The Painful Contortions of the Edelman Trust Barometer

And what they tell us about corporations, reputation, responsibility and current discourse

It’s Davos week, which means it is also time for the annual release of the Edelman Trust Barometer. And, as usual, I see swathes of smart people quoting it credulously and using the findings to buttress arguments that support their own consulting or advisory aspirations.

It’s time to stop. And I’m going to explain why. I will discuss the Edelman methodology and make some broad comments on why we shouldn’t trust it to evaluate trust. Then, I’ll take a look at how its rhetoric has evolved, and what that tells us about why corporations in general, but American corporations in particular, are in such a pickle right now.

Let’s start with the basics. Edelman is now the world’s largest PR firm, and the Trust Barometer is a key driver of its success. It first launched the survey in 2000 as a response to the Seattle WTO protests. Back then, it had a sample size of just 1,300 people across five countries. At the time, the survey aimed to capture the views of the ‘informed public.’ This helped put the survey on the map with ambitious PR people who wanted to demonstrate to the C Suite that they were on top of what the chatterati were thinking.

In 2012, the firm pivoted to measuring trust in the general public, noting that the rise of social media and the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis had given the wider population a stronger voice. It also expanded its sample size to over 30,000 people in 25 countries, moving beyond the initial ‘WEIRD’ (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) focus. However, the firm retained the Informed Public subset, partly to highlight what the widening trust gap between the masses and elites really reveals. It’s likely no coincidence that obsessing over this gap plays into CEO nightmares about public revolt and uncontained populism.

Since 2020, the firm has ostensibly become more granular in measuring the nature of trust, possibly in response to some of the critiques I’m about to discuss. It uses a framework developed by Francis ‘End of History’ Fukuyama in the 1990s and defines trust along two independent variables, Competence and Ethics. The firm also added a new metric, My Employer, as part of what it argued was a pivot to more local trust dimensions. The core question, however, remains the same: How much do you trust [X institution] to ‘do what’s right’?

That’s pretty much all I’ve got for you on the methodology, partly because Edelman is not entirely transparent and does not allow independent academic oversight. It does publish the questions, weighting, etc., and gives readers a chance to dive into detailed findings, but not the raw data.

Before we dive into how the Edelman narrative has evolved, let’s look at why we should approach this survey with a sensible dose of skepticism.