Josh Dougherty is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder and CEO of A Brave New, a Seattle-based branding agency that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. They have specific expertise in healthcare technology, hospitals and specialty care providers, and healthcare nonprofits. 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 in the healthcare space. 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.
Well, welcome to a special episode of A Brave New Podcast. If you've just started listening, I do episodes like these without guests every so often to dive into topics that I believe are really widely valuable to our audience. And so, today, we're going to do that. So, you're stuck with just me during this conversation. And over today's episode, we're going to dive into one of the reports that I anticipate each and every year.
As a brander, as a marketer, there are certain data points that I think can be especially valuable to the work that we do and certain data points I think we should pay attention to. And certainly there are a number of reports throughout the year that claim to have a bunch of insights, but one of the ones that I've found over the years to have insights over and over again is the Edelman Trust Barometer. I'll include a link to that report in the show notes so that you can grab that. But if you haven't heard about this before, it's a pretty cool study.
Edelman completes this study every year in the fall, and it's a global survey on the state of trust with over 30,000 respondents across 28 countries. And because of the huge correlation between brand and trust, I believe it's an essential quantitative input to help brands understand how to build awareness and loyalty. And it doesn't really focus specifically on branding itself. And so it's more of a meta-analysis of the trust environment that your brand's going to hit when it goes into market.
So, this is the third time that we've walked through this report on the podcast. And my goal today is to look at that report through the lens that we try to look at everything—how do you build a bold and memorable healthcare brand or a bold and memorable health tech brand? And so we'll look at the implications for trust this year that we all need to be thinking about. And then I'll speak specifically at the end about the implications or the questions that I think healthcare brands specifically should be asking as a result of this data.
Here's what we're going to do over the course of the episode. I am going to, first, run through a review of the findings from the report. Now, just to be clear, this isn't my work. I'm going to mostly highlight the key takeaways that I thought I saw in the work that Edelman's done. It's worth you taking 15, 20 minutes to run through it and see what kind of insights you see as well as you're reviewing, but I'll try to give you a look at the highlights and maybe whet your appetite a little bit about why you might want to spend some time yourself going through this.
Then I'm going to talk about the overall implications. So, zooming out for a second from just looking at the healthcare or the health tech space, I’ll talk about: What does this mean for us overall? And I'll try to stay out of sticky areas like politics, et cetera, but I think some of that bleeds in no matter what in this conversation.
And then, finally, I will talk about what specifically, I think, healthcare organizations should take away from this report as they're making plans for how they want their brand to show up in the world. And if they're going through a brand refresh, how they want to approach that based on the findings. So, that's a little bit of the scope of what we're going to talk about, but before we dive in, I think it's important to tackle the elephant in the room. Let's talk about a little bit of background.
We all know that we live in an era of low trust. You can feel it. You can, I think, tangibly see it in the media market as you look at different media sources. You can feel it in the way that people interact, think, talk, in the way that people talk about different people who are different than them. And so if you're looking to just understand if there is trust or not trust, when you look at this report, you're not going to discover anything new about the fact that trust doesn't exist or about the state of trust, I guess.
The remarkable thing that this report reveals to me are the specific insights into how trust is failing and how that failing trust, the specific areas where trust is failing, how that influences decision-making and what can be done about it. So, I think that's where the unique value of this report comes from because it tells us a little bit about how to think about this era of low trust that we live in and how to show up differently as a brand.
So, without further ado, let's dive into the findings. First step is unpacking the findings and talking about where we are. Before we talk about specific findings, let's talk about methodology. I mentioned this up above as well, at the beginning of the episode, but I think this is a really valuable thing to do whenever we're looking at research to understand: Is it broad enough? Does it represent a kind of statistically valid sampling size so that we can trust the data?
And I think here we see that the data is pretty trustworthy because of the scope of this research. So, there are respondents in the Trust Barometer from 28 countries, 33,938 people participated in the survey work, and there's a statistically valid amount for each country because we have over 1,200 respondents per country in the report. This report, as I mentioned as well, was done in October through November of 2025. So, it's a bit of a look back, but not too much of a look back when we're in February, currently, of 2026.
The biggest finding in this report is, again, not surprising. We're moving to deeper levels of mistrust as a society. Two years ago, when they released their report, the Trust Barometer said, "We're in an era of polarity," which is this idea that there are entrenched divisions about major opinions in society. And this was globally, not just in the United States, but we see this certainly in the United States.
Now, that's kind of the first level of mistrust, right? Polarity. Different beliefs about two different sides of an issue or multiple different issues, there are different beliefs. And we've seen this continue to evolve post-COVID as we've looked at what's been going on in society.
The next year there was the report, so this was the 2025 Trust Barometer. Edelman called it, "A year of grievance," that not only were there entrenched divisions, but all of a sudden, there was more and more of a sense that there's a system that's rigged against us. Things that we used to trust are working for us are no longer working for us and we're having to fight against the system to get to scrap and survive. And it's not our fault. We're resentful of that. And I'm talking about the royal we, obviously. And again, this wasn't just in the United States, but across the world, this idea of grievance.
And this year, I think is a very interesting result or next step in that cycle of mistrust in society where it talks about how people have retreated into insularity. This is the idea that they're now operating inside of their information bubbles or their trust bubbles. And at its core, insularity is this concept of... it's the reluctance to trust anyone who's different from you. And so this is kind of the core finding—that not only are we polarized, there are different opinions. Not only is there some sense of grievance against the system, against those in power, et cetera, but there's also a sense that now we just trust those who think the same as us.
And this is a challenging place to be. And so we need to figure out, as brands that are operating in this space, how do we build bridges? How do we build consensus? How do we move forward the missions of our organizations when there isn't a surplus of trust hanging out around to grab onto?
Now, in the United States specifically, which is where we are and most of the clients that we work with, the people we talk to on this podcast, and North America, maybe we extend that to Canada as well, trust remains stagnant. So, in the United States specifically, 47% of respondents said that they trust business, government, media, and/or NGOs. So, just a plurality, just under a majority say that they have trust.
Now, it feels good to say, "Just under a majority," but then I think the flip side is that means 53% of people don't trust the institutions that build up our society. And as we dig further into the results, we see the first detailed signs of insularity. We see that respondents trust companies from their country far more than other places. We see that trust is higher amongst high income respondents than low income respondents, and this is driven by a fact that we see throughout society of record high income inequality in the United States and elsewhere.
So, we have that trust of stuff that's outside from us. We have certain income brackets trusting more than others, and people retreating to trusting only those that are like them. But there's an interesting finding in amongst us that has trended for the last few years of reports, and it continues this year. That finding is that businesses, specifically, remain in a really good position. They're considered the most ethical, competent organizations in society followed by NGOs.
Think about that. Businesses, like your brand, are considered the most ethical institution out of NGOs businesses, governments, and media in society. You're also considered the most competent organizations. Government and media slags significantly behind NGOs and businesses here.
And so if we're thinking about this, this should give us hope that there's an opportunity to leverage that, to build success, to establish a brand that can be trusted, to establish a brand that can have loyalty, et cetera. But despite this—this idea that businesses are the most trusted, most competent, most ethical—the future looks less bright to people. Even if they're saying that, I think people are still questioning whether, knowing that, if they or what sort of trust they have in the future. The report says that, "Only 30% of people believe their kids will be more prosperous than them." I'll say that again, "30% of people believe their kids will be more prosperous than them."
That's a stunning statistic. I don't think that's been something, at least in the United States, that until recently has been the case. We've always thought the next generation will succeed on top of the current generation. 67% of respondents also fear that a recession may cause them to lose their job, and AI is driving fears of job loss. I mean, I see this and hear this anecdotally when I'm talking to potential clients, to friends, people who work in all different sectors from small business to tech.
And so these are some macro fears that influence, regardless of whether you work in an established firm that feels confident about the future or you work in something that's feeling more precarious, regardless if your brand is in the healthcare space, providing care to patients, or it's in the health tech space, selling some sort of solution to healthcare providers or to insurers, the people that you're interacting with when you're doing your sales or when you're trying to attract patients, are coming from this perspective. 67% of them fear that a recession is going to cause them to lose their job, so there's some financial insecurity. We're worried about what the future is of AI, and I think no one really knows where that's going and what it's going to look like, but there's certain significant fears of job loss, et cetera. We're worried about what the future looks like for our kids.
And so I think in some ways, our brands need to be empathetic to meet people where they're at and acknowledge that it's hard to sit down and have a positive conversation about the future with all the things that are weighing on us, even if there are things that are not weighing directly into our work life. And these macro trends here lead to insularity according to Edelman. They say, "70% of respondents say they're unwilling or hesitant to do four things," and I'll just read these off. I don't want to interpret what they are.
They said, "They're unwilling to hesitate, or are hesitant, to trust people who live by different core values than me, believe different facts and trust different sources than I do, want to address societal problems differently than I do, and have a different culture background or lifestyle than mine." So, they say, "One of those things contributes to their unwillingness to trust." This is very challenging, to say the least.
And it's leading to real world conflicts in the workplace. And this is where I think this starts to become real for us as brands, right? If we're trying to interact with the people at other businesses to build trust, build affinity, build loyalty. As far as workplace conflict goes, 42% of respondents said they'd, "Rather switch departments than report to a manager who has different values." Whoa, crazy, right? There's a loss of productivity. 34% of respondents said, "If a project team leader who has different political beliefs than me, I will put less effort in to help them succeed." And 34% said they would, "Support reducing the number of foreign companies operating in their country, even if it meant higher prices."
These are crazy stats. And so I think we know that these things are true from a feel perspective, as we go through our lives, but it's interesting to get these specifics. There's also a sense of grievance that's high, and we talked about this, and sorry, this is a parade of depressing, maybe, data. I think maybe we'll call it out, but their sense of grievance is high. A lot of people say that they hold a sense of grievance because businesses and governments serve a select few, business and government actions hurt them, the system favors the rich, the richer getting richer.
And so these meta narratives influence what we're supposed to do. So, that's the findings. Wow, a lot of stuff there to unpack, a lot of, I think, added color to where we are and how we should think about where we are as a society and where the people we're trying to meet and build connections with as brands are coming from. And we need to take all this into consideration to make sure that we are meeting people where we're at, showing empathy to where they're at, and building bridges with them.
I want to transition into talking about the next thing, which is: What are the overall implications or the practical advice we have for businesses as a whole, and I think our brands as a whole? And Edelman does a good job of talking about this. It says, "These are implications or practical advice that they provide in the report."
First, they say that, "Businesses should play the role of a trust broker." They should facilitate trust across difference because the businesses, and specifically a business like when they're facing their employees, they're the most trusted entity. And so they should put in place... Trust brokering is this concept of a, Edelman says, "A set of practices and behaviors that counters insularity by facilitating trust across difference." And they say that, "Rather than trying to change people, trust brokering surfaces the common interests of insulated parties and translates their needs, goals, and realities for one another." So, they're saying that businesses should focus on identifying where are those shared values? And how do we show people that they have those shared values?
And I think the ability to do this begins with an acknowledgement of differences. We need to understand that people are maybe coming to things and have an open mind, and show that even though maybe someone has a different perspective or thinks about something differently, we're not trying to change them and we can be transparent about how they differ from us, but people are willing more to trust someone if they helped them in the past and they defended them when they were criticized.
And so, what are the most powerful things that brands can do to earn trust in high-stake moments like this? It could be that a brand shows up in the market and encourages people to cooperate, find solutions without taking a side. It could be that the brand supports the position that is true to its values. It could be that a brand supports someone's position that they believe in, but really those are ways that, when responding to a divisive societal issue, a business could earn trust.
What the report overwhelmingly says is that, "People trust brands that encourage people to cooperate on finding solutions without taking a side," 35% of respondents said that. And another 28% said, "They trust a brand that's true to its values." So, my encouragement for you in this area of low trust, as you're trying to broker trust between people, build trust and build momentum for your business and your brand is to focus on cooperation, "How do we cooperate effectively together?" And to focus on being true to who you are and knowing that being true to who you are is building trust more than not taking a public position.
The next thing that business can do is build trust between distrust and groups by first, bringing employees into the workplace and finding a way to help them interact effectively with people who are different than them. This seems basic, but I think it's a very strong thing. The consensus across all income levels in this report is that this is an effective strategy—to build trust—for businesses to take.
The next strategy is to partner with unexpected organizations across cross-cultural, cross-political conversations. So, people really believe that they would trust businesses more and brands more if they can build those partnerships with people that are unexpected.
And then finally, I think the employees say that their employer will be effective... An effective strategy for them to build trust is to promote shared identity and culture in the company. We talk about it in branding all the time. It's important to have a strong culture that stands for something. So, focus on that now to build that strength and trust in your company. They say that it builds trust for them when you build a team that requires people with different values to work together to succeed. Great. Focus on how do we work together and build and succeed together.
And then finally, they say, "It would be helpful to get constructive dialogue, employee training for engaging in constructive dialogue of conflict." So, people want to be equipped to be able to have constructive conversations with people they would disagree with. These three things are simple things that an employer can do to build trust across our workplace.
In summary here, we're saying that the four key findings that Edelman's saying, and that I just kind of walked through, but we'll talk about at high level, is pervasive insularity is stalling progress. People are unwilling, 7 in 10 people, are unwilling, they're hesitant to trust someone who is different from them. And so businesses need to be able to address that insularity as kind of the most trusted element or institution out there. They need to involve a model that includes people of different backgrounds, different perspectives, different thoughts, and build trust across the board.
And to do that, they should use the concept of trust building or trust brokering that is really helping to surface common interests between different parties and translate their needs and goals and realities for one another. So, helping people to see commonality and work towards common goals. And I think the final piece is because the businesses are considered the most effective and competent organizations, they're positioned to scale trusting brokering the most of anyone.
If those are some practical things or some like the, "So what?" A little bit of the implications. We know we live in an era of low trust. Businesses are positioned using this concept of trust brokering to build connections and help people navigate through, "What does this mean for healthcare specifically?"
I think one good sign out of this report is they did say that, "Healthcare and technology are two of the foremost trusted industries." So, if you're in health tech, you're in a really good place. If you're in healthcare alone, you're in a good place as well, and you have a real opportunity to be a bridge-builder to make progress for society. And so let's talk about health tech first.
I think you need to ... Here's my kind of takeaways, and now I'm drifting away from sharing exactly what's written down in the Edelman report, but more my thinking of how I synthesize this together for you as a health tech organization and brand. I think you need to be really super cognizant of the environment you're playing in, as you look forward in 2026.
Health techs are more excited than ever in the advent of AI and its applications. Everyone we're working on has some element of AI worked into their value proposition. It's doing amazing things, especially in the area of operations, starting to also help in clinical settings. But the reality is, even though the corporation or the company is super excited about this, people are more fearful than ever of AI personally.
In the corporate sense, we feel obligated to use it, but people are buyers and they're worried, "Is this going to take my job? Is it going to take away the quality of my healthcare? Is a health insurer going to use this to refuse care? And I want to have a person to talk to. What are all the implications?" So, B2B health tech brands need to build trust with those buyers that maybe are skeptical personally, even though they know they have to use AI professionally. They need to work to build trust with those buyers by showing that the AI that they have in their solution will improve their work, not remove the need for the people to do work. So, it's going to enhance the work that people do, not remove them.
They also need to make actual patients’ and others (who benefit from health tech software) lives improve. It can't just be about driving efficiency or saving money or making more money with less people. We need to show improvement. And I think you need to take a hard look and say, "Does my AI drive improvement in the actual lives of patients who are served or the people who are going to benefit from this?"
And the other takeaway here, I think, is that health tech brands need to care, authentically care, more about the people, be more real, not just be high-minded because trust is local and because people want to trust other people that they know, so they need to find a way to build those close connections.
Health tech companies need to focus on providing real and transparent information, not just sales hype. Inherently, when we see an artificial intelligence application that's going to do something, it's not enough to just say, "It's going to transform your life," or, "It's going to change your life." People are, I think, skeptical inherently about the efficacy of AI and the ethics of it. And so I think it behooves health tech brands to think about, "What does our AI actually do? What are the workflows or tasks that it can accomplish? How does it specifically improve people's lives?" And be transparent about that. Be transparent about what you're still figuring out, so that you can make sure that people can trust what you're doing.
And then I think there need to be direct lines drawn by health techs, between the work that they do or the solution they provide and how it will improve someone's life. The next thing to think about is if you're doing it right, your application, your AI tool, is going to have a positive impact on people, otherwise you're not going to last very long.
And so my encouragement is when you ... Be intentional about gathering the evidence of this positive impact and double down on sharing social proof, videos, quotes, long form stories. People trust their peers. And so let your customers, who are the peers of the people you're selling to, tell your story and tell about how much you've had a positive impact.
And then finally, focus on earned media, which is considered more authentic than paid. People don't trust ads anymore. And so certainly there's got to be some air cover from ads to get seen, to get visibility, but try to double down on your earned media this year to tell a story that's authentic, and tell a story that's earned because it's good enough to be earned. I think even as you're doing your media, think about, "How do we not just place this media with a message that is going to hit flat?" Tell people, do the work to make sure even the paid media is authentic and gives people a chance to engage.
So, that's what I would say for health techs. Understand that you're super excited about AI. The applications are actually really cool of things it can do, but people are fearful of it. So, we’ve got to connect to real outcomes. You’ve got to connect to how it's going to improve people's lives. You have to authentically care more about people, be more real. You need to provide transparent info and you need to draw direct lines between the work and how it's going to improve our lives or society, and use social proof to build trust.
For healthcare organizations, ones that are maybe providing direct care to people and doing other things such as that, I think you're starting off in a better place to trust than most other organizations. I think that's an important thing to remember. But when we get down to it, a lot of healthcare organizations are trying to attract patients, and patients trust local, not big. It's pretty laced throughout this study that local solutions, local people, local organizations are the ones that patients trust. And so whether you're a large hospital network or you are a small hospital, I think you need to figure out how to look smaller and more local.
Your patients, the people you're trying to get to reach out to you and trust you, they need to know how you're embedded in a community. And even larger health systems should know or be able to explain in a really, I think, authentic and real way, not just a, "We need to have an explanation, but we've thought through and have an authentic strategy for this." They need to share how they're embedded in each community that they serve. So, maybe they're part of a bigger whole, but the community, when they get into a community, they are fully focused on that community.
I think another thing that you should do, again, with the social proof, the hyper-local patients trusting, other people that are in their circle, is that in your marketing, you really need to lean on the word of other patients and people in that community. In your brand design too, how do we put patients in your community front and center, not you? And focus on earned media again, but center everything you're doing on patients or on the patient-doctor relationship. Scientists in the study are also shown to be the most trusted people yet in society professionals. And so I think you lump doctors in there, highly trusted.
So, share through your brand, center it on patients, center it on the relationship between a patient and a doctor. And if you're an NGO hospital or a nonprofit hospital, nonprofit healthcare provider, shout about it, share about it. NGOs are really highly trusted too. So, let's use the concept of, "We're both a business and a nonprofit. We're doing this with a clear mission." Be clear what you're doing, and make sure people clearly understand what are the benefits of being a nonprofit healthcare provider or hospital.
Those are some of the takeaways for healthcare organizations. And as I close out, I want to encourage you to think about three questions for your business, for your brand. In addition to downloading the Trust Barometer, which you 100% should go do, ask yourself these three questions.
One: "How can I accept that people are living in an era of insularity and use that knowledge to build more authentic connections with my audience?" Two: "How might I leverage my brand's position as someone who's considered competent and ethical to build bridges and trust?" And three: "How can we double down on earning trust versus buying it in the coming year?"
I'll repeat those questions. One: "How can I accept that people live in a time of insularity and use that knowledge to build a more authentic connections with my audience?" Two: "How might I leverage my position as someone who's considered competent and ethical, my brand, to build bridges and trust?" And three: "How can my brand double down on earning trust versus buying it in the coming year?"
I think in these three questions, we have the kernels of great brand positioning in 2026, great brand building brand campaigns. And if we can figure out how to live this out, it's going to drive success, and it's going to get more and more people to buy into your brand and also to find the right people who would really benefit from your brands so that you can build authentic connections with them.
And with that, I want to thank you for listening. It's been great to walk through the Edelman Trust Barometer with you. I encourage you to use the link in the show notes to download it for yourself, to share it with your teams, and to think about, "How do these findings from this great report influence my brand?" Talk to you next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.