OVERALL MOOD
• Generally improving mood on trust: ‘opinion elites’ in many countries show significant increases in trust scores for specific companies, and credibility scores for media sources and spokespeople.
MEDIA
• “The voice of media is back” – Traditional news sources still hold the greatest credibility, with webbased, peer-to-peer sources continuing to play an influential role.
BUSINESS
• Trust in Business is a trend, and not a one-year blip. Business ties with NGOs as the trust leaders globally
⇒ Significant increases in business trust in the U.S. and Japan, and drops in China and Sweden.
⇒ US trust in business is at historical high 58% in 2008 vs 44% in 2002
YOUNG OPINION LEADERS
• 25-34 year old Young Influentials give business a new entrée for engagement
• 25-34 Young Influentials use multi sources of information and are more trusting of several
spokespeople.
SPOKESPEOPLE
• A “Person Like Yourself” and experts (such as documents, academics, industry analysts) continue to represent the most credible spokespeople; not the CEO
⇒ Companies must change the way they communicate to opinion leaders. They should blend “traditional high level communications” with peer-to-peer efforts.
⇒ Person like yourself defined by common interests rather than shared demographic features and attributes. Communities are not geographically contained.
TRUST ACTIONS
• Elites will act positively based on trust or negatively based on distrust in companies.
ONLINE
• Use of web-based information sources (e.g., online forums, social networking, video-sharing sites), is particularly high in the countries which have typically had the most government control over media, such as China and Russia.
⇒ The majority of young opinion elites in these two countries are using online forums and social networking sites to get information about companies.
