Beyond Performative Purpose: Brand Trust in the Post-ESG Era

In a landscape saturated with slogans, pledges, and polished campaigns, trust has become one of the rarest and most valuable currencies a brand can earn. No longer a peripheral consideration or hygiene factor, brand trust is now a critical business differentiator - impacting everything from customer loyalty to investor confidence, employee engagement, and long-term enterprise value.

And yet, building trust today looks nothing like it did five years ago.

We’ve entered what many are calling the post-ESG era. A period marked not by the decline of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks, but by increasing scrutiny of how genuinely and effectively those commitments are executed. Where once ESG was a badge of progressive intent, it’s now a benchmark of corporate credibility—and the bar has never been higher.

From Purpose to Proof: The End of Performative ESG

The backlash is real. Greenwashing. Purpose-washing. DEI tokenism. Consumers, employees, regulators, and investors are calling out brands that say one thing and do another. The market is waking up to the uncomfortable truth: many ESG initiatives were designed more for perception than performance.

In a recent Kantar Sustainability Sector Index report, over 70% of consumers expressed skepticism about brands’ sustainability claims. Similarly, an Edelman Trust Barometer report found that trust in brands falls sharply when companies fail to demonstrate alignment between their stated values and operational behavior. These aren't just PR concerns—they're material risks.

Brands that once got by with inspirational purpose statements and surface-level sustainability campaigns are now being asked to show their receipts:

• What are your actual Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions?

• What percentage of leadership identifies as BIPOC or female?

• Are your suppliers adhering to fair labor standards?

• What systems are in place to audit and validate your impact claims?

Without evidence, brands face erosion not just of trust—but of legitimacy.

Radical Transparency as Strategy

In both B2C and B2B environments, stakeholders are no longer content with brand storytelling that prioritizes emotion over substance. They want radical transparency—a willingness to show the unvarnished truth, even when progress is imperfect.

This doesn’t mean brands have to be flawless. It means they must be honest, accountable, and open about where they are on the journey. Some of the most trusted companies today are not the ones with perfect ESG scores, but those that demonstrate clear intent, consistent effort, and public accountability.

For example:

• Patagonia continues to be heralded not just for its environmental mission, but for its consistent transparency—even disclosing its own supply chain challenges.

• Unilever publishes progress (and setbacks) across its entire ESG portfolio, including responsible marketing and plastic usage targets.

• Microsoft provides real-time updates on its carbon removal efforts and the status of its 2030 climate commitments.

These are not marketing tactics. They are trust-building practices embedded into the core of business strategy.

What This Means for Marketers and Brand Leaders

For marketers, the implications are profound. In the post-ESG era, our role is shifting from brand storytellers to brand stewards—tasked not only with amplifying narratives, but with ensuring that the narratives we tell are grounded in operational truth.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Publish Auditable ESG Metrics

Move beyond glossy sustainability reports. Align your ESG reporting with globally recognized frameworks (GRI, SASB, TCFD) and make your data accessible. B2B buyers, institutional investors, and increasingly B2C audiences want verifiable, third-party-backed data.

2. Show Year-over-Year Progress

Trust is built over time. Illustrate the journey—where you started, what you've learned, how you’ve course-corrected. This includes owning setbacks and being transparent about pivots. Humility builds credibility.

3. Close the Narrative-Operations Gap

Too many brands have a powerful external story and a fractured internal culture. Ensure that what you market is a reflection of what you operationalize—from sourcing to hiring to partnerships. If your ESG narrative isn’t lived internally, it will be exposed externally.

4. Empower Cross-Functional Collaboration

Marketing alone cannot carry ESG. Work closely with HR, Procurement, Legal, Finance, and Ops to ensure shared ownership of brand integrity. Trust is no longer the job of one department—it’s a collective responsibility.

5. Reframe the Role of Purpose

Purpose is not the story you tell. It’s the reason your business exists—and it should cascade into product innovation, hiring, customer experience, and beyond. Use it to inform decisions, not just decks.

In a Post-ESG World, Trust Is the New Brand Equity

Ultimately, trust is not a KPI—it’s a systemic output. It emerges when there’s coherence between what a brand says, does, and is. And it is hard-earned, easily lost, and nearly impossible to fake.

Brands that embrace this reality will thrive. They’ll deepen stakeholder relationships, attract aligned talent, and earn the benefit of the doubt in moments of crisis. They’ll become resilient not because they’re perfect—but because they’re principled, consistent, and real.

And the rest?

They’ll be scrolled past.

Called out.

Left behind.