RSS 76: The T.R.U.S.T. Framework: Scott Baradell on How to Build Lasting Brand Credibility in the AI Era

0:00How much do you trust what you read on the internet? How much do you trust from the guru on LinkedIn? How much do you trust from ChatTPT, Perplexity, or Claude? And how much do you trust from that influencer who happened to put something on Instagram last week that you were following? My next guest, Scott Baradell, has studied the concept of trust for quite some time. He's one of the world's most renowned trust experts, has deep background and expertise in everything from PR all the way through to SEO, and now the whole world of AEO, GEO, LLMSEO, etc. In this conversation, we're going to dive deep into understanding the factors of trust that matter in the modern era.

0:38Not only if you're in consumer, but also if you're in B2B. Folks, if you're playing the long game, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Ross Simmons Show. I'm thrilled to connect you with Scott Baradale.

1:02Scott, thanks so much for coming on. I'm really excited to have you here. You redefined PR as the art of securing trust at scale. Could you give me a bit of a rundown on what made that old definition kind of fall and why this became the new concept that you thought was relevant and important for the industry to kind of embrace? Well, you know, the PRSA, which is the organization of the PR industry in the United States, has a definition, but it's like very, you know, it's about relationships between organizations and their publics and all this stuff that's like doesn't really connect, I think, with like what someone would call and ask for if they want PR.

1:43Right. And what they do call and ask for is media coverage, you know, and to me, that's pretty tactical, you know, and can be seen as kind of a tool in the marketer's toolkit. Whereas, you know, when I went from journalism to PR, I had this idea of PR as being more strategic than that. And so PR has kind of let itself be tethered as a profession to the news media as the traditional news media has shrunk in other types of influence from online reviews to influencers, take your pick, have become more and more important. And so my thought was, well, let's extend beyond this, creating ourselves in this corner of media relations and start thinking a little more broadly about why people really come to a PR firm.

2:37Do they come to us, even though they say we want media coverage, do they want media coverage for its own sake? You know, no, generally what they want is what media coverage gives you, which is third-party validation and the trust that comes from that. So what I thought was, and the idea of the book that I wrote, Trust Signals, a few years ago, was, well, why don't we move from the tactical of earned media to the strategic of what earned media delivers as a benefit, which is trust? And let's look at all the ways today. Let's look at all the ways in 2026 that people are earning trust online. And why doesn't PR attempt to be kind of the keeper of trust within organizations?

3:24So really part of the mission in having the definition, the art of securing trust at scale, is that the way I've always thought of marketing is the marketer's job is to look at what your best salesperson is doing to be successful and find a way to scale, bottle that and scale it. Right. And in the case of PR, I want PR people to scale trust. It's just, it's really an attempt to elevate the profession as much as anything else. Right. I love that. When you think of this post-truth world, like what does that mean to you? What did the pre versus the post kind of represent? Well, this term post-truth world was actually coined by a journalist back in the first Gulf War, way back in the early 90s.

4:10And how he came up with it was that was the first time the military and the U.S. government had implemented a pool system of reporters so they would have a much limited and much controlled view of what was going on with the first Gulf War. Right. As opposed to Vietnam. Right. Vietnam was everybody's – Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, yeah. Well, and showing – and this was on TV every night, and it's a big reason. warrant the warrant what the writer of this piece where he came up with this idea of the post-truth world was is that people knew that they weren't getting the full story but they liked it right they liked it right so how does that relate to us today yeah we go out and we seek out the news that we agree with and that we like and the influencers we like oh i agree with joe rogan so i'll believe what he says or i'll go here i'll go here and so the post-truth world means that you know go back to the the mid uh 20th century or the 60s and 70s and walter cronkite the idea of the uncle waltie the cbs for many years that everyone trusted him there's nobody like that anymore right and so the post-truth world mean is there's no one sees a single source of truth or a shared shared basis of truth or authenticity anymore.

5:31And so what that means for brands is you have to know your audience really well. So you know what sources of truth are sources of truth to them. And that goes beyond liberal and conservative. There's lots of different flavors of that. You argue often that we're not in a trust deficit. We're in a trust displacement. What does that mean? And how should brands think and act based off of that? You know what I mean by that? One of my favorite movies, do you ever see Magnolia? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's one of my favorite movies. I've probably seen it at least 10 times. Love it. And I'm not that savvy, but for some reason, that movie always makes me cry.

6:11And there's this really moving scene near the end where there's this lonely guy, this downtrodden character. And he says, I really do have love to give. I just don't know where to put it. Right. That line just stayed with me. It hit me so hard. And I thought, that's what I thought, how people are with trust. You know, it's like, yes, you might say, oh, I can't trust politicians anymore. I can't trust the media anymore. I can't trust government. The latest Edelman research says a lot of people don't even trust nonprofits anymore, but people can't really exist and be happy if they don't have things to invest trust in.

6:45And that can be, it can be a podcaster that you follow. It can be, it's why people go down these rabbit holes. They find people that they connect with. And so you have all these different splintered, you know, places where people cobble together the sources that they trust. And mine could be very different from yours, which could be very different from someone else's. And so that's what I mean by, you know, the trust displacement. It's gone from, we all trust the big news networks to, I think there was a lot more respect for, say, the presidency years ago than in recent years. that's all gone away, but we found lots of other places to, to, to find that sense of trust that I think we need as humans.

7:30So you have the book about trust signals. Then you have Idea Grove. Does Idea Grove support brands with understanding how they can demonstrate trust? Could you tell me a bit of how trust plays a role in your delivery and your, the work that you do, you guys do? Yeah, I mean, we try to, and especially today, as you can imagine, Ross, probably half the calls we get today are, hey, can you help us show up in LLM results when people ask about our brand? And so is essentially automating or replicating this kind of process that I talked about in the book of how people find little signals of trust. I call them breadcrumbs of trust also because the idea is hopefully they'll lead you to your website and then your website draws them through to contact you or make a purchase.

8:19We did a survey not too long ago of a thousand people asking them about their use of LLMs in purchasing and trust related. And what it showed was that, as you can imagine, more and more people are using ChatBT, using Claude and so forth in their purchases. But in our survey, which I think came out was in April or May, only 2 % said for an unfamiliar brand, that recommendation would be enough. The rest all said they went to validate it somewhere else. So they go to Google. Is it popping up high in Google? They go to the reviews and so forth. So to answer your question, we help clients with that whole picture.

9:00I'll give you one example. we have a client that's an MSP, um, in a regional MSP and they were not showing up. We did SEO for them and some PR work and other work that they were not showing up in LLM results when you were looking for an MSP in their area. Right. And so what I saw, um, was that for all of these results, there was a review site, cloud Tango, that was always popping up every time. Right. And so So, you know, our client had a presence on Cloud Tango, but, you know, they were kind of low on a list and they weren't popping up. All we didn't have to do in that case to have an immediate impact was they made a sponsorship investment that moved up to the top of the list.

9:47That was carried over and suddenly they were top result. And yet you could say, well, wait a minute, that's paid, right? Right. It is. But what I tell people, because whether it's journalism or whether it's, all the lines are blurred today. Right. So the way I look at it is not earned versus paid. I look at it as trusted versus untrusted. Love that. Right. And if it's pulled over without any, oh, this was sponsored, this isn't. No, it's like this is who we're recommending and we're ChatGBT. Then that's a playing field we work on today. Right. I love that. So essentially you base it off of a simple insight.

10:26People are using ChatTPT to figure out what are the MSPs they get on the shortlist. You folks find out that there's a certain domain that's showing up in the citations time and time again. You work with the client, you get them placed from number 20 on the list to number one through a sponsorship, and then they're able to influence the LLMs. Do you think that in the future, more brands need to think holistically in nature around this stuff? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you need to think about how, in general, no single trust signal is going to close the deal. And I hate to tell marketers this, but I worry a little less about attribution and a little more about this constellation of trust breadcrumbs that you're laying out online.

11:11And then what's great for PR people, because PR people, we've always had the hardest time with being connected to sales. PR has always been kind of above the funnel, right? Yeah. And I'm not seen as tying directly to sales. And so it used to be very subjective. Like it could be like, well, our CEO doesn't believe in PR. Right. Like it's like it's a religion, right? Yeah, yeah. I don't have faith. Well, what a big thing that AIO has done, as I know you know, like 80 plus percent of citations in LLMs are earned media. Yeah. And so what we can do now is we can show that as we're moving people up in terms of their AI visibility, we can actually show for the prompts that are important to them.

11:58Let's say we're tracking 50 prompts. We can show, look, we moved you up. And these articles we place for you, these are now in the citations. So you can see the direct impact of PR in a way that you couldn't in the past. It's like the survey. You go to ChatGPT, but still most people are going and checking other things. If you just somehow finagled your way through a sponsorship to a ChatGPT recommendation, but then you didn't have the stuff out, the third-party validation out there to back it up, that alone is not going to be enough. So TrustSignals, you launched the book in 2022. There's a site that we're talking about now called ChatGPT that comes out in 2022.

12:39The timing seems very interesting. How does trust signals show up now? Like there's the pre-AI boom and trust mattered. How does it influence things today with like all of the stuff that we're talking about? Like, do you feel like the concepts and the philosophies still carry true today? And if so, maybe even more? Yeah, I think more than ever, because like I said, I really feel like what was happening before. I'll give you an example. we had a employee who was about to have a baby and she and her husband had already blown their budget. You know, it's her first baby. So on the baby room, it still needed a crib masters.

13:17And so first thing Lori was going to do is find the cheapest crib mattress she could because they were already over budget. And so she's starting to look for that. But then in the back of her mind, she remembered that months earlier, there was some influencers she followed on social media who talked about toxicity and some safety or issues related to the crib mattresses. And as a mom, to be mom of a first baby, it planted a seed, right? And suddenly she remembered. So instead of looking for cheapest crib mattress, she started looking for non-toxic in terms like this. Shifts the behavior. She couldn't think of the name of the brand.

13:58But when she did a Google search that brand popped up as one of the top results and then she made the connection oh that's the brand that that influencer was talking about right so influencer mention way long time ago being at the top of google if that had been on the page to google maybe she never made the connection right so she she goes there then she's looking at reviews then she found like parenting magazine had given it some seal for such and some environmental organization on its website there was a third party seal so all of these things made her end up spending like three times what she was planning to spend on the right but if it hadn't been for all of them yeah and so all that is to say with ai what a chat gpt can do is do all that for you right right right so all that research i just did you can search chat gpt and they'll appear in the citations now right right The only difference is that I think right now, most of us, according to the survey, 98 % of us, don't trust ChatGP enough to then, hey, call them and make a purchase.

15:05You're still going to check it. I just wonder if it's not too long before we trust these LLNs enough that we don't feel the need to do that checking. Do you think we get there? And if so, how long do you think it takes? I don't know. I mean, it's so unpredictable, right? I mean, you've got people predicting that, you know, AI is going to get everybody out of their jobs or AI is going to create a paradise or AI is going to destroy the world. But I think it's all happened. Everything that's happened has happened a lot faster than any of us thought. Yeah, certainly wouldn't be far fetched to think that within a year or so, we've all become so used to it.

15:46And the technology has improved to the point where we have enough trust in the results we're getting that we don't feel the need to then go Google and double check for ourselves. Yeah, I can imagine that happening through if you've had enough experiences where it went well for you. True. You know, and technology is improving at the same time. I can imagine us getting to that point relatively soon. Do you think it's different when you think of consumer trust versus B2B trust? Like is trust the same philosophy, no matter if we're talking about a mattress or we're talking about B2B CRM software? Like is it all the same or is trust different depending on like whose money we might be using?

16:27Yeah, that's a good question. Well, there are differences. I tend to believe that there's more similarities than differences and more similarities than most people think, because ultimately it's a human making the purchase at the end of the day. Right. And humans, whether it's a million dollar software or a pack of gum, you know, people are making decisions. Ultimately, there's emotion involved. It's not like Spock is making this choice, you know. Right. And so all the triggers that I think work on consumers work in B2B as well. Right. So that's the approach we take. That's why we think about things like, you know, when we talk about helping a client with their brand message, we use this concept that I thought I would write another book about, but that shift's probably sailed.

17:13But we called it three-dimensional branding, meaning that if you think of a brand like a human body, your body is the product. Your heart is your values or mission or involvement in community or the reason behind why you did this. In other words, I didn't start this company just to make money. I started this company because I saw a problem. I wanted to solve it. I wanted to make the world a better place. that kind of narrative behind why a company or product started is really important to people. And then if you can back that up, it's even more powerful. And then, and then the brain is thought leadership.

17:49So heart is that message, that connection to the community and that emotional connection. The brain is that kind of intellectual connection through thought leadership and the body is the product and your UVP. You've got to have all of those pieces in place. I think it's not so much for B2B versus B2C. It's what I would call low consideration versus high consideration purchases. So in other words, things like thought leadership and these other elements become so important is when there's a lot of products, both consumer and B2B products where 95 % of your potential buyers are not in market at that time.

18:26So in other words, consumer purchase of a car or a house is very similar to a company's process of buying expensive software where they're locked into a contract and so forth. Look, I'm not going to buy a new car until I'm off my current lease. But if you can be planting seeds with me, and that's whether it's a dealership or whether it's a car model or whatever it might be, then you've got me in a good position when I am ready to buy. And I think that's the way it is with B2B too. So I think more in terms of like, What's the sales cycle versus who's buying it? Could you talk a little bit about the TrustSignals framework that you've built and how that can be applied to businesses?

19:05The idea of the TrustSignals framework is to try to take the elements of how you build trust and to create a simple model. So trust is an acronym. The letters in the acronym are third-party validation, reputation management, user experience, search presence, and thought leadership. And so the third-party validation being the single most important, and we've talked about that a lot. Reputation management, though, is you've got to protect your backside at the same time. If you're doing all this to get media coverage and stuff, but you're getting negative reviews or you're getting these other issues, that's going to undercut what you're trying to create pretty quickly.

19:45User experience just means that, man, if you haven't invested in your website, then so much of what you're doing is wasted. I mean, when we have, for example, how we started doing websites, because we started out doing PR content and SEO. How we started doing websites is clients would really want PR visibility, but they had really bad websites. And I'm like, do you really want to drive, you know, people to this? It's not going to help, you know? And so that's where the core of everything starts online. And so when we talk about user experience, the way I talk about it is, you know, some web design firms think about, you know, when they present what they do, it's all visual pyrotechnics and look at this cool stuff we did.

20:28And for other design firms, it's very, very conversion oriented. It's like we made this button green and therefore we've got 37 % more conversions. I just talk about you need to use that website to build rapport and a sense of connection. And it's ultimately about building trust because until you build trust, like a salesperson is not going to sell you anything until you trust them enough what they're saying, right? Same thing for a website. It has to take that same approach. And so that's what I mean by user experience. And the way I relate it for people who are like, oh, I don't know that it's that big a deal.

21:01I don't want to spend$50 ,000 on my website or whatever it might be. Well, you know, everything that happens with a person who doesn't know your company and hasn't used your company services, who goes to a website, it's a proxy for how they think about you. Like, for example, if your website is slow, I just wonder if everything you do is slow. You know, when your customer service is, I'm on the phone for now. If it's hard to find the things you're looking for, I wonder if you're the right company for me because maybe you don't understand what I need. You can think about every decision someone makes on their site.

21:34So that's why I think user experience is more important. So that's the you in trust. And I think we know the importance of search. And a lot of people think about search as, well, I want to be high in Google so people come to my site. Well, as you know, about 70 % of searches don't end in a click anymore. But I still think they're super important in terms of if you come up high, that's the equivalent of ChatGPT's endorsement, right? Google's endorsing you. And so there's that trust element of being high in search, whether it's a zero-click search or someone clicks through. And then the last is thought leadership.

22:13And that's the whole idea of recognizing that unless your buyer is exactly in that moment where it's time for them to buy in a long time purchase, then you're just going to alienate them with constantly hitting them with sales messages. And so you have to form a connection by sharing helpful information. I kind of extend the idea of thought leadership beyond, you know, the traditional idea of thought leadership is have some brilliant viewpoint about the future of your industry or what. I just say, be helpful. You know, just be helpful. Provide information that's helpful. You don't have to impress anybody about how smart you are.

22:50Right. But provide non-sales information that's helpful. And that obviously builds rapport and trust. And it's really important between when that person's ready to buy. I love that. That's awesome. When you think of the various trust signals, is there one that most brands underinvest in that you think they're forgetting or leaving on the table that would probably be worth more attention than they typically give today? Yeah, I know a lot of companies. and in our experience, it can be big companies or small. It can be any size company. They don't want to, like we were talking about websites. I'm a big believer in original photography for websites.

23:31And, you know, a website, if it's a big website can cost a fair amount, right? And so it's not uncommon for a brand to say, well, I don't really have time for that. Can we just make up some graphics and use some stock photography? And we really try to push back on that. And we don't make any money for the photography. We work with photographers and they pay the photographer directly. It's only because we're trying to create a better product for them. And there are a few better ways to earn trust than in a website than by people seeing who they'd be working with. This is a true story. I mentioned it in the book is a company was doing a 50 ,000 a month retainer.

24:13And they had come down to two agencies. They'd gone through this whole process. They got down to two finalists. And after they got the two finalist presentations, and I'm sure this would drive them both crazy, but the head of marketing just said, I'm just not feeling it. I just don't feel it. And so she did some Googling and she found our site at the time. And we had at that time some very kind of fun, creative teen photography. Cool. And she said, when she got on the phone, she said, you know, I've been doing this whole process. But when I saw those photos, I felt an immediate connection to your team.

24:52That's cool. And it ended up being, you know, about$500 ,000. So I'm just saying, that's not going to happen every day, right? But I'm just saying. It's one signal. It gets you something that stock photography never will. Yeah, that's fair. I love that. You mentioned in the past that you're somewhat skeptical of some of the AI, SEO gimmicks and things like that. What do you feel like is the true delta and true alpha that more people need to focus on instead of getting caught up on whatever's trending on LinkedIn today? Well, I think it's just like with SEO in that there are things that will work now and might work for the next few months, but that won't work for the long term.

25:32So I'm not saying don't do them, but I'm saying like, for example, as I'm sure you know, every company in the world, it seems like, has now written a blog post saying top 10. Yeah. Like, and they put themselves at the top of the list. Right. And it was because it was working. Right. It's still working some. Right. Right. I think mainly what they do now is they'll look at all the lists and there's so many now and they'll triangulate and figure out who's mentioned on the list. Yeah. So you're just thrown into the pool of the others. But so it's already morphed in that way. But all of those things, it's just like how Google just continually got smarter and all of these tricks.

26:10So I would just say, hey, if you have time to do some of those tricks to get some quick attention, go for it. But the tried and true is get real validation from real trusted sources and preferably sources that have been around and that you expect to be around, like your key trade publications, tier one media, the top review sites, et cetera. You know, and so it's OK to play around with that stuff. But if you spend too much time with it, it could be like poof. It's going to stop doing it. Or as soon as you chat GPT gets a little smarter, you've lost all of that. You've seen a lot of the shifts from the early days of search and SEO all the way to this new era of AI visibility.

26:56Looking back, have there been key decisions that you feel were pivotal for you to grow Idea Grove into what it is today and like where you folks have grown and how you've succeeded? Like, is there anything that stands out through the turmoil that those who are going through it maybe for the first time could like listen to and hear for like guidance on going through some interesting chaotic shifts that you've learned over the years that you would give advice to? Yeah. Well, you know, I, I started the company 20 years ago now because was frustrated with the agent PR agencies I work with because at the time, most of them didn't really have even writers on staff and they, they, in terms of what they were producing, it was for a B2B tech company, which is where they could go about an inch deep.

27:41And I wanted, when I started IdeaGrove, to be someone who could not only pitch and get you on media, but also write your white papers and things like that. So that would give me more credibility with the media too, right? Because if they'd ask me a question, I could actually answer it and not just run back to the client, which is what the agencies would always do with me. So to the point where a lot of you'd be like, why do I need you? Just to send out those emails. So IdeaGrove started with the idea of starting to integrate services that made sense to go together. And that's what we've tried to do and just tried to stay a step or two ahead over time.

28:18I mean, in terms of building our competencies around PR content and SEO, we kind of got lucky in that sense because those have to be the three things that are probably most important to do well with AIO. And SEO and PR are often traditionally kind of like oil and water. They don't mesh well. And we had that foundation in place. And what's great about AIO is it really makes PR people for the first time start to love the SEO stuff a little bit because PR people are getting more respect because finally they're getting some validation through metrics that the CEO can see tie to sales. And so I think AIO is going to do a lot in bringing those together.

29:00We've had some good vision sometimes, but we've also gotten lucky at other times. But I just think you can just never rest on your laurels. And that's always been true. But I think it's more true now because what you're doing now can be totally outdated in a year or less. Yeah. So the way that we're, as a small agency, morphing and changing all the time just to try to stay ahead. because when people are coming to you as an agency for expertise, because you need to be ahead of where they are. True. Right. If you're where they are, they don't need you. Right. So that's why it's so important. Fortunately, you know, a lot of times, you know, people in corporate jobs, they don't have time to do that.

29:43But our whole job in an agency should be looking at, because we're doing the same thing across a lot of clients, and we're not having to do all the company-specific stuff in the clients. So we've got a natural advantage as an agency. Yeah. But unless you attack that with real curiosity to go out and figure out how you can keep staying a couple steps ahead, you can lose that advantage real fast. How do you maintain the culture within the agency as all of these shifts are happening? What's been your kind of belief on how you can maintain the culture that you folks have built? Well, we have a close-knit team.

30:24Most of us have been with the company a long time and mostly senior, which is good. And one of the things that we did, I hate to say it, but it's true and it was smart for us, is for a while we haven't been bringing on interns, entry-level folks. Everyone who comes onto the team comes with a level of experience where they can really contribute and operate more independently. And we also, since COVID, we went from in-office to virtual environment. So about half of our team is in Dallas, Texas. The other half is right across the country. And I just think we're a close-knit, mostly senior team, and we're all in these client meetings together.

31:04So it's not like, oh, the senior team's off, and let's have a philosophical meeting about things. We're actually meeting about a client. That's awesome. We're trying to solve a problem for a client, and then can we take that over? So I think because all of us are in the day-to-day work, it creates a closeness that you wouldn't have if it were more hierarchical. That's fair. That makes sense. When you think of the future of trust and how it shows up for businesses, do you see any trends or shifts that are happening? I know we've talked about a lot with AEO and AIO. does anything stand out that you feel like more people should be paying attention to that might not have been covered even in the book, but you think might be coming soon?

31:46I'm really curious about, you know, one thing that hasn't really come to bear in LLM results yet is things like TikTok or a lot of influencers. You could argue that based on what the LLMs are pulling and how powerful they become, the importance of influencers and TikTok and so forth in terms of business has fallen back a little bit. But I think it'll be interesting to see what happens there. But I also think about kind of the merger of AI and influencers in terms of things like AI companions. And will we ultimately be able to have kind of a buddy out there who we've created to believe the things that we believe and we've put everything into them.

32:35And so I don't have to go search and see if I like Joe Rogan. I create it. It's the ultimate, I guess, in terms of finding the person that you want to trust because you made them and, you know, and the decisions coming from them. That's a kind of a little scary thought. It's really not too far away. There are already some pretty sophisticated AI companions out there. What if we had a really sophisticated AI companion that we put together that that was giving us all our shopping advice? Right. That's fascinating. It's very likely to be honest. Like when you think of how much information we're passing off to some of these LLMs, eventually when they know us so deeply and we start to build that familiarity, even if it's a pixel, that trust becomes kind of assumed.

33:22So you, so to speak, that's interesting. That could be a whole new book, Scott, who knows? I love it. If folks did want to learn more about you, where would they go? How could they learn more about the work that you folks are doing at Idea Grove. Of course, I'll include link in the show notes to the book as well. But is there anything or anywhere that people should go if they want to get connected with you and the team? Yeah. Well, our agency is Idea Grove, like an orangegroove.grove.com. You can search for the book on Amazon, Trust Signals. And we also have a trustsignals.com website. That's a thought leadership site around these kinds of issues.

33:55Awesome. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. And thanks for your contributions to the industry. The trust framework is one that I'm sure a lot of the listeners will get a lot of value out of. And then a lot of organizations have gotten a lot of value out of over the last few years. So thank you again for coming on. Oh, Ross, thanks for all you do. And thanks very much for having me.