• What We See: As public political identity feels riskier, Americans are shifting values expression into cause advocacy across party lines.
• What It Means: Advocacy has become the “safer” identity signal, and the audience for credible cause engagement is broader than most brands assume.
• What To Do: Don’t abandon cause engagement—reset it around authenticity, long-term commitment, and clear boundaries between advocacy and activism.

What We See

Americans haven’t gone silent on issues that matter. But they have taken their voices elsewhere. Faced with political labels that feel increasingly toxic, millions of Americans have found a safer channel for saying who they are and what they believe. How? By supporting causes in greater numbers than ever.

The context matters here. The retreat from public political identity isn’t just about social awkwardness or tribal toxicity. It’s happening in an environment where visible identity can carry real consequences. Federal workers have lost jobs. Programs have been dismantled or investigated. People have been targeted for what they publicly support or who they’re seen to stand with. In that environment, the calculation around public political expression has changed for many. The risk of a yard sign or a party affiliation isn’t abstract anymore.

The numbers tell both sides of this story. Giving USA reports that U.S. charitable giving reached $592.5 billion in 2024, a 6.3% increase over the prior year. Advocacy organizations are growing their base of support. And yet many brands and businesses have pulled back from so-called cause marketing, spooked by recent backlash. These trends look like they’re moving in opposite directions. Purple Pulse data suggest they are not.

That 49% Republican number is worth sitting with. In a political environment where cause marketing is routinely dismissed as a “liberal snowflake” strategy, nearly half of Republican respondents say cause-based expression is their preferred channel for communicating who they are and what they believe.

A second Purple Pulse finding explains the underlying pressure. Across both parties, roughly three in four Americans agree that identifying publicly with their own party feels riskier today than it did five years ago. The numbers are nearly identical on both sides: 76% of Democrats, 78% of Republicans. Independents follow at 67%. This is not a story about one side retreating from its label. It is a universal phenomenon, and it is happening at scale.

The picture that emerges from Purple Pulse is a public that is civically engaged but politically homeless: active in causes, skeptical of labels, and looking for ways to signal values without triggering the full weight of partisan identity. Nonprofits are capturing that energy. Many brands are not, and some are actively stepping away from it precisely when the audience appetite is highest.

What It Means

Advocacy has become America’s preferred alternative to partisan identity. When political labels feel like liabilities, causes offer a way to say who you are and what you believe without the associated baggage. Causes let people show what they’re for rather than what they’re against. In a political environment defined almost entirely by opposition, that distinction has become enormously valuable.

There is also a harder truth embedded in this moment. Some of the people turning to causes aren’t just expressing preferences — they’re trying to protect themselves, their communities, and their way of life. That impulse cuts across the political spectrum. Donations to organizations focused on legal defense, civil rights, border security, and religious liberty have surged in recent years, reflecting anxieties that are neither exclusively red nor blue. For those donors, cause advocacy isn’t a lifestyle signal. It’s a response to felt threat. Brands and nonprofits that understand this distinction will engage differently, and more credibly, than those treating all cause engagement as a marketing opportunity.

The brands and organizations that are pulling back from causes are, in effect, leaving the field at the moment of peak demand. They are reading a concentrated, specific cultural backlash as a mandate to disengage from values-based communication entirely. That misreads both the data and the moment.

[Read more: Corporate Leadership in a Divided Nation]

What to Do

For brands that have pulled back from cause marketing: the retreat may be costlier than the engagement.

The fear driving the pullback is real, but it has a specific origin: a period when certain brand engagements were perceived as performative, timed to cultural moments rather than rooted in genuine, sustained commitment. Consumers can tell the difference between a brand that believes something and a brand that’s briefly following a trend. Purple Strategies’ ongoing research finds that roughly seven in ten Americans (70%) agree that corporations have an obligation to speak out on societal and political issues that broadly affect the public. Most causes don’t carry the freight of recent controversies, and the public knows the difference.

The playbook for navigating this moment:

• Choose causes authentic to your brand’s actual history and DNA, not to the political moment. Consistency signals belief; recency signals calculation.
• Treat cause engagement as a long-term commitment, not a campaign. The brands that got hurt were not punished for caring, they were punished for appearing to calculate.
• Understand the distinction between advocacy and activism. Supporting a children’s hospital is advocacy. Wading into contested cultural debates is activism. They carry very different risk profiles.

For nonprofits, the message is more direct: this is your moment. The public is more receptive to cause engagement, and more in need of it as an identity channel. The question is whether organizations can capture that energy and build durable relationships with the new advocates finding their way in.

The political landscape has fractured the old channels of identity expression. Causes are filling the gap. The organizations and brands that recognize this early will have a significant advantage over those waiting for the old map to start working again.

The post The New Safe Harbor: How Advocacy Became America’s Alternative to Political Identity appeared first on Purple Strategies.

• The earnings call you design for investors is being read by regulators, journalists, labor organizers, and advocacy groups who will use your own words against you.
• Companies that treat earnings calls purely as financial events hand adversaries a transcript with legal weight that no press release can match.
• The most sophisticated organizations integrate a reputation lens into earnings preparation, asking what every stakeholder audience will take from the call—and what opponents will weaponize before the next one.

What We See

Every quarter, America’s largest companies convene one of the most consequential communications events on the corporate calendar and then leave much of its potential on the table.

The earnings call is built around a narrow obligation: give investors and analysts the numbers, take their questions, and get off the line. That framing is understandable. It is also increasingly incomplete. Because the audiences who hold real influence over a company’s license to operate are not waiting for the investor deck.

Regulators monitor earnings calls for commitments that can be cited in enforcement actions. Journalists and advocacy groups mine transcripts for ammunition. Policy newsletters read by thousands of Capitol Hill staffers regularly surface earnings call language as evidence of corporate intent. Labor organizers track management’s language about workforce and productivity. And competitors have a standing front-row seat to your strategy.

None of this is hypothetical. In January 2026, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat before CVS Health CEO David Joyner at a House Energy and Commerce hearing and proceeded to dismantle his prepared testimony using language drawn directly from a CVS investor call. AOC cited the company’s own description of its “captive strategy” and walked through a graphic, sourced from CVS’s own investor materials, showing how a single patient’s entire healthcare journey could flow through CVS-owned entities from insurer to pharmacy to drug manufacturer. ‘Captive strategy’ may read as sound business logic to Wall Street — a shorthand for vertical integration, margin protection, and long-term value capture. To every other audience, it reads as a company that has engineered a system where patient outcomes are secondary to corporate ones. Words written for Wall Street became a national story.

In this environment, a company that walks into an earnings call thinking only about analysts is leaving significant reputational value on the table and handing skeptics and competition a ready-made script.

Read more: Why Earnings Calls Are the Most Underleveraged Tool in Reputation Management

What It Means

The Untapped Opportunity: Owning Your Narrative Beyond the Street

Reputation is not built in a single channel, but any strategic leader who manages it knows it can be challenged in one. Earnings calls are a case in point. They carry a credibility that almost no other corporate communication can match: legal disclosures, on the record, transcribed, indexed, and read by audiences who would never click on a press release. That same credibility, properly used, is also the opportunity.

That makes the prepared remarks section one of the most underused assets in a company’s stakeholder communications strategy. CEOs and CFOs who treat it purely as a financial walkthrough miss an opportunity to shape the external environment around their business. A well-constructed earnings narrative reaches policymakers, regulators, media, and advocacy audiences with a kind of inherent credibility that corporate communications cannot manufacture.

What gives the earnings call its unusual power with non-financial audiences isn’t its reach — it’s its perceived authenticity. Unlike a press release or a brand campaign, an earnings call is understood as a quasi-internal look at how a business actually thinks. A powerful test of corporate character is whether stakeholders believe a company does the right thing when it thinks no one important is watching. The earnings call is one of the few public forums where that question gets answered in real time — and where narrative coherence between business outcomes and the expectations of those who control your license to operate is not optional.

When a CEO uses that platform to articulate a compelling vision on workforce investment, economic contribution, or long-term strategy, they are not padding the call. They are executing a reputation strategy, delivering under the conditions of disclosure exactly the message they want attached to their brand.

The Under-Appreciated Threat: Active Adversaries Are Already Listening

This dynamic cuts across industries. When grocery executives boasted about pricing power on earnings calls during the post-pandemic inflation surge of 2022 and 2023, those quotes became the backbone of congressional hearings on “greedflation” and state attorneys general investigations into price gouging. When major retailers project margin expansion driven by labor efficiencies, union negotiators arrive at the next contract with that transcript in hand. A single sentence about competitive dynamics, spoken to reassure analysts, can hand a rival a ready-made line of attack. And in an era when AI tools can parse thousands of transcripts instantaneously, the information asymmetry between companies and their adversaries has never been greater.

Competitors retain analysts to track rival transcripts. Government investigators build timelines from sequential earnings calls. Advocacy campaigns are seeded by a single loosely worded answer to an analyst’s question about labor costs or environmental commitments. The transcript that closes on a Tuesday afternoon may be the foundation of someone else’s strategy by Wednesday morning.

What to Do

Treat Earnings as an Outcomes Event

The companies that get this right don’t change what they say; they change how they prepare to say it. Investors still need substance. Analysts still punish evasion. The financial narrative has to hold.

But the earnings call is not only a report on outcomes. It’s a moment that shapes outcomes. The regulators, lawmakers, competitors, labor leaders, and advocacy groups reading an earnings call transcript don’t just observe your business — they define the landscape in which you operate. When a CEO uses this platform to articulate a coherent, credible narrative about workforce investment, economic contribution, or long-term strategy, they are not padding the call. They are actively shaping the conditions for future success.

That’s the difference between a communications function that reacts and one that leads.  Forward-looking communications teams are integrating a reputation lens into earnings preparation: opening the aperture, identifying the non-financial stakeholders who will encounter this call, and doing the deeper work to translate the story behind the numbers into language that lands with audiences who are not reading a 10-Q.

That means asking, before every earnings cycle, two questions that rarely appear on the prep agenda: What do we want every stakeholder audience to take from this call, not just the analysts? And what are we about to say that our adversaries will use against us before the next one?

Those questions do not require a longer call or hiding details. They require a different frame going in, and a communications function that has earned a seat at the table before the script is written.

The earnings call will always be a financial event. But for organizations that understand reputation as a business asset, it is also a strategic one. The audiences holding your license to operate are listening. The only question is whether you’re speaking to them.

The post Your Earnings Call Just Testified Before Congress. Were You Ready? appeared first on Purple Strategies.

• The Super Bowl remains the annual milestone to reach American audiences at scale, but shared visibility doesn’t produce shared meaning
• What audiences already believe about a company’s brand determines whether an ad builds credibility or fuels an inevitable conversation based on skepticism
• Reputation grows when companies tell a story that’s consistent with their character in ways that resonate with the nation’s character

What We See

It’s fair to be skeptical of Super Bowl ad analysis. Every year, the choices made by companies that are distilled and reflected in :30 and :60 bursts are framed as a cultural referendum. Every year, brands are told it means more than ever.

And today, it still does.

Now that we’re two weeks past the game and the traditional ad rankings have run their course, we can examine what the game actually left us with.

Our research conducted prior to the game showed rare agreement across political identities that the Super Bowl remains a powerful tactic for brands. Seven in ten Democrats (71%), two-thirds of independents (67%), and nearly three-quarters of Republicans (74%) agreed it’s an effective way to gain visibility and spark conversation.

Instead of critiquing and ranking ads, we stepped back to examine what it means to have a shared stage in a fragmented political culture — especially when the conditions surrounding this year’s Super Bowl were unusually charged.

Ahead of the game, some of the country’s most heated debates — around immigration, representation and national identity — surfaced unusually close to the event itself. Ads took on health care, the role AI should play in our lives and MAHA movement. At the same time, performances by artists like Bad Bunny and Green Day brought their own cultural and political resonance to a stage already under scrutiny. None of it sat in a neutral lane.

The result was not a single, shared cultural moment, but a collision of meanings.

People didn’t experience the Super Bowl as a unified audience. They experienced it through political identity, cultural expectation, personal experiences and accumulated skepticism. They watched the same ads, but they didn’t watch them the same way. What looks like a mass moment from the boardroom fractures quickly once it’s interpreted by the public.

[Read more: Reclaiming Trust When Under Fire]

What It Means

Reputation is built on consistency, not clicks. The test on this grand stage is unique: whether what shows up can withstand being seen, and interpreted, by everyone at once.

In mass moments like the Super Bowl, people aren’t suspending judgment. They are accelerating it. Audiences rely on what they already believe about a brand to interpret what they see: often in seconds, and rarely with the benefit of the doubt.

This is why reputation isn’t formed during the game. It’s tallied afterward.

The same message or symbol or minute production detail can reinforce trust with one group and deepen skepticism with another. Even the choice to opt out carries its own weight — not because the message changed, but because the audience’s interpretation did.

In this environment, inconsistency travels faster than persuasion. Attempts to appeal broadly are scrutinized for alignment, and intent is quickly inferred in character terms. Messages from a brand that feel disconnected from the company’s character are dismissed quickly — and remembered longer than carefully crafted appeals.

The risk isn’t controversy. It’s contradiction.

[Want to dive deeper into what this means for your business? Let’s talk.]

What To Do

This approach was on full display in one of this year’s most strategically sophisticated efforts. Lay’s didn’t just tell a brand story during the Super Bowl. They showed how to put these principles in action.

The regulatory threat was already brewing. The MAHA movement’s “eat real food” message put processed food companies directly in the crosshairs, ever since RFK Jr. aligned with President Trump during the campaign in 2024.

Lay’s response was strategically brilliant. On one level, it’s a timely effort to refresh the brand and reassure America that it deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the quality of the food. It’s simple. Its basic ingredient comes from the ground, harvested by farmers. To the extent it’s processed, it’s minimal, certainly not “ultra.” The story of an archetypal, empathetic and noble supplier, an American farmer family, anchors the quality, heritage and character components of the brand.

While it worked as brand advertising, it also functioned as a timely effort to remind sets of eyeballs measured in the dozens and residing in Washington, that they’d better tread lightly. The HHS exhortation to “eat real food,” if accompanied by restrictive regulatory action, changes the ending of this story. Much fewer bags of potato chips are sold, much fewer potatoes are harvested with care, and much fewer family farms like this get passed to the next generation. This ad is also for the leaders of HHS, USDA and, ultimately, the White House as they perform the complicated calculus of creating policy that protects America’s iconic farmers and policy that puts teeth into a largely popular American health agenda. These agendas are more mutually exclusive than mutually reinforcing. And where this game nets out will help decide the midterm election. This ad is an emotionally resonant reminder of that fault line, and it was done in front of 130 million people.

Back to outcomes: an enhanced brand reputation and, more critically for the business, food policy that preserves their license to operate. The takeaway: find the people in your corner who your critics actually care about, then put them front and center. Regulators might dismiss Lay’s, but they can’t dismiss family farmers.

The post How can you hit the bullseye during the big game without becoming one? appeared first on Purple Strategies.

Straight To The Point

• Patients aren’t rejecting healthcare. They’re rejecting care that doesn’t work for them.

• When a system asks for patience without offering control, people don’t push back, they route around it.

• Fixing the whole system starts with creating solutions for individual patients.

Here’s the thing:  Across the healthcare landscape, patients are arriving at the same conclusion: waiting is a waste of time.

For decades, care was organized around institutional timelines. Intake forms. Referral loops. Weeks between appointments. But life doesn’t wait. Patients are living at the speed of their lives, sometimes while holding a puking baby, as I was the other night. (She’s better now, thank you. I wish I could say the same for my blouse.)

When a system asks for patience without offering control, people don’t stage a revolt. They find a workaround. That’s the moment healthcare leaders are in right now whether they like it or not.

What We See

Patients haven’t walked away from care. But they have changed how they get it.

Instead of moving neatly through traditional pathways, patients are turning to at-home diagnostics, wearables, AI tools, and self-directed options, often before the healthcare system even knows they’re shopping around.

And this isn’t a generational rebellion or some Silicon Valley fad. Healthcare populism cuts across age, ideology, and political identity. The unifying factor isn’t suspicion of institutions, it’s frustration with them moving too slow for modern life.

Our latest research explores how widespread this shift has become and what it signals for healthcare leaders navigating a new era of patient control. [Read the full report here.]

What It Means

This moment is often diagnosed as a collapse in trust. But that’s overly simplified and doesn’t tell the whole story.

What we’re seeing is a rebalancing of control. Patients haven’t become anti-institutional; they’ve become practical. When systems feel slow, opaque, or misaligned, people seek out tools to keep moving. The instinct itself isn’t new. People have always wanted control over their health.

What is new is the toolset—one robust enough to let patients act without waiting for permission.

I recently discussed this shift at Axios Live, because healthcare leaders are now managing a parallel care experience, one that runs alongside the system, not outside it. That parallel track is reshaping expectations in ways that won’t snap back. Organizations built on assumptions of patience, loyalty, and linear journeys are suddenly competing with experiences defined by immediacy, visibility, and control.

What To Do

The response to this moment cannot be to ask patients to slow down or trust harder.

At Purple Strategies, we spend our time in exactly these moments, when public sentiment, politics, and behavior are moving faster than institutions were designed to handle. Our work lives at the intersection of reputation, advocacy, and strategy, helping leaders understand not just what is changing, but why.

Patients are telling us, through their choices, that momentum and control now matter as much as clinical expertise. This is a healthcare populism era. And the rules are different.

Here are the shifts leaders need to make:

Stop talking “system.” Start talking “you.”
Patients don’t want institutional promises. They want solutions that feel personal, adaptive, and built for real lives. Frame offerings as tools. Emphasize choice. Make customization, not scale, the headline.

Don’t fight skepticism. Use it.
Credibility comes from transparency and permission. Invite scrutiny. Encourage comparison. Be willing to say: Try it. See what works best for you.

Put AI to work, without removing humans.
Patients want speed and insight. They are also watching institutions carefully. Spell out benefits and risks. Show your work. And always leave a clear path back to a clinician when judgment matters most.

Lean into direct-to-consumer realities.
The goal can no longer be to funnel people through a dictated path Instead, equip them with tools, data, and optional paths they can assemble themselves.

Treat politics as context, not background noise.
Health decisions now carry political meaning. Segment by worldview. Be honest about who you can reach. Speak to MAHA priorities without borrowing MAHA branding.

The Bottom Line

The organizations that win in this next chapter won’t be the ones defending the old contract with patients. The winners will be the leaders who recognize what has already changed and actively decide to move with it.

Interpreting cultural moments like healthcare populism and turning them into strategic advantage is just one more way Purple can help leaders like you succeed.

The post Patients Aren’t Patient Anymore appeared first on Purple Strategies.

• The rules of advocacy in Washington have changed faster than most organizations’ strategies have.

• The gap between how influence actually works in Washington and how many organizations still operate is now costing companies time, money, and access.

• Organizations that update their advocacy playbook now will shape outcomes; those that don’t will spend more and achieve less.

What We See

At the end of last year, Purple Strategies convened corporate and association leaders alongside POLITICO for a candid conversation just steps from the White House — including a discussion with Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff to talk about a simple but urgent question:

How do you actually succeed in Washington right now?

The answer, made clear throughout the morning, is that Washington is operating on a fundamentally different advocacy operating system.

Power has centralized. Decision-making has accelerated. Traditional venues for bipartisan compromise have narrowed. And influence now flows through a wider and less predictable constellation of actors, many of them outside formal government channels.

In other words: the old Beltway playbook still matters but it is no longer sufficient.

We’ve captured the key insights from the evening — including perspectives from corporate, association, and advocacy leaders — in a post-event recap developed with POLITICO.

What It Means

The discussion reinforced what we are seeing across clients and sectors: advocacy is simultaneously more important, more scrutinized, and less forgiving of missteps than ever before.

A few realities stood out:

• The White House is the dominant center of gravity. Nearly every major policy decision ultimately runs through the administration, even those once left to agencies or Congress.
• Coalitions and associations are operating at peak power — and peak pressure. They are better funded, more aggressive, and more visible, but also at greater risk if governance and strategy are unclear.
• Agility is no longer optional. Velocity has increased dramatically. Influence now depends on speed, precision, and an ability to pivot as decisions move through unconventional pathways.
• Congress still matters — even when it isn’t moving. Lawmakers shape narratives, provide oversight, and often serve as critical channels into the administration, even in a stagnant legislative environment.

Perhaps most importantly, there was broad agreement on one point: You cannot win in today’s Washington by simply doubling down on the tactics that worked five or even two years ago.

What to Do

Winning in this environment requires a reset, not a retreat. Based on theinsights shared at the event and the joint Purple–POLITICO research, a few imperatives are clear:

Design coalitions for impact, not optics. Coalitions must be purpose-built, fast-moving, and able to say things individual members cannot say alone.

Rebuild your theory of influence around real decision pathways. Start with power mapping, not tactics and work backward from who actually shapes outcomes.

Treat speed and patience as complementary, not contradictory.Broad-based pressure campaigns often backfire; disciplined, targeted, well-timed engagement increasingly wins.

Translate advocacy value in terms leadership understands. Progress is not just policy wins, it is access, risk mitigation, and building enterprise value ahead of major decision points.

Advocacy has never mattered more and it has never required more precision.

We encourage you to take a look to see how senior practitioners are rethinking influence, coalitions, and engagement in Washington’s NewNormal. Click Here for the Purple Strategies & POLITICO Roadmap: Advocacy in Washington’s New Normal.

If you’re still running the old playbook, now is the moment to update it — before the next wave of hearings, rulemakings, or election cycles forces the issue.

The post Washington’s New Normal: Why the Old Advocacy Playbook No Longer Works appeared first on Purple Strategies.

The patient has left the building.

That’s the central finding of Purple Strategies’ latest research report, The New Health Populism: How Americans are Seizing Control of their Health and Leaving the System Behind — and it has major implications for every company operating in the healthcare space.

Based on a national survey of 1,000 health-informed Americans conducted in late 2025, our research reveals a healthcare landscape in the middle of a dramatic unbundling. Six in ten Americans say they are actively working around the traditional healthcare system using new technologies and over-the-counter medicines. Nearly four in ten are doing both simultaneously.

This isn’t a fringe movement. It’s mainstream America.

What’s driving health populism? Frustration. Disillusionment. A conviction that the only person truly invested in one’s long-term health is oneself.

Seventy-three percent of Americans believe the country’s health and wellness landscape either faces serious challenges or is at a crisis point. Rather than waiting for the system to fix itself, a growing number are opting out entirely — turning to at-home diagnostics, wearables, AI chat tools, GLP-1s, and digital health platforms to fill the gap.

Think of it like cord-cutting, but for healthcare.

The era of the passive patient is over. The question for every healthcare company is whether they’ll adapt to this new consumer — or get left behind along with the system they represent.

Download the full report or reach out to learn how Purple Strategies can help your organization navigate the new health populism landscape.

The post [New Report] The New Health Populism: How Americans are Seizing Control of their Health and Leaving the System Behind appeared first on Purple Strategies.

The rules have changed. And most organizations haven’t caught up.

That’s the central finding of Purple Strategies’ latest report, Advocacy in Washington’s New Normal — produced in partnership with POLITICO and based on a survey of 340 advocacy professionals and in-depth interviews with senior public affairs leaders across companies, trade associations, and lobbying firms.

The verdict is clear: Washington is running on a fundamentally different operating system. A hyper-centralized White House, vanishing venues for bipartisan deal-making, and an expanded constellation of informal influencers have rewritten the rules of how policy gets made — and who gets to shape it.

The old playbook — broad national messaging, earned media, bipartisan coalition-building — no longer moves the needle. And doubling down on what used to work won’t fix it.

What does? Speed. Precision. Coalitions built for impact, not optics. And a clear-eyed map of where power actually lives.

The report identifies what advocacy professionals are learning the hard way: direct lawmaker engagement still matters, but it’s no longer sufficient. Coalitions and associations are at peak influence — but only when they’re purpose-built with clear governance and a defined goal. And in an environment where public disagreement can cost you access, strategic patience isn’t weakness. It’s the strategy.

With the 2026 midterms approaching and this environment showing no signs of easing, the organizations that thrive will be those that update their playbook now — before the next wave of hearings, crises, and election cycles forces their hand.

Download the full report or reach out to learn how Purple Strategies can help your organization navigate Washington’s New Normal.

The post [New Report] Advocacy in Washington’s New Normal appeared first on Purple Strategies.

Straight To The Point

• Today’s brands live under constant, unrelenting scrutiny — every decision is visible and judged in real time. Chasing trust is increasingly futile when it isn’t reinforced by visible steps that connect a brand to the future.

• Managing messages isn’t enough — leaders must close the gap between perception and reality across the whole business, and be open to changing reality.

• Build alignment, create a story worth hearing, and make every part of the organization part of the solution.

What We See

The way brands are judged has fundamentally shifted. Trust isn’t dead. But it’s dying. Yes, it still matters, but in today’s environment it isn’t enough. Trust is a conclusion stakeholders reach based on what you’ve already done. And in an era where Gallup and others show trust in institutions at historic lows, past performance alone won’t carry you forward. Your stakeholders want to know: are your best days ahead of you? Are you connected to the future? They are more likely to engage and support you if you are part of how they define a better tomorrow.

In my recent conversation with Neil Golden—Panera Brands board member and former McDonald’s USA CMO—we dug into what this means for companies under fire. Over his 30+ years guiding global brands through high-stakes moments, Neil has learned that these challenges aren’t rare events. They’re constant stress tests.

Take McDonald’s for example. Years ago, a single ingredient controversy might have been a temporary storm. Today, questions about food sourcing, product decisions, and corporate responsibility are permanent weather systems.

Neil put it plainly:

“You don’t win back trust with a press release. You earn it with actions people can see — and feel.”

That means companies that step up authentically in tough moments can come out stronger. Those that hide, delay, or spin? They don’t just lose trust — they hand the narrative to their critics and provide evidence that, just maybe, their best days aren’t in front of them.

What It Means

Here are the major shifts to reckon with:

Scrutiny never ends

When McDonald’s changed menus, reconfigured the Happy Meal, or rethought employment practices, those moves weren’t isolated—every step was watched, debated, and dissected. You don’t just survive one test—you’re living in a test environment.

Narratives are forever open

You can’t draft a “corrected” version later. Once your narrative is framed—by critics, news, customers—it holds a bias. The best defense is to get in early, with sincerity and clarity, not smarter spin.

Every function is a credibility channel

Marketing, HR, operations, supply chain—they all either bolster or erode your standing. As Neil stressed, reputation is not just a communications problem; it’s a business problem because the most important outcomes are measured in business performance.

Expect tension — and show the trade-offs

You’ll get pushed to pick a side. Be prepared to communicate not only wins but also the challenges, trade-offs, and constraints. Show the “messy middle” rather than pretending there wasn’t one.

What this means is simple: your lessons can’t live only in comms. They must operate in your thinking, your decisions, and your structures. That’s how you close the gap between what you stand for and what you’re known for.

What To Do

I’ve distilled five lessons for leaders determined not just to safeguard reputation, but to earn trust and prove that their organization’s best days are ahead through their choices and conduct.

1. Aligning What You’re Known For with What You Stand For: If your brand’s purpose, intentions, and actions don’t align, people will decide for you—and not in your favor. Neil shared how moments of misalignment at McDonald’s, from marketing campaigns to public commitments, quickly turned into flashpoints. Leaders must make their values unmistakably clear, back them up with consistent behavior, and change when necessary.
2. Telling Your Story Better or Having a Better Story to Tell: When a message isn’t breaking through, the first reaction is often to double down: repeat it, amplify it, shout it from every channel. But that’s just yelling louder. Neil and I discussed how the real challenge isn’t the delivery — it’s the narrative. McDonald’s had real progress to share, from healthier menu choices to better employment practices, but those actions weren’t woven into a story that felt relevant to people’s lives. Messaging alone wasn’t enough. It had to be in service of a narrative that framed the actions and signaled the company’s best days were ahead.
3. Creating Buy-In Across the Whole Organization: Trust isn’t a marketing problem — it’s a full enterprise challenge. Neil emphasized that reputation lives or dies through daily decisions across the entire organization, not just in the marketing or comms department. Every function, every leader, every employee has a role to play in earning and protecting trust.
4. Public Affairs is Marketing, Marketing is Public Affairs: There’s no longer a line between these two worlds. The same audiences you’re trying to reach as customers are also influencing public perception, regulatory decisions, and media narratives. And those stakeholders, in turn, are more interested in how you show up in the world than what you tell them. Consistency is mandatory. Inconsistency is mercilessly, immediately punished.
5. Bait Needs to Taste Good to the Fish, Not the Fisherman: Good instincts are important, but they’re no substitute for research. Neil stressed that understanding what stakeholders really value is the only way to act effectively. You can’t just rely on what you think matters—you must listen and adapt based on what they care about, and what they need to hear and see.

Watch the Full Conversation: Reclaiming Trust When Your Products — and Intentions — Are Under Fire
A candid discussion with Neil Golden and Purple Partner John Gatti. [Watch the full video now →]

The post Reclaiming Trust When Under Fire appeared first on Purple Strategies.

In this exclusive conversation, Neil Golden, current Panera Brands board member and former McDonald’s USA CMO, joins Purple Partner John Gatti to share hard-earned lessons from three decades leading iconic consumer brands.

From ingredient concerns to employment practices to public scrutiny, Neil reflects on how leaders can anticipate challenges, build resilient narratives, and protect reputation while driving business performance.

Whether you’re a communicator, marketer, or external affairs leader, this discussion offers practical insights into leading brands through today’s complex, high-stakes environment.

The post Reclaiming Trust When Your Products – and Intentions – are Under Fire appeared first on Purple Strategies.

Purple Strategies announced today that Brad Dayspring has joined the firm as Executive Director, bringing more than two decades of experience at the intersection of politics, policy, media, and strategic communications.

Dayspring stands out as one of the few Washington strategists whose career spans the White House, Congressional Leadership, national campaigns, and the corporate media C-suite. He joins Purple after nearly a decade at POLITICO, where he served on the executive team as Executive Vice President of Global Communications and Brand. During his time at POLITICO, Dayspring advised multiple CEOs, editors-in-chief, and ownership groups, helping drive growth, profitability, and brand impact. He also served as trusted communications counsel to hundreds of publishing professionals and more than 500 journalists, spanning Washington, New York, California, London, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin.

“Brad is a rare talent whose experience, instincts, and drive align perfectly with Purple’s mission to help clients navigate change and unlock opportunity,” said Steve McMahon, co-founder and CEO of Purple Strategies. “He’s built a career in high-stakes environments — in government and the private sector — and knows how to turn complexity into clarity for leaders and brands facing critical moments. When the going gets tough, there’s no one better in the trenches than Brad Dayspring.”

Throughout his career, Dayspring has been a trusted advisor to CEOs, C-suite executives, elected officials, candidates, and industry leaders, guiding strategy in moments of crisis, legislative and regulatory pressure, and market transition. He’s known for his leadership, relentless work ethic, and unwavering loyalty — traits that have made him a sought-after partner in shaping communications strategy, policy advocacy, brand positioning, and stakeholder engagement.

At Purple, Dayspring will counsel clients on reputation management, issue advocacy, crisis, corporate positioning, and enterprise-level strategic communications. His deep understanding of political dynamics and media landscapes will further enhance Purple’s reputation as a leader in corporate reputation, public affairs, and issue advocacy.

“What drew me to Purple is its campaign-style mindset: hyper focused, strategic, and built for high-stakes moments and high-impact activation. In times like these, leaders don’t just need support — they need a steady hand, a sharp strategic mind, and a team that plays to where the puck is going, not where it’s been — and that’s where Purple stands out. I’m thrilled to join a firm with bold ambitions, an offense-minded approach, and a team I genuinely admire,” Dayspring said.

Dayspring began his career in the White House press office under President George W. Bush and later served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, as well as Communications Director at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. At POLITICO, he played a central role in transforming the brand into a global media leader, guiding the organization through acquisition, leadership transitions, and market expansion.

Brad is a native of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, and holds a B.A. from Villanova University where he was an NCAA ice hockey player.

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