Edelman Trust Barometer
Once a year, the world gets a trust report card — and business keeps beating government.
- Publisher
- Edelman (the PR firm)
- Running since
- 2001, annual
- Scope
- ~28 countries, 30,000+ respondents
- Recurring finding
- Business the most-trusted institution
Forms & parts of speech
What it is
The Edelman Trust Barometer is the annual survey the PR firm Edelman has fielded since 2001 — 30,000+ respondents across roughly 28 countries, measuring trust in four institutions: business, government, media, and NGOs. Its drumbeat findings shape corporate communications: business as the most-trusted institution, 'my employer' as the most-trusted relationship, and the era's defining anxieties (misinformation, polarization, AI) tracked year over year.
Why marketers rely on it
It is the only long-running, global, public dataset on institutional trust — which made it the citation infrastructure for stakeholder capitalism, employer-brand investment, and CEO-activism debates. For marketers it supplies the macro layer: when the barometer shows audiences trusting employers over media, internal comms and owned channels inherit strategic weight that no campaign brief would otherwise grant them.
How to use it well
Use it for the macro framing (which institutions and spokespeople carry credibility this year), the country cuts for international work (trust profiles differ wildly), and the 'trusted voices' findings for channel and spokesperson choices. Remember the publisher: a PR firm benefits when trust looks like the product — read the methodology, use the trends more than the absolutes.
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonyms
Origin & history
Richard Edelman's firm launched it in 2001 for the Davos audience — a PR company productizing the question its clients kept asking after the anti-globalization protests: who do people believe? The annual Davos-week release became a fixture of the corporate calendar.
Etymology: source.
Usage trends
Search interest for this term over the last five years:
Common questions
- What is the Edelman Trust Barometer?
- The PR firm Edelman's annual global survey (since 2001) of trust in business, government, media, and NGOs.
- What are its recurring findings?
- Business as the most-trusted institution, employers as the most-trusted relationship, and declining media/government trust.
- How should marketers use it?
- For macro framing and messenger selection — whose voice carries trust this year — with methodology and publisher interest in mind.
Related tools & calculators
- toolCAC calculator
- toolLTV-to-CAC ratio
Resources & people to follow
- referenceEdelmanTrustBarometer — the annual report
- referenceEdelman.com — methodology archive
- referenceKantar BrandZ — the brand-level complement
Curated, non-competitor resources verified per term.
Related training
- moduleContent marketing
Disciplines
Areas of marketing where edelman trust barometer is a core concern: