preview that as we talk about the key insights here. They are not the most positive insights, but they're helpful for us, and we need to be thinking about them if we're going to build brands that are going to stick and be trusted in this world.
So the next finding kind of builds on that trust as a minority position. But the second finding is this idea that lies are the default for two thirds of the population. So what do I mean by that? I mean that 68% of people who responded to the survey in 2025 said that they believe that business leaders purposely mislead other people. This is a crazy stat, 68%, so this is way over half, believe that there are businesses that purposely mislead people. This is a huge challenge for our brands, for the brands that we work with, for your brand to overcome. When you're starting out the gate with someone thinking, 7 to 10 people thinking, you're not telling the truth, there's a lot of work to do. This has been an accelerating trend over the last few years. In 2021, 56% of the respondents said that they thought people purposely misled, and it's risen to 68% in 2025. So we need to kind of keep this in mind as we're going out into the market.
And I know a lot of people will say, well, yeah, but I'm not talking to the general public. I'm talking to buyers. Maybe I'm selling a B2B health technology product, and I'm talking to people who are corporate buyers. It's a little bit different there. And I would say, yes, probably there's a little bit more trust going on. There's a little bit more of a... How would I say it? There's a little bit more of a common ground that you start with. But it shouldn't be overestimated that in their personal life, those people fall somewhere in that, they're either in that 68% that thinks businesses purposely mislead or they're in the 32% that don't think that. And so, I think we need to be careful to not divorce ourselves completely from what maybe someone would say outside of work to what someone would say inside of work. And, realize that this crisis of trust and maybe this mistrust in businesses, and business leaders specifically, probably bleeds a little bit into the work that we're doing on a day-to-day basis.
Now, so trust is a minority position, people assume that business leaders are lying to them. And the next thing to add on to this is this idea of hostile activism is more and more acceptable. And so what do we mean by hostile activism? Things like, I don't know, calling someone out online, things like speaking out when something's going wrong and accelerating up to things like threatening or committing violence, someone thinking that that's justified. Now, luckily, only 23% of respondents said that they think threatening or committing violence is justified. But 40% said that they think some sort of hostile activism, some really aggressive activism is allowed. So things aren't going well and it's not that they're allowed, it's that the specific statement that 40% of respondents agreed with I approve of hostile activism as a way to drive change. Now, this gives us a picture of where we are as a society, but it also is something that we need to keep in mind as we're building our brands.
So if that wasn't enough, let's talk about the fourth finding, this idea that there's a deficit of optimism, and people have a really zero-sum outlook. And in the United States, the Trust Barometer found that only 30% of people believe the next generation will be better off than the current one. Now, this is a stark thing. I think, typically as a parent, like I want to believe that my son's going to have a better future than I am going to have. And so when we look at ... And I think most parents, most families, have that same sense, but this is saying that only 3 in 10 people believe that the next generation of people are going to have a better future. So there's a lack of optimism, and there's an increasing portion of the population that believes that everyone winning simply isn't possible. I think this reflects the polarization. It reflects the income inequality that exists in our country.
And so, really, there's an opportunity, I think, for brands to take a lead in presenting a second way, showing how we can collaborate together to make things better, showing how our solution does help create a better future for the next generations. But we need to understand that that isn't the prevailing opinion in the marketplace.
And two more findings. One of them is, I think, especially relevant in the healthcare technology space, and that's around AI. There's a suspicion about AI that's growing, especially for people who feel that they have a sense of grievance. The Edelman Trust Barometer asked people whether they had a low, high, or middle sense of grievance. The people who said they had a high level of grievance said only 3 in 10 of them trust artificial intelligence, and even less, around 29%, trust its use by businesses. And so, in the healthcare technology space, that shows that we have a lot more work to do to build trust around the solutions that are built around AI. And probably need to think about what are guardrails, how do we make sure that there's human interaction, all these sorts of things. Because AI has enormous potential for us as businesses, it has enormous potential to help people live healthier, more full lives. But we've got to convince people that it's a useful tool and that the safeguards are in place. And so that's the fifth finding.
And then finally, I think a more positive finding, the first five were maybe illustrating the lack of trust that exists in the market right now, the fifth one is, I think, should be encouraging to us, it says that businesses remain the most trusted entities except for among respondents with high grievance. So if someone has a high grievance, they don't really trust a business, they don't trust many people. But, the good news is that when compared to government, the media, and non-profits, business is the most trusted entity around. People trust them to be competent and ethical overall. And so, I think for those of us who are trying to grow trusted brands, bold, memorable brands in the healthcare space, this is good news. Because if people trust us to be competent and ethical over maybe the government, media and non-profits, we're starting from a better place to build trust.
And so just to summarize, before I go and talk about what I think the challenges are out of these findings for healthcare organizations, I want to summarize what I talked about. So I talked about how trust is in a minority position, most people do not trust today. How 68% of the population believes that business leaders purposely mislead people. How hostile activism is more and more acceptable. It's maybe not the majority of people who don't say it's okay, but at least 40% do. How there's only 3 in 10 people in the United States who expect the next generation to be better off than the current one. That there's suspicions around AI. But the bright spot in these findings is that business remains one of the most trusted entities. And so there's an opportunity to, I think, build progress and build trust in your brand using that as a place to start.
So with all those findings in mind, I think we need to ask ourselves, what should healthcare brands make sense of this? Or how should healthcare brands make sense of this, rather. What should we take away from this? I think the biggest takeaway is that trust can no longer be assumed. It's time to put in the hard work. It's no longer a given. And so even if you work in healthcare technology and don't deal with frontline patients, we need to do hard work to show people why they should trust us, to show people the facts behind, or the evidence for why trust is merited, and to show up in a consistent way so that trust can be won over and over again. We can no longer just assume, yeah, we're in healthcare, we're doing great things, we're helping people get healthier, they're going to trust us. And I think this is especially true in the frontline with hospitals, et cetera. There is more work, fair or unfair, to get people to trust us. We need to build brands that are going to demonstrate in clear ways why that trust is merited, why the outcomes that —as a hospital or healthcare provider—you provide are true, so that people can trust.
The next major, I think, takeaway or challenge that we're going to have to work on is how to build trust with patients at the end of the day. And so for those who work in hospitals, health systems, or at healthcare providers, there's more work to do than ever before. This is especially true as proven facts. Things like efficacy of vaccines, maybe efficacy of known treatments, that are proven scientifically are now questioned in the mainstream. And patients need to be brought along during their care journey to ensure that the necessary trust exists. Because at the end of the day, the patient-provider relationship, the effectiveness of healthcare is reliant on patients being willing to follow through on their care plans. And so we need to make sure we're building that trust at each point along the way.
So when we step back from the meta and look at some more specific things, I think the first one to mention is, and I alluded to this when I was talking about the findings a little bit ago, but we must do work to ensure that health tech driven by AI clearly articulates its values and the guardrails that exist to keep it safe. So an increased sense of mistrust and grievance in the general market has led, as we discussed, to a decreased trust in the positive outcomes of artificial intelligence. And we know that there's a multitude of ways that AI can positively impact healthcare. We're already seeing them in the market and how they maybe identify disease, how they are building efficiency, how they help with care coordination. AI can have a huge impact. And AI is also, when you talk to people in VCs, AI is the primary driver in healthcare technology space right now of innovation of new ideas and new companies.
But in order to build trust in these solutions, we have to take a step back and say, what is that specific and unique value that this AI solution is providing? What are the guardrails about it going off the rails? How are we making sure that the human factor is still involved? And, so, we need to ask all those questions and clearly articulate them to continue to build trust in health tech as we go forward.
And then two more quick findings or challenges I think to overcome specifically for healthcare. An authentic brand in healthcare is a must now, it can't be just a flashy marketing game. And so I say this, I think oftentimes in the healthcare space we can run strong marketing campaigns, flashy marketing campaigns, but when they get to the human experience or the other brand experiences, the brand doesn't match up with the experience that they have. And so people are going to see through that more than they have in the past. I think it's always been something that you want to avoid with your brand. You want it to be reflected from both the marketing all the way down to how you're delivering your services down to how you're interacting with people. But authenticity is more key than ever before.
And that leads to the other opportunity, I think, for healthcare brands, is that if you show up with authenticity, healthcare brands have an opportunity to build trust. Now, the good news is because the reason for this is that business entities are the most trustworthy entities in the United States today. So if you show up in the right way, you affirm that trust, you work hard to build trust, you work hard to fulfill on the trust that's been given to you, you're going to be able to make progress. But I think we also have work to do. Because there's not a lot of trust in the healthcare system in the United States that it's built around driving outcomes for patients. It's built around getting people healthier. A lot of times people think it's built around, you know, frankly, people making money. Yeah, because the costs are so high, because insurance companies are mistrusted, et cetera. And so we’ve still got to do work to build that trust more than ever before.
So I think if we have that work to do, the big question here is how do healthcare brands build that trust? So there's I think five takeaways I want to give you about how you can build trust. The first takeaway is I want you to think about your brand. How do you showcase and champion shared values with your customers and with your patients? Many of the challenges today that our society face currently are driven by the fact that finding commonality between groups of people is increasingly difficult. We talked about polarization. We all live that polarization, at least politically. And this, combined with an inherent distrust in the American healthcare system, means that work needs to be done to find and highlight shared values that can be emphasized in order to begin to rebuild connections and trust.
And so I think wherever you can, it's important to think about how do we emphasize shared values between you and your target audience? Whether you're selling to B2B buyers or you're marketing to patients or your organization goes straight to consumers, you need to think about how do we emphasize shared values between the people we're trying to talk to and our company? How do we make human connections here? How do we reduce a little bit of the noise around the polarization and help people feel like this is shared space where I see people who see eye to eye with me, I agree with them on things, and let's do the hard work there.
I think the next opportunity … so, showcasing shared values is that first opportunity, the first thing we can do to build trust. The second thing is creating opportunities for optimism backed by real data. We live in a world where the news cycle is pretty relentless. There's a constant flow of bad news and you maybe turn away for a couple hours and then come back and there's more bad news and it seems like it's relentless. But I think that as healthcare brands, you have an opportunity in your work, in the spheres of healthcare that you work in, to be a bringer of optimism and good news. Sharing a narrative that really counteracts the generally negative news cycle.
So the word of caution here, I would say, is that we need to make sure that the news, that the optimism we're bringing is grounded in fact, it's grounded in truth, and that we're not denying the challenges that everyone faces today, but we're giving people chances to say, you know what, that's a really great thing that's going on, and I want to be a part of that. Because great brands draw people in who want to be a part of progress that's being made or of a breakthrough or of a really cool thing that is going to improve efficiency and make work easier. We should be sharing that sense of optimism and giving people a chance to believe because belief is powerful, positive emotions are powerful, and they'll allow people to move forward and hopefully at the end of the day decide I want to be part of your tribe, I want to be engaged with you, whatever that means for your brand.
The next thing I would say that healthcare brands have a chance to do in order to build trust is act boldly on behalf of patients and show your work. So, whether you're a frontline healthcare provider, maybe you work like we work with some cancer research hospitals, you're doing work with patients every day, or you're a healthcare startup that supports some aspect of the healthcare community. It's essential to show the impact that your work has on real people. At the end of the day, people don't want to hear high-minded philosophy, I don't think. They want to understand how is this going to impact real people? How is it going to make life better for me if I get sick or for my family or my loved ones?
And so we need to really be telling stories about how we're working hard to improve health outcomes and help people live better lives. And we need to show and tell people how we're doing that work, and also show the actual outcomes that we're driving so that people can see it's not just a happy story about how we're making someone's life better, but actually it's a true story. It's backed up by fact. And so, yeah, we need to act boldly on behalf of patients and tell people about that bold action.
So that leads me to the fourth item. So the fourth way that I think healthcare organizations can build trust is by looking for opportunities to work together with others. I think most of you do this naturally, you're looking for opportunities to collaborate, to partner, to build maybe an initiative together, whether it be businesses and other non-profits working with a government entity. But I think brands can be trusted today when there's polarity and it seems like everyone's polarized and there's not a lot of working together that people see in the general news cycle. If they can see a brand that is partnering with other brands around them with like-minded approaches, like-minded philosophies, it can be a force multiplier for helping people live healthier lives, fuller lives. And it can be a force multiplier for building trust too, to say, look at these organizations, they're partnering together out of goodwill, they're doing really cool things, and they're an example of the way the world should be—the way that we want the world to be.
And the final thing I would recommend is to really focus on authenticity in your brand above all else. So we need to make sure that your brand, the essence of your brand, the core attributes inside at the center of your brand are like DNA. They need to impact every aspect of your company's work because only by really ensuring brand alignment between marketing, service design, service delivery, people, management, and all the other areas within your organization, are you going to demonstrate that your brand is something real and that can be trusted. People want to poke holes right now. Let's not give them a chance to poke holes. Let's think about how we architect a brand experience that is true from front to back within our organization. And it's our responsibility as people who care about brand, who are trying to build authentic brands to do that.
So those are the key takeaways or ways people can act. Let's go through them real quick, one more time. How can healthcare brands build trust today? They can do that by showcasing and championing shared values with customers or with patients. You can build trust by creating opportunities for optimism backed by real data. You can build trust by acting boldly on behalf of patients and showing your work. You can build trust by looking for opportunities to work with others. And then finally, by focusing on authenticity in your brand above all else.
And yeah, that's where we're going today in the conversation. I hope you found my takeaways from this year's Trust Barometer to be helpful. They aren't the most rosy takeaways, but I think they give us a really nice dose of reality, a dose of understanding about where the market is and how the market is shifting, where people's mental frame is. And this allows us to think differently about how we're going to build our brands over the next year, how we're going to build trust with people, and how we're going to work on establishing a unique position that's bold and memorable. Because all of it starts with understanding where our target audience is and how we meet them where they're at, and we build trust and build relationships from there.
So with that, I'll wrap up for the day. I hope this has got you thinking and I look forward to speaking with you on a future episode. Thanks so much.
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand and marketing. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing and rating and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a brand and marketing agency in Seattle, Washington. Our producer is Rob Gregerson of Legato Productions.