4 Ways to Build Trust in a Turbulent Communications Landscape

Communication for any organization can be a fraught business. It’s impossible to please everyone, but have you offended anyone in the process? Messages are targeted to specific audiences but are they resonating with what you’re saying? Do your core stakeholders believe in the promise of what you’re saying, and does it align with what you’re doing?

Now take that general state of complexity and multiply it by managing through an issue or crisis, navigating political or geopolitical dynamics and cross-cultural intricacies. If this calculus appears to mirror the current communications and business landscape, you’d have the correct answer. The factors organizations must contend with on a near daily basis these days can seem daunting. The consistent political pendulum swing that changes regulations in certain markets every few years, the fluctuations of the global market marred by regional conflicts and other disruptions and the need through it all to sustain brand promise and quality to core stakeholders requires discipline of both practice and message.

This reality does not make communicators’ jobs any easier, as they’re seeking to mitigate threats and build or rebuild trust in a fractured media environment and time when stakeholder trust in institutions is fragile. AI makes this job even more complex: with many users relying on the answers large language models (LLMs) provide them with little to no verification, any bias can cloud perceptions of organizations unfairly. And while the designers of the LLMs build balance into their design, recent research published by The Washington Post showed that most of the leading LLMs express political leanings that can vary from answer to answer.

Adding to this is the pressure that audiences may not be reacting from move to move but are certainly tracking what the organizations they support are doing—or, more critically, not doing. APCO’s recent Pulse Check survey showed that 72% of U.S. audiences respect companies that maintain existing practices and commitments despite political pressure. Further, while affordability remains their predominant concern, the same study showed more than four in 10 respondents on average expressed a willingness to walk away from companies that stayed silent in a situation where they felt a response was necessary. While they may not be taking action now, these audiences have a clear eye on the behavior of the companies they support.

With all of this, crafting and disseminating even a simple message these days may seem like an overwhelming ask. But let’s be honest—the communications landscape has never been easy. Four years ago, we experienced a wave of elections that changed the global order. Six years ago, we were in the middle of a global pandemic. You can reach back across the years and find some major issue that created a unique frame of the global landscape and changed perceptions accordingly. There is never a golden moment for communications as intended; all we have are the moments we must rise to meet and the opportunities we create.

Some steps organizations can and should take to ensure their readiness to cut through the noise and have an impact with their efforts include:

• Understanding your organization’s issue landscape can help identify where these moments and opportunities can exist and how best to leverage them. Preparing in advance to manage issues (at least, the ones we can identify) remains a best practice for any communications leader. And for those that we can’t predict, having a flexible crisis response framework that can be adapted to meet the moment at hand is a business-critical priority.
• Keeping a focus on company values underscores and supports any position your organization takes. Those same stakeholders tracking what organizations are doing or saying are taking their cues from their publicized values or brand promise. Ensuring your words and actions align under those principles signals to your audiences your adherence to your commitments, creating trust even in challenging moments.
• Explore where other avenues of risk may exist, especially within the AI/LLM landscape. Understanding where misinformation or misperceptions may currently exist within chatbot search results informs your ability to adapt communications to correct the record. On the other hand, knowing how best to optimize any communications to feed these engines can help to strengthen the narratives you want to amplify.
• Align with leadership early and often, especially as the environment changes. Their understanding of the expectations of both external and internal audiences can help to inform how business decisions are implemented. Getting their buy-in ahead of potential critical moments can also keep everyone moving in the same direction, especially in a crisis when decisions are made swiftly to stay ahead of the news cycle.

Upcoming events like the U.S. midterm elections and lingering geopolitical threats signal that the current landscape is unlikely to improve anytime soon. That does not mean that communicators cannot plan accordingly and find success, despite the odds. Understanding these moments and opportunities can help any organization to navigate their way through a crowded and turbulent landscape to continue to build trust with the audiences that matter most.