Some costs are easy to track in an Excel spreadsheet. Others aren’t. A campaign that didn’t work out. A project that went over budget. A customer who stopped buying. All of these can be measured.
It’s harder to gauge the cost of a reputation that has gradually eroded. A company loses a customer and often looks to the most immediate reason: price, competition, service, or timing. But the decision isn’t always that simple. There are cases where trust was already lacking before the decision was made. And that’s much harder to identify.
We all start from a lower point than we realize
It’s best to start by accepting an uncomfortable truth: the starting point today isn’t neutrality—it’s mistrust.
O Edelman Trust Barometer de 2026, que inquiriu 34 mil pessoas em 28 países, descreve aquilo a que chama a passagem de uma crise de insatisfação para uma crise de isolamento. Setenta por cento das pessoas não estão dispostas a confiar noutras ou mostram-se hesitantes em fazê-lo. Sete em cada dez. E apenas 32 por cento acreditam que a próxima geração terá uma vida melhor do que a sua.
This isn’t data about companies. It’s data about the environment in which companies operate. When seven out of ten people are initially hesitant, an organization that hasn’t done anything to build trust isn’t starting from scratch. It’s starting below zero.
It is also worth noting that, even though companies are the institutions people trust the most, the 2024 edition of the same study placed that level of trust slightly below 60 percent—the threshold above which trust is considered high. In other words: the highest-ranked institution is, technically speaking, still not trustworthy.
Our reputation precedes us
When a company goes into a meeting with a potential client, it doesn’t necessarily start from scratch. Someone has already heard of it. Someone has looked up its name. Someone has visited its website, checked out its LinkedIn page, come across a news article, or asked a colleague if they know that company. The meeting often begins a few days before it actually takes place.
The same goes for a job candidate. Before accepting an interview, they can seek out opinions about the company. They can talk to someone who works there. They can try to get a sense of what the work environment is like, what the leaders are like, or simply whether what the organization says about itself matches reality. It’s an assessment that almost always takes place without the company realizing it’s being evaluated.
When You Have to Explain Too Much
A good reputation doesn’t mean a company never has problems—because every company does. The difference often lies in the level of trust that exists when those problems arise. A company that’s known for following through, responding, and taking responsibility starts from a different place when it makes a mistake. There’s context. There’s a track record. There are people who’ve had positive experiences with the company.
On the contrary, when a reputation is fragile, every problem seems to confirm a preexisting notion.
There is a finding from the Trust Barometer that describes this mechanism with almost unsettling precision: among people with a strong sense of injustice, companies are perceived as 81 points less ethical. It’s not that these people have had a worse experience ; rather, they interpret the same experience differently. The prior frame changes how the facts are interpreted.
That’s why a bad reputation can be costly even without an actual bill for it.
We need to explain more. Answer more questions. Negotiate more. Be more persuasive.
A business proposal may require additional meetings. A hiring process may take longer. A partner may ask for more assurances. A client may hesitate before renewing a contract.
These aren’t necessarily communication problems. But communication may have contributed to how the company is perceived.
How much does this actually cost?
It’s worth translating the argument into simple arithmetic, because that’s where it ceases to be philosophy.
Imagine a business deal that, at a company with a solid reputation, is closed in three meetings over the course of six weeks. At a company where there are doubts, the same deal takes five meetings and eleven weeks, involves an additional member of management, and ends with a request for a discount that would not have been made otherwise.
None of these hours are recorded as a cost to reputation, but they do show up as business time, as a long sales cycle, and as lost margin. Multiplied by a year’s worth of proposals, it’s a large number hidden within line items that no one associates with communication.
The problem with thinking only about reputation when there’s a crisis
It’s relatively easy to remember a reputation when something goes wrong.
Bad news. A social media post that goes viral. A customer comment. An internal issue that becomes public. That’s when questions like “What should we say?” or “How should we respond?” arise. These are legitimate questions, but they come too late.
A reputação não se resolve com um comunicado. Muito menos com uma publicação cuidadosamente escrita depois de uma crise começar.
It is built over months and years, through many seemingly small things: the way a company talks about its work, the quality of the information it provides, the way its experts participate in the debate, what customers say, its relationship with journalists, and, above all, the gap between what it promises and what it delivers.
Reputation is also a matter of people
There is another aspect that deserves attention: the employees. It is difficult to separate the company’s external reputation from the experience of those who work there. Sooner or later, a significant discrepancy between what is said and reality becomes apparent.
The data helps us gauge the prevailing sentiment. In 2025, the Trust Barometer reported that 61 percent of people expressed a moderate or high level of dissatisfaction, and that four in ten would approve of at least one form of hostile activism. Among those aged 18 to 34, that figure rose to 53 percent.
Today, anyone can talk about an organization. An employee, a former employee, a job applicant, or a customer. This doesn’t mean that all opinions carry the same weight or that a single criticism should define a company’s image. It simply means that there is no longer such a clear line between official communications and what people say about an organization.
Companies no longer have sole control over their reputation. They can influence it, they can work to build it, and they can respond when necessary. But controlling it is another matter entirely.
The good part: confidence is on the rise
There is a figure from 2026 that often goes unnoticed and is, in fact, the most optimistic in the entire study. Sixty-two percent of people who trust lifestyle content creators say that this would lead them to consider trusting companies they do not currently trust.
In other words: mistrust isn’t a final verdict. It’s a state of mind. It can be transferred, shared, and rebuilt. Those who show up consistently—with identifiable people and useful content—manage to make a difference. Those who only show up when they need to don’t.
The return that doesn’t show up in the metrics
Perhaps this is the most thankless part of reputation management. It’s possible to measure reach, visits, mentions, leads, or engagement. It’s not so simple, however, to measure the decision of someone who chose a company because, in some way, they already trusted it. We won’t always know how many business deals were facilitated by a good reputation. We do know, however, that the absence of a good reputation can create obstacles—and those obstacles come at a cost.
It takes longer to close deals. It’s harder to hire. There’s more resistance during negotiations. There’s more pressure on the sales teams. There’s more work when a problem arises.
Ultimately, a good reputation doesn’t guarantee that a company will win every opportunity. But it can prevent some from being lost before they even begin.
That is why viewing reputation solely as a matter of communication is too narrow. It is a matter of management.
Because building trust takes time, but losing it can happen in a single day—and regaining it usually takes much more effort.
EDC publishes the Portuguese edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer annually.
Se quer perceber onde está hoje a reputação da sua empresa e o que a está a travar, fale connosco.
