In 2025, consumer trust is anything but a given. In fact, for many audience segments, distrust is the norm.
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer characterizes today’s climate as a global “Crisis of Grievance,” the result of events over the past 25 years—from the Iraq War to the 2008 financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic—that have chipped away at trust in leaders and institutions. Evidence of this crisis includes an unprecedented decline in employees’ trust in their employers to do what’s right, record-high levels of concern that leaders lie to the public, and four in 10 global respondents reporting that they view hostile activism (including threats or even violence) as a viable means for driving change. That ratio rises to 1 in 2 among people between the ages of 18 and 34.
Among major institutions, brands still hold a relatively advantageous position—ranking as more trusted than government, NGO, and media entities—but this climate of growing distrust is impacting them as well. In 2024, 71% of global consumers agreed with the statement, “I trust companies less than I did a year ago.” Brand trust from Gen Z, a demographic that makes up about 20% of the US population and is projected to account for $12 trillion in spending power by 2030, is particularly difficult to come by.
Marketing and advertising professionals also face consumer skepticism around an assortment of industry practices such as data privacy (64% of global consumers think companies are reckless with customer data) and the use of artificial intelligence (one study found that mentioning AI’s use in products often reduces emotional trust and lowers purchase intentions).
Even more, consumers have grown increasingly willing to voice their displeasure by “voting with their wallets”: 2025 has seen a wave of viral consumer boycotts, from “a total economic blackout” on February 28, to a weeklong Amazon boycott in March, to planned boycotts of General Mills, Nestle, Target, and Walmart. In just the first few months of 2025, 43% of American consumers have shifted their spending to align with their morals, and 36% report “opting out” of various aspects of the economy. Perhaps more alarmingly, consumers are pulling back on spending as a result of uncertainty around the Trump Administration’s shifting plans for tariffs and trade policies, which means brands will have to work even harder to earn their dollars.
Brands cannot take consumer trust for granted amidst today’s crisis of grievance. As leaders strategize around how to earn and maintain that trust, authenticity, consistency, data privacy, and brand safety must remain top of mind.
Over the past decade or so, the rise of conscious consumerism has led to brands increasingly taking social and environmental stands. But consumers and stakeholders demand authenticity and expect a coherent alignment between brands’ words and their actions: Those who try to talk the talk without walking the walk will quickly garner backlash and lose consumer trust—and dollars—as a result (see: “greenwashing;” “rainbow washing;” “woke-washing,” etc.).
But a key aspect of effective authenticity that’s less discussed (though equally important) is consistency. “Brands need to be loud and proud about what they stand for,” says Molly Marshall, Client Strategy and Insights Partner at Basis. “But they also need to do that consistently. When brands try to please everyone or shift their values according to the cultural or political climate, that’s when they receive backlash.”
A cautionary tale around consistency (or lack thereof) has been playing out in the industry in recent years in relation to Target. In 2023, the brand received blowback for the Pride month-themed merchandise it featured, with conservative consumers and social media creators encouraging a boycott. Target, which at that point had celebrated Pride month with Pride-themed merchandise for over a decade, then released a statement that it would remove some of the items from that year’s Pride collection in response to the backlash. This, in turn, garnered even more negative reactions: The company received bomb threats accusing it of betraying LGBTQIA+ people, and a coalition of 15 state attorneys general came together to encourage the brand to stand by the LGBTQIA+ community. Panelists discussing LGBTQ brand advocacy at SXSW the following year agreed that Target’s decision to walk back its stance in the face of backlash ultimately made things worse for the brand. Still, the controversy continues in 2025, with the State Board of Administration of Florida recently filing a class-action lawsuit against Target alleging that the brand misled shareholders about the risks associated with its 2023 Pride Month campaign, resulting in billions of dollars in investor losses.
A similar controversy began in January, when Target—known for its strong support of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and Black-owned businesses after the 2020 George Floyd protests—announced plans to scale back several DEI programs. This move aligns with a broader trend among major brands and comes as the Trump Administration takes steps to end government DEI programs. The retail giant received swift blowback from consumers, and a 40-day boycott organized by Reverend Jamal Bryant began on March 5. “When consumers see a brand like Target—which had previously committed to DEI—pull those commitments back, they’re going to wonder if they can trust them to authentically act out their brand values or if they’re just going to react based on what’s happening politically,” says Kate Diehl, Group VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis.
Target’s year-over-year foot traffic has also fallen for 5 consecutive weeks, though it’s unclear whether this is a direct result of the boycott. Continued consumer pullbacks could hit Target especially hard, as the ongoing threats of tariffs could lead to huge price spikes and drive down the company’s economic outlook.
The takeaway for brands? The combination of today’s crisis of grievance with the rise of conscious consumerism and a polarized political climate means that taking a stand on social and political issues comes with real risk. Brands should only take a stand when they can back it up with authentic action and are prepared to weather criticism. And, when pushback comes, the best response is often to stay the course and maintain their initial stance to demonstrate consistency.
That said, for many (if not most) brands, the best move may be to simply not take a position on such polarizing issues. Just 38% of adults in the US feel that businesses should take a public stance on current events, and many brands whose products or services aren’t related to social or political issues or politicized communities may reasonably choose not to engage in those issues.
Ensuring the ethical use of consumer data is another key strategy for brands looking to build trust with consumers in 2025, with a recent PwC report finding that 88% of consumers say protecting customer data is one of the most important factors in brands’ ability to earn their trust. “Data privacy is considered table stakes by consumers at this point,” says Marshall. “Still, brands and advertisers are struggling to implement it consistently.”
Going into 2024, nearly half of US marketers felt their organizations were unprepared to succeed in a cookieless world. And even though Google no longer plans to fully deprecate cookies in its Chrome browser, its plans to give users a choice over how they’re tracked with cookies in Chrome is expected to have essentially the same impact. It’s estimated that nearly 90% of US browsers could be cookieless once user choice comes to Chrome, with additional factors such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, Safari and Mozilla’s default-blocking of third-party cookies, and privacy-minded digital advertising regulations all contributing to widespread signal loss.
As a result, first-party data has emerged as a top privacy-friendly identity solution among advertisers. “Even beyond building trust with consumers by respecting their data privacy, advertisers need to be able to rely on privacy-friendly solutions like first-party data to successfully target and measure their campaigns as signals drop off,” says Diehl. At the same time, first-party data comes with an ethical responsibility for advertisers—to gather, organize, store, and leverage that data in ways that preserve consumers’ privacy.
With over 90% of digital advertisers reporting that they use generative AI in their work at least once a month, marketing teams must take even more care to protect customer data. Some AI-driven tools, particularly those used in collecting and analyzing data, present serious data privacy risks. And with 57% of consumers believing that AI poses a significant threat to their privacy, this is an area where brands stand to garner significant distrust if they don’t take the proper precautions.
Finally, advertisers looking to build more trust with consumers should work to prioritize brand safety across their campaigns, with recent industry developments making this focus all the more critical.
Advertisers have felt increasing concern around brand safety for years now—indeed, it’s programmatic advertisers’ top concern by a significant margin. The rise of generative AI has only amplified these concerns, with 100% of marketers agreeing in a recent survey that generative AI presents a brand safety and misinformation risk, and 88.7% describing that risk as moderate to significant.
Social media carries the highest brand risk of all digital media channels, according to just over half of advertisers. Just recently, Meta apologized after Instagram users reported seeing extreme violence in their Reels feeds, including videos of people being murdered. “This is an example of a brand safety concern that’s really hard for brands and agencies to get ahead of,” says Marshall. “I do think it brings up larger questions around what platforms are safe and effective for advertisers, and what consumers expect from brands who run on those platforms.” Even more, content moderation rollbacks at social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X have aggravated the riskiness of social media environments.
Beyond social media, brand safety made headlines recently as a result of an Adalytics report that found that multiple adtech companies have placed ads for major brands on websites hosting CSAM. (Note: The report cites Basis as an adtech vendor who did not serve ads on any of the sites in question.) This extraordinary brand safety crisis underscores how critical it is for brands to have robust and multi-layered systems to ensure their advertising content is only shown in safe and suitable environments—not only to safeguard consumer trust, but to avoid ethical catastrophes such as these.
Of course, there’s a case to be made that consumers are now savvy enough to know that brands aren’t choosing to serve ads next to disturbing content, hate speech, or misinformation—particularly on social media. Still, 82% say it’s important to them that the content around online ads is appropriate, and three-quarters say they would feel less favorable towards brands that serve ads on sites that contain misinformation. Considering this majority opinion as well as the broader culture of consumer distrust, brands who prioritize brand safety likely stand to gain a competitive advantage over their peers who take a laxer approach.
In the face of deepening consumer distrust, heightened social tensions, and growing scrutiny around corporate behavior, earning and maintaining trust from target audiences will be a defining priority for today’s most successful brands—and authenticity, consistency, data privacy, and brand safety will be foundational elements of their strategies.
For marketing leaders, now is the time to double down on trust as a core metric of success. Failing to do so may carry financial consequences in a world where consumers are spending more intentionally and brand loyalty is increasingly difficult to earn and maintain.
