Uncovering the $7 trillion reputation economy

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1:29Ready for anything. Ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com slash ready for anything. Bob, I had boards and C-suites asking me like, hey, if this thing goes really sideways, what does it cost us? Reputation is not an extra thing you bolt on at the last minute and go, oh shit, what if something goes wrong? It's a part of the process. The entire world is reacting to the actions of this administration, right? This administration is engaging like no other in history, not even the first instance of the Trump administration. The stakes are a lot higher.

2:14We knew they were a lot higher, but now we can actually affix a value to those stakes.

2:26That's Corey DeBrowa, CEO of Burson, the global communications firm. At a time of incredible disruption from AI to ice shootings in Minneapolis, I wanted to talk to Corey about the unprecedented reputation challenges facing businesses and brands. Corey's pre-person roles included advising Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Mark Benioff at Salesforce, and Sundar Pichai at Google. He talks about why reputation is still one of the most powerful and most misunderstood assets in business, and the high-stakes decisions companies face right now about whether, when, and how to speak up. Whether you're leading a major business or contributing to a team, Corey offers great insights for navigating a volatile era.

3:12So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

3:23I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Corey Dubrowa, CEO of Burson, the global communications agency. Corey, thanks for being here. Bob, thanks for having me. It's great to see you sort of in real life for the first time in 2026. Yeah, I see you have your Seattle Seahawks hat on. You were saying you're feeling a little FOMO about not being at the Super Bowl parade. I'm feeling a huge amount of FOMO this morning. I'm literally, before we got on, was watching on Twitter, sort of scrolling through like crowd shots and was just remembering the last Super Bowl parade that I was a part of, which was in Seattle, the Marshawn Lynch edition way back in the day when I worked at Starbucks.

4:03So yeah, a little fun though. The hat's going to have to, the hat'll have to tide me over for this morning. Have to serve the function. Yeah. I think so. Exactly. You took over at Burson in 2024 and it's just been kind of wild times since then. Disruption everywhere. Not because of you, of course, but like, do you - Thank you for that clarification. Do you long for the simpler days when you were in-house advising just one business like Starbucks and Google? Or does this perch give you a broader understanding of what's going on in the landscape? So I had spent 15 years sort of monomaniacally focused on like one business, one client, one thing.

4:46Eight of those were at Starbucks. One of those was with Benioff at Salesforce. And then the last six were at Google. What I found is that your focus kind of tends to be a little bit lather, rinse, repeat in the sense that you're really focused on the message, the messenger, and the platform. You're trying to get everybody to say the same thing consistently over and over and over again. You are. You're very deep on that business, but sometimes you lack the periscope to sort of put it up and determine what's happening in the world. And I'd forgotten how much fun it is to have such a liberal arts purview.

5:22So I feel like I can actually still be helpful to our clients, but in a different way than when I was actually responsible for sort of running the message messenger and platform. I mean, you and I have talked privately in recent months about how hard it is in this environment for brands and leaders to figure out what to say, sort of where the risks are and where the opportunities are when so much seems like it's up in the air. Is that what you're hearing from your clients? They're sort of asking, looking or trying to find that clarity? Yeah, 100%, Bob. You know, we're in year two of Trump's second presidency.

5:56And so, you know, there's renewed protectionism. Certainly tariffs are sort of one aspect of this, deregulation, the America First Trade policy. And so helping companies to navigate these shifting priorities and be thinking about global trade and, frankly, regulatory uncertainty, that's sort of one thing. There's been a global shift to the right. And so there's a conservative resurgence across Japan, France, Germany, UK, to name but a few. And so helping clients to be able to, again, kind of navigate that volatility, that societal polarization that everybody is kind of dealing with. We in this country, because we sort of pay attention to our own news, will be focused on things like Minnesota, but you can also point to Iran, Gen Z-led protests across Asia, budget protests in Bulgaria, which were huge and probably not on most people's radar here.

6:48So guiding clients through social listening and activist engagement and brand neutrality, you know, how do you stand for things without necessarily putting yourself in the line of fire? Like, that's a thing. There's the global AI governance race. You know, there's competing rules about how to shape AI's futures. I mean, it was so fascinating to me to watch Google, of all companies, a company that has never really lacked for resources, go into the bond market and raise more than$30 billion worth of 100-year debt. That's a whole new thing. Yes. Because AI is expensive. And so how that's governed and the way that investments work in that world is a whole separate thing.

7:28There's erosion of trust in traditional media. The Washington Post, you and I both have friends at the Post. You know, a third of their staff is gone. And so at the same time that, you know, only 28 % of U.S. adults trust mainstream media. This was the Gallup poll that came out last year. I mean, that number was like in the 70s, in the 70s, 72%, 1972. Because it's all fake news now, right? I mean, you don't know who to trust. Even the entities that are financially solvent, people have very strong feelings about. Absolutely. And, you know, what we're observing more and more, Bob, I certainly saw it at Davos and I saw it again with the Super Bowl.

8:09Four in 10 U.S. adults, according to that same Gallup poll, get their news from digital influencers, right? And I'm not saying influencers are fake news at all. Many of them, frankly, come from the world of traditional media. But the fact that, you know, the trust is so upside down now, we have fewer than one in three Americans saying they trust traditional media forms. You realize that, you know, company-owned media channels and storytelling are becoming more important than they ever have been. Clients have to navigate all of this at the same time that they're thinking about things like the erosion of institutional credibility, their own institutions, not necessarily conferring confidence in that AI, for all the advantages that it has, it actually amplifies mis - and disinformation at scale.

8:56And so I think there's a lot for clients to sort of wrap their heads around. And that's the job that we have is helping them to kind of navigate a very confusing and frankly, pretty fragmented landscape. I mean, as you go through all of these disruptions and changes, in some ways, it's a great time to be in the business you're in because you're needed more and the stakes have never been higher. But at the same time, the pressure's also never been higher, right? I mean, there is more that is at risk based on the way you communicate than it ever has been before. That's totally true. For 15 years as a client, Bob, I had boards and C-suites asking me like, hey, if this thing goes really sideways, what does it cost us?

9:40Or if this thing goes really well, this initiative, like what's the upside for us? And so we at Davos launched a study that proves that corporate reputation actually has quantifiable value, that companies with strong reputations realized almost 5%, 4.78 % unexpected additional shareholder returns, creating a reputation economy that's worth almost$7 trillion. The stakes are a lot higher. We knew they were a lot higher, but now we can actually affix a value to those stakes. Like, what defines a strong reputation in this environment? For years, I think we have been told, or it was received wisdom, that there was this sort of binary relationship of trust, like to be trusted or not trusted.

10:24And what I always knew is that reputation was actually comprised of different things. There's a lab within the University of Oxford that helped us to develop this model. It takes into account eight different levers that comprise modern reputation. Citizenship, you know, the degree of good that a company may or may not do in the world, but also creativity. How creative are your solutions? Governance, the structures and policies and integrity that sort of help the company to be managed. Innovation, you know, how forward thinking are you? What new technologies or ideas are you putting forth? Leadership, how you manage at scale, the way that you navigate things.

11:02performance, financial results, products, the quality, reliability, and perception of your products. And maybe more importantly, although I'm not sure it gets the play that it should, workplace, the culture, the well-being of your employees, the way that you manage talent. So if you think about how companies manage these eight levers, it's pretty bespoke, right? Like There isn't a one-size-fits-all model for how every company, like the way Starbucks would have thought about these eight levers would be pretty profoundly different than the way that Google would think about those eight levers. The lens of this research was around kind of financial impact.

11:45But do business leaders have, I don't know, have responsibility to think beyond just sort of financial impact? Is there a connection between sort of reputation and courage? Every company sort of has the opportunity and, frankly, responsibility to think about, among these eight levers, how they show up, right? Your citizenship, how creative or innovative you are, the products or services you put out in the marketplace. You as a company have to determine what is your unique value that you can offer in that space and the extent to which you really choose to pull that lever hard or don't pull that lever hard.

12:22Because citizenship is one of these eight levers, I think all companies have both an opportunity to think about that and also some risks attached to that. You know, they have to think about, you know, are we picking a side, a political side, or are we doing something that may really please our employees, but for our customer base may be a different thing. So this gets into the whole realm of stakeholder management, the way you start to think about how the actions that you take, because you only really get to communicate, Bob, after you've taken action. Your actions give you the hall pass to communicate.

12:55And those actions, sure, they can very well be related to things like corporate citizenship out in the world, but you have to be mindful of the way that people are receiving things. So the way, Bob, that we did things at Starbucks back in the mid-2010s in a different political environment with a different administration would be received, I suspect, in a very different way in this administration, in this – the year of our Lord, 2026, compared to what we did then. Doing – choosing to do exactly the same things. And you might not necessarily choose to do them the same way because of that environment.

13:32Exactly. Or you might choose to communicate about them in a different way. You know, context matters, right? And so I think you have to start thinking about things like context and the actions in that context before you're thinking about message. Message is almost the last thing that you're thinking about. You mentioned stakeholders. For some business leaders today, their public communication often seems targeted to an audience of one in the White House. Some CEOs want to at least appear to cooperate with this administration. A few seem prepared to push back and most seemingly want to kind of hide.

14:08Am I being too simplistic about it? I don't know that you are. I think the influence of this administration has been immense in terms of the global order, the entire world. I mean, you know, you don't have to go to Davos. It helped for me to see it that way. But like the entire world is reacting to the actions of this administration, right? So you look at tariffs, you look at a president who was tweeting about Greenland before he even arrived to give his speech. You really start to realize this administration is engaging like no other in history, not even the first instance of the Trump administration.

14:45You can't debate the influence that's being wielded by this White House. So from a business standpoint, as a business leader, I mean, I think for companies, maybe it's not so much about being pro-Trump or anti-Trump as it is about being pro-business continuity in this hyper-polarized world, right? How do you maintain that continuity when there are all these changes going on around you? Every day gives a new wrinkle in how to manage continuity with policies that can change. They're mutable, right? They kind of evolve from day to day or week to week or month to month. And so sometimes silence can be a calculated strategy to protect the brand in the bottom line.

15:27And other times it's simply because that company doesn't have anything meaningful to say on that topic. You know, Dara mentioned this, I think, in your podcast from last week. I'll take a different spin on it. But I think companies have to, first and foremost, be thinking about what are their values? What do they stand for? What are sort of the immutable truths of that company that have been true since it was founded? You know, P &G, when they were first founded, by and large, those things are still true. Certainly Starbucks, you know, the mission statement may have changed, but the objectives are still the same.

16:03For, you know, our friends at Adidas, it would be the same thing, right? You know, if it's not a meaningful connection to you, to your brand, to your values, to your mission, then you have to seriously question, like, well, why are you in the business of talking about that then? Corey is getting right to the heart of it. And actually, he's just warming up. Next, we talk about corporate reactions to ICE activities in Minneapolis, how AI is impacting the reputation of tech companies and more. That's after the break. Stay with us.

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17:57Deal is the fastest way to hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Deal, your forever people platform. Visit D-E-E-L dot com slash M-O-S to learn more and book a demo. Before the break, Corey Dubrow of Burson talked about the importance of reputation in today's charged business marketplace. Now we talk about the letter that 60 Minnesota companies signed responding to ICE activities in Minneapolis, us how AI is impacting the story Silicon Valley tells about itself and what each of us can do to safeguard our own personal reputations. Plus stories from inside Salesforce and Google. Let's jump back in.

18:44There's been activity or communications that in some ways has been performative. I think of a conversation I had with Ken Frazier at one point where he said, well, listen, if you believe in something only when it doesn't cost you anything, then it's not really a core value. And I guess I wonder how you have those conversations with clients, with CEOs, with leaders about what are the things that are immutable for you? It's kind of the same as talking about reputation in the sense that it's almost like a pie chart, right? You're not looking at something binary, trusted, not trusted. citizen, not citizen.

19:24You're really looking at something that has more nuance to it than that. I think you and I both know that nuance doesn't travel very effectively on the internet. It doesn't travel very effectively in today's world. But I think most business leaders have learned that the era of commenting on each and every social or news event has kind of passed, right? And I think for the most part, companies are relieved, but it doesn't necessarily mean staying mute in the face of major events. So, you know, as we've seen even pretty recently, Minneapolis or Minnesota, and you look at this letter and, you know, there were different views on the letter, right?

19:57Some people thought that it was pretty performative, pretty weak, didn't say a whole lot that, you know, it really didn't have much teeth in it. There's probably some validity to that. But I think the fact that you had companies willing as a cohort in a pack to speak up about something that was meaningful to them, meaning their local community, the place where their employees live, work, connect with one another. That's smart business, I think, for those companies. It's not performative. Maybe it wasn't as strong as people would have liked for it to be, given the stakes, given what had happened in Minneapolis.

20:31I mean, I had a private exchange with a CEO in Minneapolis just when the letter came out. And I was like, it's pretty lame. Like, It's not really getting into anything harsh. And this person said, maybe, but getting a whole group of people to agree to anything these days and to do it publicly is a bigger deal than it might seem like that they all band together. Did you get called in at all on these discussions around it? We certainly advised clients who signed up as a part of the letter. And I think to your point, you know, anytime you're doing something in a cohort or as a collective, there are going to be edges to that conversation, right?

21:18So there will be companies who believe that it wasn't strong enough or companies who barely made it to the table as it was. Like, to me, that letter was a good sign in the sense that, you know, exactly to the point of the person that you were speaking with. Getting that many people to sign on to something that at least pointed in a direction of saying, like, we disagree with the way that you are handling immigration and the way that you're standing up a presence in our community. That is a start. the start of a much longer and more meaningful conversation as opposed to the finale or some sort of bookmark that says they're there.

21:52You know, we've we've done our bit and we can we can peace out. I don't think most companies thought of it that way. Your reputation report also warns that corporate America overall could be a target heading into the midterms. You know, the billionaire heroes of business are also villains, right? Like how how concerned should leaders be about that and kind of what can they do? I think it's a very real thing. If I go back in time to my time at Starbucks, I mean, I had never experienced a personal death threat before for doing my job. I did then. I did at Google too. And I wasn't the only one. The first conversation that I ever had with the late Susan Wojcicki, literally the first conversation I ever had, is when I was at Salesforce and I was interviewing for the Google job and she very sort of secretly came up to me because she was on the Salesforce board.

22:49So at lunch, she kind of snuggled up to me and was just like, you know, I hear Sundar wants to talk to you. He's great. You should go talk to him. And I asked her about the shooting at YouTube. They had had an active shooter in their building in Northern California and that it was known that the shooter was looking for her personally. and her view of it was pretty sanguine. She was like, you know, we're here. We're here because we have a creator community to look after. I have an employee base that I'm responsible for looking after. She was very focused on safety of others, which I thought was incredible.

23:29She was a remarkable person. And that for me was sort of the first thing where I took a step back and I was like, maybe this is what leadership looks like, right? When you're constantly having to sort of juggle this idea of exposure, social exposure, real life exposure, reputation exposure. And her first thought was about the safety of her people, the safety of her creators. And so I think that, you know, corporate America being a target, it's not new, but I think we've seen shifts. And so while every situation is unique, right, our general counsel for clients is to focus on stakeholders, just like Susan was doing employees, customers, investors.

24:06And the goal isn't to garner headlines. I don't think it shouldn't be. It's really staying consistent with your corporate and leadership value. You're not scoring points. You know, you're managing a business. You're managing your reputation. Those things are interconnected with one another. When I think about the reputation of not just Google, but sort of Silicon Valley and big tech over all these days, it's like it's gone through these ebbs and flows. I mean, there was a point where it was just, you know, adoration, right, for a lot of those companies. And now the bigger they are, the more successful they are.

24:43It might be a little bit more mixed. Where do you see the reputation of Silicon Valley and sort of big tech right now? Well, it's really interesting. I mean, to go back to the AI point that we were speaking about before, one thing that was totally clear to me at Davos was you couldn't walk down the Davos Plats. You couldn't walk down the promenade without being bombarded by AI messages. Like every company that had a storefront or a presence had a different AI message. You know, whether it was AI as empowerment, whether it was AI as simplicity, whether it was AI as executing better at scale, whatever your company's message may be, you can do so much more than you ever could before with digital means.

25:29But by the same token, with great power comes great responsibility. We value as a society, and certainly Silicon Valley values, innovation, pushing ahead, breaking boundaries, kind of getting to a new place, as opposed to the kumbaya of getting everybody, you know, the Minneapolis thing, getting everybody to agree on a difficult thing, you know, around a table and kind of sign their name to it. And I think that's, for Silicon Valley, that's the challenge. It's both the upside of the potential and it is the potential downside of the risks that come from a world that's catching up from a regulatory point of view and sees that for every cool part of AI, there are some downsides.