July 1, 2021

How do advertisers gain trust in a post-pandemic world? The importance of trust has never been higher than it is in our current climate. After one of the most turbulent and uncertain years we’ve seen in a long time, punctuated by a number of world events that have shaken our trust to the very core, public anxiety is high. It’s affected our outlook, impacted our behaviour and shifted our priorities.

CNN has seen a significant increase in audience and engagement in the past year, and Tini Sevak, VP Audiences & Data at CNN International Commercial, believes that transparency and a sense of trustworthiness in the media, and across the board, matter more than ever in the current climate.

Despite going through a pandemic, our own personal worlds have gotten much smaller in the past 12 months. With more time spent at home during lockdown, seeing fewer people than before, we’ve had time to focus on what’s important to us. We’ve created new habits and shifted how we are spending our time, and who with.

According to a recent Kantar LifePoint survey, 76% of people are making changes in their personal lives, while another survey by GWI found 46% of audiences are spending more time with their family, and 29% of them believe this will be a permanent change.

“Audiences want to see it’s not just lip service,” says Sevak. “They want brands to walk the walk, so, of course, that means in their products and their services, but more than just that – they want to see it in how they’re running their organisations. They want to align themselves with organisations that care about ESG [environmental, corporate and social governance] and social events.

Just as consumers expect media organisations to shine a light on misinformation from an editorial perspective, Sevak believes that media owners have a fundamental role in ensuring advertisers aren’t falling into this trap of so-called greenwashing too.

“When we’re looking for partners to work with, it’s important that we also challenge them on their messaging. That’s what you want from a good partner – someone to help you challenge your campaigns to make sure that they are authentic and genuine. The role of our team, whether from a commercial side or editorial side, is to ensure that happens.”

Read the full interview.