Emotion, Trust, and Transparency Will Define the Future of Marketing

At this year’s AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, Stagwell, Allison Worldwide, and Ad Fontes Media brought forward a picture of America’s shifting emotional climate, and the implications are profound. The data they shared reveals a marketplace shaped less by rational evaluation and more by heightened emotion, eroding trust, and deep questions about fairness. For higher education, brands, and marketers in every industry, this moment demands new communication strategies rooted in empathy, clarity, and credibility.

Below are the key insights that will shape how organizations build reputation and connect with audiences in 2025 and beyond.

1. Emotion Is the New Core Metric for Understanding Consumers

Stagwell’s Harris Poll research showed that sentiment analysis no longer goes far enough. Sentiment tells us whether people feel positively or negatively. But emotion tells us why, and that is what drives decisions.

Harris Poll’s work demonstrates that emotions like frustration, hope, fear, inspiration, and resentment are the real predictors of action. With 95% of human decision-making driven by emotion, organizations that only measure sentiment miss out on the nuances that shape trust, loyalty, and engagement.

If you aren’t measuring emotion, you’re not measuring reality.

2. Corporate Reputation Is Being Redefined by Pricing and Perceived Fairness

The 2025 Axios Harris Poll revealed that nearly half of America’s most visible companies saw a decline in reputation this year, and two straight years of inflation have reshaped consumer expectations.

People aren’t angry about prices alone.
They’re angry about fairness.

Consumers see companies posting strong financials while raising prices, and they interpret that as inequitable. Stagwell underscored that pricing is now a reputational issue, not simply a financial one. Brands that communicate transparently about value, cost, and investment perform better in the long run.

3. Gen Z Is Rewriting the Meaning of Value in Education and Work

Harris Poll and Indeed data illuminated a generational shift that higher education cannot ignore:

• 51% of Gen Z say their degree was not worth the money.

• 68% believe they could do their job without a degree.

This generation evaluates institutions through a lens of ROI, fairness, real-world utility, and access. Mentorship, guidance, and personalized support matter deeply. Traditional narratives about prestige or legacy no longer resonate on their own.

Value must be demonstrated, not declared.

4. America Faces a Crisis of Trust, and Higher Ed Is Caught in the Middle

More than half of Americans report they cannot tell what is true from what is false in the information they consume. As Vanessa Otero from Ad Fontes Media emphasized, today’s environment collapses credible journalism and low-quality commentary into the same noisy feed.

This has two implications:

• Traditional authority is no longer enough.
  People don’t automatically trust institutions, experts, or media brands.
  
  

• Third-party credibility is essential.
  People trust what comes from sources they already deem reliable — influencers, educators, journalists, and peers with perceived authenticity.

This is a new trust economy, and the rules have changed.

5. DEI, ESG, and Other Acronyms Are Losing Their Power, but the Values Behind Them Still Matter

Stagwell shared clear evidence that acronyms like DEI and ESG have become politicized shorthand, often misunderstood by the public. Yet when you strip away the labels and ask Americans about the underlying ideas: fairness, diverse perspectives, belonging, ethical business … support remains overwhelmingly strong.

This reinforces an important principle:

People support values more than they support vocabulary.

For communicators, this means avoiding jargon, centering human outcomes, and articulating values in real, relatable language.

6. Influencers, Not Institutions, Are Now the Front Line of Public Trust

Influence has splintered. Today’s audiences get their news and worldview from a mix of:

• journalists

• creators

• subject-matter experts

• “news influencers” who sit somewhere in between

Gen Z, in particular, seeks out expertise that is accessible, transparent, and human. They gravitate toward voices who explain the world in digestible, credible ways, not through official statements, but through conversation.

For higher ed and brands alike, the strategy is shifting from:

“Broadcast from the institution”
to
“Empower credible voices to carry the message.”

7. Reputation is an Emotional Contract

The overarching insight from the AMA session was this:

Reputation is what people say about you.
Trust is how they feel about you.

And today, feelings are winning. Whether you’re a brand, a university, or a nonprofit, your success depends on your ability to:

• communicate with clarity

• show fairness and empathy

• demonstrate value with evidence

• build trust through credible messengers

• align your actions with your stated values

This is an era where emotion, transparency, and consistency shape public perception more than ever before.

The Path Forward

For marketers and leaders, the moment calls for a new kind of strategy, one that centers on emotional intelligence, data-driven empathy, and authentic transparency.

The organizations that thrive in this environment will be those who listen deeply, communicate honestly, and embrace the complexity of modern audiences. The insights from Stagwell, Allison Worldwide, Harris Poll, and Ad Fontes Media offer a blueprint for navigating a world where trust is scarce, attention is fragmented, and emotion is the driving force behind behavior.