April 5, 2025
Brands of the world, it’s time to understand that truth has never been more challenged before. There’s a trust crisis at hand, and it has motivated consumers and regulators to become more watchful than ever. How you represent your brand and the values you demonstrate make a difference in your long-term growth and customer loyalty.
The question is, are you ready for this new reality where consumer trust is thinning rapidly?
The recently concluded Bazaarvoice Summit 2025 can help you navigate authentic full funnel marketing in a landscape where breaking consumer trust comes with reputational and financial costs.
Here are some of the biggest learnings that brands have gone back with from Summit 2025.
1. Earn, don’t assume the consumer’s trust
Stephen Hall, Director, Digital Innovation and Impact at Consumer International, highlights a crucial shift: transparency in brand communication going from an option to a standard. Consumers have the right to make informed decisions, and brands that empower them by providing authentic product claims and service commitments will win long-term loyalty.
Trust goes beyond product messaging and extends to values-driven purchasing. Consumers increasingly demand truthful information to determine whether the brands they engage with align with their principles.
This search for values extends to whether the products being sold meet the sustainability standards they expect, whether the supply chain relies on local sourcing, or if labor practices are fair and ethical.
Evidently, consumers want to partner with brands that help them promote the values of responsible consumerism. As a brand, thus, it becomes crucial to champion transparency, responsibility and respect for choices.
2. Harness the power of direct consumer conversations
Melinda Maria, Chief Creative Officer and Founder of Melinda Maria Jewelry, puts it simply: “What really changed my business is when we started talking directly with consumers.” Leaders like her who have successfully built thriving, engaged communities around their offerings vouch for this.
Direct engagement fosters organic conversations that no marketing campaign can replicate. If the session has one big learning point, it is this: Great content evokes a feeling of connection, but for that to happen, it must be authentic and in touch with the consumer’s voice.
When people talk about your brand and your offerings within their own communities, it is marketing that may not be attributable, but it is powerful.
Authenticity is the key to turning casual buyers into lifelong fans. By engaging directly with customers, you can unlock powerful community-driven marketing momentum for your brand.
Consumers who feel connected to a brand naturally create and share content about it, amplifying its reach without you spending marketing dollars on it.
3. Leverage UGC and creator content as engagement multipliers
Fintan Gillespie, Director of US Revenue Partnerships at Snap Inc., shares how Snapchat engendered its “Happy Platform” identity with a camera-first interface that motivates UGC. With the app opening into camera mode, they are encouraging users in content creation that feels unfiltered and real to those who consume it.
Their creators automatically take cues from this culture and feel empowered to create content that aligns with this exclusive-to-Snapchat appeal. They are bringing to their audiences behind the scenes from their lives as it exists and are seeing deeper connections being forged with their audiences and community.
When brands are introduced by creators to this highly engaged audience, they drive significantly better outcomes from an advertising perspective and higher performance down the funnel in terms of ROAS and sales.
If you are a brand continuously delivering a corporate message into a social environment, your content may even start to appear suspicious. We don’t say this alone, the newly appointed Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez attests to it.
Social platforms thrive on realness. Particularly, Gen Z craves authenticity, so this might be the time for your brand to seek meaningful, long-term creator partnerships.
4. Empower consumers and creators to fuel a full-funnel content supply chain
Brands must go with a multi-objective, full funnel marketing approach in the current economic landscape. It’s crucial for brands to see the value in building an across-the-funnel content supply chain simply because customers see utility in real stories.
Her message resonates with brands big and small. It’s not possible for your brand to be doing everything and being everywhere. Instead of creating everything in-house, borrow content whenever possible, whether it’s from influencers, branded partners, manufacturers, or consumers themselves.
Because nothing drives conversions and credibility than the real stories of those closest to your brand. She also had the most interesting tip from Betty Crocker’s marketing style that stayed with her for its sheer efficacy — a must-know from the Summit sessions that you will find in this video below.
5. Build a drop-proof digital shelf
Imagine doing all the right things, building a strong case for your brand across platforms and then dropping the ball when your customer is ready to buy on the digital shelf. Lindsey Aitken, Senior Director, e-commerce, The Coca-Cola Company would tell you, as she did at Summit 2025, that it’s simply a non-negotiable. Your digital shelf needs to be flawless.
As she underlined through The Coca-Cola Company’s CARS (Content, Availability, Ratings & Reviews, and Share of Search) approach, there should be defined metrics to track digital shelf optimization. A strong omnichannel strategy will tie in all the goodness derived from your marketing roster with strong UGC on your digital shelf to make the customer ultimately click “Buy”.
Product content, pricing, availability, and UGC must work harmoniously across all platforms. Brands that master these elements create a seamless, frictionless consumer experience, leading to higher conversions and brand loyalty.
6. Create a cohesive video content strategy
According to Marissa Jones, SVP Product, Bazaarvoice, gone are the times when video could simply be seen as a good-to-have in your strategy. From social media to product pages, the impact of a quality video content strategy on consumers, especially younger ones, is undeniable and the ability of immersive video experiences to drive engagement and sales remains unparalleled.
Dedicated video galleries help brands integrate content across platforms, making shopping more interactive and seamlessly guiding consumers through the funnel and the product experience they are in for. Brands that invest in a well-thought-out video content strategy that meets customers at every stage of the journey will increase conversions and retention.
7. Adapt or become irrelevant
As Rishad Tobaccowala, Founder of The Rethinking Work Platform, warns: “The biggest risk to brands isn’t change, it’s irrelevance”, brands that fail to evolve their mental models and redefine their categories to fit in the evolving environment they operate in will struggle to stay relevant to the new shoppers of today and tomorrow.
The world is shifting rapidly, and brands must be agile, innovative, and consumer-centric to stay ahead. Brands must play that game when the future is big on authenticity and consumer-to-consumer marketing.
As Oshiya Savur, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer at Maesa (A Bain Portfolio Company), highlights, consumer-to-consumer marketing is now the dominant force. Brands themselves no longer create the vast majority of brand-related content, it’s generated by consumers talking about brands when they aren’t even watching. Scaling trust through verified, authentic content is the only way forward.
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For years, the Bazaarvoice Trust Mark has been an opt-in feature for brands and retailers, signifying verified, authentic content. Hallmarks of authenticity become even more important now as consumers actively seek third-party validation, and brands that display this certification stand out as trusted sources in an era of skepticism.
If you run a brand, you know just what your strategy could be missing! Trust isn’t a given now, with the consumers you hold dear. And so it must be earned, verified, and proven.
These were the biggest takeaways from the biggest leaders and the brightest minds in the industry at Bazaarvoice Summit 2025. But this is just the beginning.For a full deep dive into the insights, strategies, and recommendations that will define the future of commerce, tune into our Summit 2025 On-Demand.
