Tag Archive for: brand trust

Why Regulated Brands Need Earned Media More Than Advertising

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Regulated brands can’t lean on advertising the way other companies do. Restrictions on product claims mean earned media carries more of the weight.

Here’s what that means in practice:

  • Advertising controls the message. Earned media supplies the independent validation regulated brands can’t give themselves.
  • When every competitor faces the same restrictions, third-party coverage becomes one of the real ways to stand apart.
  • Customers, retailers, and investors all factor in outside recognition, especially when a product’s own messaging is limited in what it can claim.
  • Recognition built early holds up better than credibility built in a hurry, once scrutiny arrives.
  • AI research tools pull from more than a company’s own site, which makes earned media part of how AI systems, not just people, come to understand a regulated brand.
  • Earned media creates long-term reputation assets that support competitive position and business growth when regulatory constraints limit traditional promotional differentiation.

Why Is Earned Media More Valuable for Regulated Brands?

Regulated brands face a communications problem ordinary consumer brands don’t have: advertising and product claims get restricted and scrutinized far more heavily. That makes paid advertising alone a weak tool for building credibility.

Earned media fills the gap. It’s one part of a broader answer to how regulated brands build trust when product claims are limited. Coverage from journalists, industry publications, and independent experts gives a regulated brand something its own ads can’t: proof, from someone else, that its claims hold up. Earned media doesn’t happen on its own. It’s the result of strategic PR: pitching the right story to the right journalist, positioning executives as credible sources, and building relationships with the publications and industry voices that shape a category’s conversation.

Advertising lets a brand control its own message. Earned media does the opposite – it hands the message to someone with no stake in the sale. For customers, investors, retailers, and partners deciding whether to trust a regulated company, that outside voice often carries more weight than anything the company says about itself.

Advertising vs. Earned Media In Regulated Industries

Regulatory restrictions change how much weight each channel can carry. Advertising is the channel a company fully controls, which is useful for saying what it’s cleared to say, on its own terms. Earned media works differently: it puts a company’s expertise in front of an audience through someone else’s voice. For a regulated brand, whose own promotional language already gets the most scrutiny, that outside voice is often the more persuasive one.

Advertising Earned Media
Controls the message Builds credibility through independent recognition
Works within permitted claims Provides validation a company can’t create for itself
Communicates the company’s own perspective Shows how outside experts and press see the company
Explains products and services within legal limits Adds context on expertise, leadership, and market relevance
Measures campaign reach and performance Builds a reputation asset that compounds over time

For a regulated brand, that split isn’t a marketing preference. It reflects a real constraint: when a company’s own claims are restricted, someone else’s voice carries the credibility the company’s own can’t.

Why Third-Party Credibility Is More Valuable in Regulated Industries

Every company can call itself innovative or reliable. In a regulated category, audiences have learned to discount that. They look past the company’s own language toward what respected publications say, what executives contribute to industry conversations, and what outside experts reference in their work, because that’s recognition self-promotion can’t manufacture.

It matters even more when competitors are boxed in by the same restrictions. If nobody can say much about their own products, independent coverage becomes one of the few real ways to stand out.

A healthcare technology company, for instance, may have a genuinely strong product but limited room to say so directly. An executive interview, a piece of industry coverage, or a quote from an outside expert can do the differentiating the ad copy legally can’t. That kind of placement requires a PR strategy built around identifying the right reporters, framing the company’s expertise as relevant to stories they’re already covering, and staying consistent enough that the company becomes a source those reporters return to.

How Earned Media Builds Consumer Trust

Consumers in regulated categories often have to make decisions with less certainty. They may be weighing health, safety, financial, or other risks, while the brand itself faces limits on how strongly it can promote product benefits.

Earned media gives consumers another source of information. Editorial coverage, executive interviews, and expert commentary can help them understand the company behind the product: what it knows, how it operates, and how it fits into the larger category. Instead of asking consumers to base trust solely on company-controlled messaging, earned media gives them independent context for making that decision.

How Earned Media Gives Retail Buyer Confidence

A retail buyer is evaluating a different kind of risk. The question isn’t simply whether consumers will like the product, but whether the company behind it is credible enough to put on the shelf and support over time.

That becomes harder to judge when competing brands operate under similar restrictions on packaging, advertising, and product claims. Earned media gives buyers additional evidence to work with. Coverage of a company’s leadership, category expertise, standards, or growth can demonstrate that the brand has recognition beyond its own marketing and help reduce some of the uncertainty around an unfamiliar company.

How Earned Media Supports Investor Confidence

Investors are evaluating whether a regulated company can grow while operating under greater scrutiny and constraint. Financial performance remains fundamental, but investors are also looking at leadership, market position, reputation, and how well the company understands the risks surrounding its category.

Earned media creates a public record they can examine alongside those fundamentals. Years of credible coverage, executive commentary, and industry recognition show how the company and its leadership have participated in the market over time. For a regulated brand, that record can provide useful context around the business before a funding round, due diligence process, or other capital event puts it under closer examination. That context is also what gives brand authority its measurable value at those moments.

Why Credibility Needs To Come Before Scrutiny

Regulated companies often only ramp up communication once things get hard: a regulation shifts, a category comes under fire, attention spikes. But credibility built in that moment reads as reactive, not earned.

Companies that share expertise and show up in industry conversations before that pressure arrives are the ones with accurate, credible information already on the record when stakeholders start looking. That head start shows up later, when customers, investors, and journalists come looking for answers. It’s the same narrative discipline that has to be in place before regulatory pressure arrives, not after. And it comes from an ongoing PR effort, media relationships built over months, executives made available for interviews, expertise pitched consistently, so the company already has a presence when reporters or stakeholders come looking.

How Earned Media Strengthens AI Visibility for Regulated Brands

AI-driven discovery is another reason to invest in earned media. When someone asks an AI tool about a regulated company, the answer is only as good as the material available for it to draw on. If that material is limited to the company’s own site, the answer is really just the company’s own restricted, self-interested language repeated back.

Earned media changes the material available. Press coverage, industry commentary, and expert quotes give AI systems (and the people using them) independent information to work with, not just the company’s own account of itself. As more people research companies this way, a strong paper trail beyond the company’s own site gives AI systems more credible information to work with and a fuller picture of the brand.

How Earned Media Builds Long-Term Reputation

Regulated brands need to build credibility over time, because one campaign can’t create trust in a high-scrutiny category. And when regulations limit the claims you can make, you can’t simply turn up the volume when you need attention.

Advertising works in campaign cycles: budget goes out, a defined audience gets reached, and the company moves to the next objective. Earned media works differently. Interviews, editorial coverage, executive commentary, and industry recognition can shape how audiences understand a regulated company long after publication. They continue building the company’s public record without requiring a new product claim every time the brand needs visibility.

That compounding effect matters more here than in less regulated categories, precisely because regulated brands have fewer bold claims available to reach for when they need visibility fast. The reputation has to already be there.

Turn Expertise into Market Recognition

For regulated brands, expertise alone isn’t enough. Customers, investors, retailers, and industry stakeholders need to actually recognize the value behind that expertise. That recognition is what brand authority actually means in a regulated category.

Avaans Media helps regulated brands build that recognition through strategic communications programs that strengthen credibility, executive visibility, and narrative strategy, the same work behind Avaans Media’s regulated industries practice.

Our approach focuses on building the external validation regulated brands need to compete in complex markets, where trust, reputation, and differentiation drive business decisions. By developing credible third-party recognition, regulated companies communicate their market value without relying solely on the promotional claims their industries restrict.

Ready to see where your earned media strategy stands? An assessment from Avaans Media shows you what’s missing before you invest further.

Earned media creates long-term reputation assets that support competitive position and business growth when regulatory constraints limit traditional promotional differentiation.

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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What Is Brand Authority Worth? The PR Framework That Builds Trust, Valuation, and Market Leadership

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We used to live in the attention economy. Get eyeballs, get clicks, win. That world is gone. We’re in the trust economy now, and AI is the reason. But how should you build brand authority, and what is brand authority worth?

Scroll social media for five minutes and you’ll question almost everything you see. Real, staged, AI-generated, who knows. But run due diligence on a company, and something strange happens: people trust the AI’s answer. AI isn’t infallible. It’s just very good at contextualizing and weighting what other people, real third parties, are already saying about a business. It’s excellent at reading the room.

That shift is why brand authority is the thing deciding who gets chosen right now.

What Brand Authority Actually Is

Here’s the test I use, and it has nothing to do with follower counts or how many people “like” you.

Brand authority comes down to two questions. What does this brand do that no other brand does in quite the same way? And what do the audiences that matter most, customers, investors, acquirers, need to understand or believe to act? Where the answers to those two questions overlap, that’s your narrative territory. Everything else is tactics.

At Avaans, we run this exercise as the Fingerprint Strategy: a genuine audit of what makes a brand distinct, not the marketing positioning written to sound broadly appealing, but the actual operational or philosophical difference a sharp journalist or a sophisticated buyer would find genuinely interesting. It has to be real. You can’t build narrative on top of something you can’t defensibly own.

And the tell for whether it’s working isn’t engagement. It’s Share of Voice, how often people with no vested interest bring your brand into conversations you didn’t start. When your Share of Voice outpaces your actual share of the market, that’s a leading indicator of where market share is headed next.

A Clip Is Not an Asset

Most PR chases the wrong thing. A competitor lands a great placement, a peer company gets acquired at a number that makes everyone jealous, and the instinct is: what did they do, let’s copy it. That’s the wrong approach, and it’s one of the most consistent reasons authority never materializes.

Activity-based PR, pitching news hooks, chasing trends, responding to journalist requests with no strategic filter, produces coverage. But without an underlying thread, every placement is a standalone event. Coverage without coherence is just noise.

What is brand authority worth?A clip is what activity-based PR gets you. An asset is what you get when every piece of coverage is placed with intention, around the same narrative, in service of a specific business outcome. One evaporates. The other grows into something a buyer, an investor, or a journalist can recognize on sight.

Your Product Isn’t the Moat You Think It Is

Here’s something founders resist hearing: nearly every product-level advantage is copyable. Ingredients, code, formulations, most of what goes into building a product isn’t actually proprietary. Reverse engineering is real, and if your product succeeds, competitors show up. If your whole brand rests on what’s inside the product, you’ll hit a wall, either in the marketplace or later, when you’re trying to sell the business.

Brand authority is the architecture that separates you when the product itself no longer can. It’s a tangible, credible differentiator that holds up under competitive pressure and adds real value to the brand, independent of what’s in the box.

What is Brand Authority Worth

Ambiguity about “brand” is expensive. It’s the reason PR budgets get cut first when a company is looking for savings. The fix isn’t a better pitch for why brand matters. It’s an actual number.

Brands with strong authority command a 15 to 40 percent price premium in their category. That premium isn’t an accident. It’s the accumulated equity of every association the brand has built, trust, quality, cultural relevance, and a real share of it traces back to brand authority. When editorial coverage and third-party validation reach a buyer before they see your price tag, paying more feels obvious. That’s PR doing valuation work.

In an M&A deal, brand equity shows up as a line item under purchase price allocation. It’s why a buyer pays $50M for a company with $8M in EBITDA instead of the $24M a pure earnings multiple would suggest. The gap is brand.

We saw this directly with a pre-IPO wellness CPG client in a regulated category. The brand’s narrative was built with intention well before the raise. The company hit a 300% stock increase on an oversubscribed IPO and generated over 10 billion impressions. That kind of outcome doesn’t come from a single placement. It comes from a narrative built with the deal room in mind long before the deal existed.

Where to Start: Know Your Baseline

Skip the placement chase. The work is building narratives that actually strengthen the brand, and that starts with knowing where you stand right now.

Before you build anything, get a real baseline. What is your brand authority worth today, in the price a buyer would pay, the premium a customer will accept, the confidence an investor walks in with? I walk through five frameworks for answering that, royalty relief, price premium, customer acquisition savings, market share trajectory, and Share of Voice, in my book, The Invisible Asset. You don’t need all five frameworks. You need the one that matches where your company actually is right now.

Once you have that number, you can walk into that budget conversation with real methodology behind you.

Common Questions About Brand Authority

What is brand authority?
Brand authority is the credibility a company has earned through consistent, third-party validation, coverage, endorsement, recognition, that positions it as a trusted, defining voice in its category. It’s measured by Share of Voice, not follower count.

How is brand authority different from brand awareness?
Awareness means people recognize your name. Authority means people trust your point of view enough to act on it, pay a premium for it, or cite it when making a decision. A brand can be widely known and have almost no authority.

Can brand authority actually be measured?
Yes. Share of Voice relative to your total market is the clearest forward-looking indicator. Beyond that, brand equity frameworks like price premium and royalty relief translate authority into a specific dollar figure.

Why does brand authority matter for valuation and M&A?
Because buyers pay for it directly. Brand equity is assessed as a distinct asset under purchase price allocation in M&A transactions, and it’s a major reason acquisition multiples exceed pure earnings multiples.

Ready to Know What Your Brand Authority Is Worth?

Most companies find out what they left on the table after the deal closes. Start with an Assessment of your brand authority.

Related reading: Thought Leadership Isn’t a Deliverable. It’s a Practice.

 

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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How Hyper Growth DTC Brands Leverage PR

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Three forces are reshaping how hyper growth DTC brands leverage PR in 2026: AI shopping agents, tariff-driven price increases, and TikTok Shop. Clients ask me about all three, and the answer keeps landing in the same place: architecture. Owned, branded, and earned media, working together. How you use each one depends on your narrative, your brand, and the landscape you’re competing in. There’s no generic playbook underneath any of this.

If You’re Invisible in AI Search, the Fix Might Not Be PR

When a client comes to me because their brand doesn’t show up at all when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation, we diagnose where the real gaps are first. Sometimes the problem is technical: site structure, product data, when that’s the case, we can point them in the right direction, because that’s not what we do. And that should always be up to par before any kind of e-commerce PR. Sometimes it’s content, both branded and earned, which is squarely our lane. Most of the time it’s some combination; it’s our job to help navigate the priorities based on business goals.

Most of our clients already show up in AI search. What they want is to show up better: a sharper narrative, more favorable comparisons, stronger placement against competitors. That’s a different problem, and it’s architectural rather than technical. It still comes down to the same three levers, owned, branded, and earned media, but how you weight each one depends on the brand’s narrative and the landscape it’s competing in. A regulated brand with tight legal review uses that architecture differently than a founder-led brand willing to take a strong public position. There’s no universal fix.

AI-referred visits to retail sites were up 393% year over year in Q1 2026, according to Adobe’s Q1 2026 Digital Insights report, covered by eMarketer, and that traffic converts 42% better than other sources. Getting the reputation architecture right pays off. The fix is rarely one tactic. If you want a sense of where your own brand’s gaps sit, we run AI brand trust audits as part of the Fingerprint Strategy.

Balancing the Practical with the Political

Tariffs pushed import costs up 18-25% on beauty and personal care and 20-30% on CPG and household goods in 2026, according to ATTN Agency’s analysis of more than 200 DTC brands. Eighty-seven percent of merchants raised US prices in response, per Yotpo’s 2026 DTC Index.

Navigating customer messages like this are increasingly fraught with political overtones.

Getting it right is urgently important. Our default advice is transparency. Tell people what changed and why. But as with anything political, that kind of message needs more than a transparent tone. It needs brand consistency and real nuance, because the same sentence can read as principled to one customer and performative to another, depending on how the brand has positioned itself up to that point.

TikTok Shop Sells. It Doesn’t Build the Reputation That Sells You Next.

TikTok Shop is a legitimate sales channel, and I’m not going to tell a client to walk away from sales. US TikTok Shop revenue is projected to top $20 billion in 2026, and live shopping converts at 8-12%, well above the 2-4% typical of an e-commerce site. Influencers are a real driver of that. Sixty percent of TikTok users say they trust a product more when a creator introduces it than when a brand advertises it directly, according to a 2025 generational report from Zeno Group’s Michael Brito, with Gen Z the heaviest users of the platform.

Influencer trust and AI-search authority are two different things right now, and treating them as the same thing costs brands more than they realize. AI models aren’t crawling TikTok content the way they crawl news coverage and reviews. They’re weighting sources that are hardest to fake, which today means media outlets more than social platforms. Reddit is the cautionary example here: a platform that built real trust and then couldn’t control bot activity fast enough, and the whole platform’s credibility took the hit for it. Every social platform carries some version of that risk, which is exactly why I don’t expect AI systems to weight social content the way they weight earned media anytime soon.

There’s a reach problem too. Pew Research puts TikTok use at 37% of US adults as of 2025, which means 63% of American adults aren’t on the platform at all, including the vast majority of people 50 and older. A brand building its entire reputation inside TikTok is invisible to most of the country. And even inside TikTok’s own audience, 62% of users say they use the platform to look at product reviews or recommendations before buying, per Pew. People are checking, even on the platform built for impulse buys. I know I don’t buy anything on TikTok until I’ve looked up the company and the product somewhere else first.

Quick Answers

Why isn’t my brand showing up in AI search?
It depends which camp you’re in. If you don’t show up at all, the gap is usually technical (site structure, product data) or content-related (branded and earned media), and we diagnose which before recommending anything. If you already show up and want to show up better, that’s an architecture question, narrative, comparisons, placement, built from owned, branded, and earned media working together.

Who should write our tariff price-increase communication, PR or leadership?
Delivery is secondary. What matters is that the message stays consistent with everything the brand has said before, and that it’s transparent by default with extra nuance if the pricing story is politically charged. We’re almost always consulted on the narrative regardless of who drafts the final copy.

Should DTC brands rely on TikTok Shop instead of press?
No. TikTok Shop is a real sales channel, and influencers are real borrowed credibility on it, especially for Gen Z. But AI search doesn’t weight TikTok content the way it weights press coverage, and 63% of US adults aren’t even on the platform. A brand that skips earned media for TikTok is invisible to both audiences.

What’s the one PR investment that pays off across AI search, tariffs, and TikTok Shop?
Architecture that compounds: owned, branded, and earned media working together, rather than a tactic that expires this quarter. Earned media is the hardest input to game, which is exactly why AI systems weight it, and it’s also what feeds AI models the data, insights, and points of view they need.

If there’s one instruction I’d give a CMO that applies across AI search, tariffs, and TikTok Shop, it’s this: invest in the architecture that keeps adding value over time, not the tactic that works this quarter. The halo effect of a trusted brand is well documented. The IPA’s Effectiveness Databank found that ad campaigns which significantly increase brand trust are 41% more likely to drive a major business result than the industry average, see customer-acquisition gains of 39% versus 28% for typical campaigns, and cut price sensitivity nearly twice as much, 11% versus 6%. Trust doesn’t just feel good. It makes every other dollar a brand spends work harder.

I don’t see a day coming where the platform tax for AI stops being content. It might expand into social media eventually, but I wouldn’t bet on it happening soon, for the same reason Reddit had to fight bot manipulation for years before anyone trusted its content again. AI systems are going to keep weighting the sources that are hardest to game, and earned media is the hardest one to game, period. It’s also the one that keeps AI fed: real data, real insights, real points of view, not recycled ad copy. Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer put it plainly this year: lead with earned, scale with paid, and make sure your proof points are the kind AI search can actually find.

That’s the narrative architecture we build for DTC PR clients under the Fingerprint PR Strategy, and it’s the same one behind every pillar in this piece. AI search, tariffs, TikTok Shop, they’re symptoms. The cause is always the same: whether a brand has built a reputation that holds up when someone actually goes looking.

 

Sources


The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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How Consumers Decide Whether to Trust a Healthtech Brand

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Digital health should be a rational category. Clinical evidence, regulatory compliance, product features – on paper, it’s all comparable. And yet, consumers consistently choose one brand over another even when the underlying capabilities look nearly identical.

That gap isn’t about features, it’s about trust.

Right now, health decisions are happening in an environment defined by uncertainty. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report on Trust and Health describes a landscape shaped by declining confidence, widespread confusion, and competing sources of authority. Many people believe at least one contested health claim. Confidence in making health decisions is down globally. And healthcare providers are no longer the only – or even the primary – voice guiding those decisions.

When people aren’t sure what to believe, they don’t default to the most advanced product. They default to the one that feels safest. That’s where trust becomes the deciding factor.

What Builds Trust in Digital Health?

Trust fills the gap when everything looks the same

Most consumers don’t evaluate digital health the way clinicians or researchers do. They’re not comparing study design or parsing clinical endpoints.They’re making faster calls:

Does this feel credible?
Have I heard of it before?
Would someone I trust recommend it?

Evidence still matters, but it’s filtered through perception. Two platforms can cite equally strong clinical data, but if one presents it clearly, aligns with how people think about their health, and feels more transparent, it will win. That’s because trust isn’t layered on top of the product, it’s the lens through which the product gets judged in the first place. 

Source credibility carries more weight than brand messaging

In health, who delivers the message often matters more than the message itself.

eMarketer data shows that consumers trust recommendations from medical professionals far more than they trust brands. That lines up with broader digital health research: trust increases when users have an existing relationship with a clinician and when that clinician demonstrates genuine interest in their outcomes.

It also explains a pattern across the category. Products that are clinically backed or integrated into provider systems tend to outperform standalone platforms, even when the standalone product is equally capable.

Borrowed trust through doctors, insurers, or established healthcare systems, is one of the fastest ways to reduce skepticism. Without it, brands are building credibility from scratch.

Reviews and reputation act as decision shortcuts

In a category where most consumers can’t independently verify clinical claims, social proof fills the gap.

Becker’s Hospital Review notes that 86% of consumers read online patient reviews, and nearly three-quarters require at least a four-star rating before considering engagement. Reputation.com’s 2024 data shows that actively managed review ecosystems materially influence both sentiment and conversion.

Reputation doesn’t just reflect trust, it actively shapes how people feel about a product before they ever try it. A strong review profile signals that others have already taken the risk—and that it paid off. A competitor with similar clinical backing but weaker public feedback feels uncertain by comparison.

This is why reputation management isn’t a downstream activity. It’s part of how trust is built in the first place.

Data transparency is now part of the product

Privacy used to sit in legal. Now it sits in the user experience.

A 2025 mixed-methods study on digital health trust found that clear disclosure about data usage is “paramount.” People want to know what happens to their data, who sees it, and what control they actually have. What’s changed is the tolerance for ambiguity. “Secure” isn’t enough.

What data is collected?

Is it shared?

Can I control it?

Brands that answer these questions clearly reduce friction. Brands that obscure them create it. Choice reinforces this. Giving users options in how they receive care, whether it’s virtual, in-person, or hybrid, signals control. And control is tightly linked to trust.

AI is changing the trust equation

Artificial intelligence is shifting how people evaluate expertise.

Edelman’s 2026 findings suggest that many consumers now believe AI-fluent individuals can match or outperform doctors in certain health tasks. That creates an opening, but also a risk.

AI can build trust when it feels useful, understandable, and grounded. It can lower barriers and make health information more accessible. But it can just as easily erode trust if it feels opaque or overconfident. The brands that are getting this right don’t overstate what AI can do. They make it legible. They show where it fits, where it doesn’t, and how it connects back to real expertise.

Experience is where trust compounds

The product experience is often the most overlooked part of the trust equation, but it’s where early credibility either holds up or falls apart. The 2025 study found that even users with limited technical experience were open to digital health tools when the experience was clear and supportive. In many cases, those tools improved health literacy over time.

Is onboarding intuitive?

Is support responsive?

Does the product work the way it says it will?

When the answer is consistently yes, skepticism starts to fall away. People stick with what actually works the way it said it would.

The brands that win reduce uncertainty best

Consumers aren’t choosing the most feature-rich platform. They’re choosing the one that feels most certain.

The one that:

  • Is recommended by someone they trust
  • Has visible validation from others
  • Explains how their data is handled
  • Feels clear from the first interaction
  • Aligns with how they think about their health

People choose the brand that reduces doubt more effectively than the alternatives, and that comparison is happening whether you’re aware of it or not. In digital health, that difference is often what decides adoption.

What this means for healthtech brands

The competition here is about credibility as much as capability, which is where a strong healthtech PR strategy becomes an advantage.  That shows up in how clearly you communicate, how visibly you’re validated, how your product behaves, and how well you integrate into trusted systems.

The brands that win here don’t necessarily have more features. They’re just better at reducing uncertainty.

A practical next step

If you’re evaluating how your brand is perceived ­– especially ahead of a funding milestone or major growth push – it’s worth looking beyond messaging and into trust signals: where credibility is coming from, how reputation shows up publicly, and where uncertainty still exists.

Request a Healthtech Trust Assessment to understand how your brand is being evaluated and where you can close the gap between capability and credibility.

FAQs

Why do consumers trust some digital health brands over others with similar features?

Because most people don’t evaluate health products clinically. They rely on trust signals – who recommends the product, how credible it appears, what others are saying, and how transparent it feels. When features look similar, the brand that reduces uncertainty usually wins.

How important are reviews in choosing a digital health platform?

More important than most brands expect. Reviews act as a shortcut for credibility, especially in a category where outcomes can’t be easily verified upfront. A strong, actively managed review profile signals safety and reliability, while weak or inconsistent reviews introduce doubt.

Do consumers trust AI-powered health tools?

It depends on how the AI is presented. Consumers are increasingly open to AI in healthcare, but trust rises when it feels understandable, grounded, and clearly connected to real expertise. AI that feels opaque or overconfident tends to erode trust rather than build it.

What role does data privacy play in consumer trust?

A big one. Consumers want to know what data is collected, how it’s used, and who has access to it. Clear, upfront communication builds trust. Vague or hidden policies create friction, even if the platform is technically secure.

 What’s the fastest way for a healthtech brand to build trust?
There isn’t a single lever, but credibility builds quickly when brands combine clinical validation, third-party endorsements, strong reviews, and a clear user experience. Trust builds fastest when the product consistently does what it says it will, and makes that easy to understand.

  

References

 

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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What to Look for in a Crisis Management Firm

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Key Takeaways

  • Importance of Crisis Preparedness: Proactive crisis management is essential for organizations to respond effectively to unforeseen challenges. This includes identifying risks, developing tailored communication strategies, and training teams to ensure readiness.
  • Role of Crisis Management Firms: Professional crisis management firms provide expertise in navigating crises, offering industry experience and a strong track record in managing communication during emergencies. Their support helps protect and rebuild an organization’s reputation.
  • Building Resilience for the Future: Beyond immediate response, organizations should establish a crisis management team, develop comprehensive plans, and maintain strong stakeholder relationships. These strategies strengthen long-term resilience.

In today’s fast-paced world, a crisis can strike at any moment, leaving your business vulnerable to unexpected challenges. Whether it’s a natural disaster, a PR crisis, or a cyberattack, how you respond can directly impact your reputation and financial stability.

So how can you ensure your response is both swift and effective? Many organizations turn to a professional crisis management firm—but do you actually need one?

To answer that, it helps to understand the role of crisis communication planning and crisis communication PR experts in safeguarding your organization.

What is Crisis Management?

Crisis management is a structured approach to identifying, assessing, and responding to unexpected events that threaten operations, reputation, or financial performance. Importantly, it includes both preparation and recovery.

Effective crisis management goes beyond resolving the immediate issue. It also focuses on minimizing long-term damage and reducing the likelihood of future crises.

A prime example of crisis management can be seen in how companies responded to COVID-19. Many hospitality businesses faced severe disruption, yet adapted quickly by implementing safety protocols, shifting to digital services, and communicating transparently with customers—actions that helped reduce losses and build long-term trust.

Understanding the Role of a Crisis Management Firm

A crisis management firm prepares and guides organizations through high-risk situations. These firms are staffed by PR experts who understand how quickly narratives form and spread during a crisis.

Because of this expertise, they help organizations communicate clearly and consistently across stakeholders. This allows companies to protect their brand, control misinformation, and recover more effectively.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Crisis Management Firm

From industry experience to response agility, every factor plays a role in protecting your reputation. Here are key considerations when choosing a crisis management firm:

Industry-Specific Experience

Industry experience matters. A firm familiar with your sector understands regulatory requirements, stakeholder expectations, and the media landscape, allowing them to anticipate issues and craft more effective responses.

Track Record of Success

A strong track record demonstrates the ability to perform under pressure and adapt across crisis scenarios. It also reassures stakeholders that the firm can protect—and even strengthen—your reputation.

Team of Seasoned PR Experts

A team of seasoned PR experts brings deep experience in communication, strategy, and media relations. As a result, organizations benefit from clearer messaging, stronger media positioning, and fewer missteps.

Crisis Preparedness Approach

The best firms don’t just react—they prepare. This preparation includes vulnerability assessments, response planning, and team training, ensuring your organization can act with confidence when a crisis occurs.

Bespoke Crisis Communication Strategies

No two crises are the same. A strong firm develops tailored strategies that address stakeholder concerns, maintain transparency, and protect your organization’s reputation.

Global and Local Media Relations

Crises often extend beyond one market, making media expertise essential. Firms with strong relationships can manage messaging across regions, helping maintain consistency and reduce miscommunication.

Continuous Monitoring and Adaptation

Ongoing monitoring is critical. Leading firms track sentiment, media coverage, and communication performance in real time, allowing them to adjust strategies as situations evolve.

The Economic Impact of Unmanaged Crises

Without a clear crisis plan, the consequences can be severe, including revenue loss, reputational damage, and long-term decline. In contrast, organizations that invest in preparation and expert support often recover faster and limit financial impact.

The Onboarding Process: Integrating a Crisis Management Firm

Integrating a crisis management firm into your operations strengthens resilience and protects your reputation. The process is tailored to your organization’s risks and typically follows a structured approach.

Step 1: Initial Consultation

The firm begins by understanding your business, including its structure, operations, and vulnerabilities. This creates a foundation for an effective crisis management plan.

Step 2: Risk Assessment

Next, potential risks are identified and evaluated based on likelihood and impact. This step prioritizes threats and informs strategy development.

Step 3: Strategy Development

Based on the assessment, the firm develops a communication plan outlining how to respond across scenarios. The goal is to ensure fast, coordinated action.

Step 4: Training and Simulations

Your team participates in training and simulations designed to test response plans, identify gaps, and improve coordination under pressure.

Step 5: Implementation

The firm integrates systems and processes into your organization, ensuring communication flows smoothly and response protocols are ready for immediate use.

Step 6: Continuous Evaluation

Crisis planning is ongoing. Strategies are updated regularly to reflect evolving risks, business changes, and lessons learned.

Future-Proofing Your Organization

Future-proofing goes beyond managing a single crisis. It requires building systems and relationships that support long-term resilience and adaptability.

Establishing a Crisis Management Team

A dedicated team ensures coordinated response efforts and oversees communication during crises. Regular training keeps the team prepared.

Developing a Comprehensive Crisis Plan

A structured plan defines roles, communication protocols, and escalation paths, ensuring consistency during high-pressure situations.

Implementing Proactive Monitoring Tools

Monitoring tools help detect risks early by tracking sentiment and emerging issues in real time, allowing for faster and more informed responses.

Training and Simulations

Regular exercises strengthen response capabilities and improve team confidence when facing real-world crises.

Building Strong Stakeholder Relationships

Strong stakeholder relationships are critical during a crisis. Clear, transparent communication helps maintain trust and long-term confidence.

Crises are inevitable in both B2B public relations and consumer PR. Preparation is essential.

A professional crisis management firm provides the expertise needed to navigate complex situations. With the right support, organizations can protect their reputation, reduce financial impact, and emerge stronger.

Secure Your Business’s Future with Avaans Media

Don’t wait for a crisis to strike. Partner with Avaans Media to strengthen your readiness and protect your business.

Our executive-level team delivers tailored crisis management strategies for emerging industries and high-growth companies. Connect with us today to confidently navigate any challenge.

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What Is Purpose-Driven PR?

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Key Takeaways

  • Internalization of Purpose: A truly purpose-driven brand integrates its values into all levels of the organization, from leadership to employees. This internal commitment ensures that decisions, hiring practices, and daily operations align with the brand’s purpose, creating an authentic and cohesive culture.
  • PR as a Supportive Tool: While PR can amplify a brand’s purpose-driven initiatives, it should be rooted in genuine actions rather than serve as the primary driver. Effective storytelling is essential to highlight the real impact of a brand’s choices, making it crucial for purpose-driven brands to collaborate with experienced PR agencies to share their ethos.
  • Authenticity Over Appearance: Brands can either be born with a purpose or develop one over time, but authenticity is key. Consumers are increasingly adept at detecting insincerity, so brands must carefully craft their purpose-driven initiatives to avoid disingenuous efforts that can lead to distrust or backlash.

Purpose-driven public relations means the brand proactively builds and incorporates values that impact social, cultural, and environmental issues. A true purpose-driven company makes corporate choices within its purpose framework, even when it means purpose over profits.

Truthfully, public relations aren’t purpose-driven — a brand is purpose-driven. Public relations is simply a lever a purpose-driven brand can use to improve the world around them.

Building a purpose-driven brand is an inside-out job. These aren’t PR campaigns or PR ideas; they are a cultural way of thinking that’s internalized by everyone in the company.

[3 minute read]

The Importance of Internalizing Purpose

There are lots of ways a brand can support its customers, community, and the globe meaningfully. Cause partnerships and donation campaigns are relevant PR tactics, but they aren’t purpose-driven.

Purpose-driven companies take the long view on impact.

Internalization is what distinguishes purpose-driven brands. When everyone—from the Board to the CEO to the janitor—walks the talk, a brand has authentically implemented a purpose-driven culture.

This means employees incorporate purpose into everyday decisions. That can include hiring, internal programs, purchasing, and product development.

It also means employees feel safe making purpose-driven choices because they know they are acting within the company’s ethos—and that those decisions will be supported.

Should Purpose-Driven Initiatives Even Have a PR Component?

The deciding factor is the “why” behind the initiative.

Every day, businesses—from Fortune 500 companies to emerging brands—make decisions that have a social impact. Most of the time, these decisions don’t get the credit they deserve.

But purpose isn’t one decision, one campaign, or one person. It’s people moving in unison and making decisions that can impact millions.

What Actually Becomes News

Take something simple like eggs.

At the grocery store, you’re faced with choices: cage-free, organic, local, inexpensive. Producers are constantly balancing product, purpose, and price.

Even though organic or cage-free eggs are more expensive, margins are often lower than mass-produced options. These producers are likely making additional costly decisions—better feed, renewable energy, more humane practices.

These are meaningful, purpose-driven choices. But they don’t always make news.

What may become news is the broader impact, the cumulative effort, or the story behind the people making those decisions.

That’s where PR comes in.

There are opportunities—but they require real storytelling. This is why it’s important to work with experienced purpose-driven PR agencies that can translate ethos into compelling narratives.

Brands should have PR at the table when developing purpose-driven initiatives, but PR should be part of the purpose, not the purpose of the purpose.

Are Purpose-Driven Brands Born or Made?

Both—and neither.

Some brands are founded with purpose. Others grow into it over time. Both approaches are valid, but only if they remain consistent.

A brand founded on purpose can lose its way. A brand that evolves into purpose is not automatically forgiven for its past.

Authenticity is what matters.

Consumers are increasingly skilled at identifying insincerity. They can quickly detect when a mission is disingenuous, and that can lead to distrust or backlash.

In many cases, a brand is better off doing nothing than pursuing a purpose-driven initiative that isn’t genuine.

Final Thought

If your company is considering a purpose-driven plan, download our guide and contact us.

We can help you navigate the opportunities—and avoid the pitfalls—for purpose-driven brands.

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