What Actually Sells When Nobody Trusts Anything?
Updated: Sep 7
In Part 1 of this series, I investigated a question that has been bothering me both as a business owner and as a consumer: Why do sales and marketing increasingly feel like lies? The research confirmed that I wasn't imagining the trust problem. Consumers are more skeptical, money feels riskier, and businesses dramatically overestimate how much their customers trust them. But once I accepted that we're selling in a trust recession, another question became much more interesting to me: What the hell are people actually buying?
Because we're still buying things. We're still watching things, attending events, sharing content, following people, and spending money when something feels valuable enough. So I started doing what I teach business owners to do: I watched myself. What gets my attention? What am I willing to leave my ridiculously comfortable house for? What do I share? What makes me stop scrolling? What makes me trust somebody enough to listen a little longer? Then I started watching what worked in my own business, talking to other business owners, observing audiences, and paying closer attention to entertainment and social media. I started seeing three things over and over again: comedy, controversy, and experience.
But I don't think those three things are working simply because humans suddenly need to be entertained every second of the day. I think there is something much more important underneath all three of them: we're looking for truth.
After Betrayal, We Start Looking for What's Real
I've spent 20 years working with couples, including couples recovering from infidelity, and one of the things I've learned about major breaches of trust is that the person who has been betrayed often becomes intensely interested in reality. They want to know what actually happened. They investigate. They look for inconsistencies. They ask questions they never imagined they would need to ask. They turn over every metaphorical—and sometimes literal—leaf because their understanding of reality has been disrupted. What was true? What wasn't? What else don't I know?
Obviously, buying a disappointing product is not equivalent to discovering an affair. But I do think the psychology of trust repair gives us an interesting lens for understanding what's happening with consumers. When trust has been damaged, simply saying trust me doesn't repair it. People start looking for evidence, and I think businesses need to pay very close attention to what feels like evidence of truth right now.
The research supports at least the larger premise. Edelman's 2025 Brand Trust report surveyed 15,000 people across 15 countries and found that 88% said trusting a brand was important or a deal breaker when deciding what to buy—the exact same percentage who said that about quality and value for money. The research also found that 73% said their trust in a brand would increase if it authentically reflected today's culture. Trust isn't some fluffy emotional bonus sitting beside the "real" business metrics anymore. Consumers report treating trust like price and quality when deciding where their money goes.
So if trust matters that much, the next question is obvious: How do you give people evidence that they can trust you? That's where my observations around comedy, controversy, and experience start getting interesting.
Comedy: Let Me Put My Guard Down for a Minute
Comedy is working incredibly well in my own business right now. When I look at my social media, content that takes something uncomfortable, controversial, or taboo and makes it funny frequently gets people's attention. That's useful information for me because my subject happens to be sex, and sex already makes people nervous. If I stand in front of an audience and announce, Today we're going to have a very serious discussion about sexuality, I can practically watch everyone's buttholes clench. Humor changes the room. It tells people, We're allowed to play here. We can talk about this without dying.
There is research supporting humor's power in marketing, although it also gives businesses an important warning. A large meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science found that humor in advertising can increase attention, positive emotion, attitudes toward the advertisement, brand attitudes, and purchase intention. But humor did not magically make the advertiser more credible. In fact, the analysis found that humor could reduce perceived source credibility.
I find that fascinating because it means the lesson isn't be funny and people will trust you. It's much more nuanced than that. Humor can get the door open. What you do once you're inside still determines whether people trust you.
That's exactly how I experience humor in therapy and onstage. Humor can lower the tension enough that we're finally able to talk about the thing everyone was terrified to say out loud, but then we still have to tell the truth. A good joke often contains an observation everyone recognizes but nobody has quite said that way before. You laugh because some part of you thinks, Oh my God. That's true. In a world where people are desperately trying to figure out what's real, I think that little moment of recognition matters.
Controversy: Please Don't Destroy Your Life for Engagement
The second thing I keep seeing is controversy, and I want to be careful with this one because I am absolutely not suggesting that businesses manufacture outrage, pick fights online, or blow up their families so they can improve their engagement metrics. Please don't ruin your life for the algorithm.
When I say controversy, I mean something broader: be willing to violate an expectation. Controversy in your business should still fit what I call your Mojo—your passion, values, personality, beliefs, and the way you genuinely want to show up in the world. If you're manufacturing controversy that has absolutely nothing to do with who you are because somebody told you rage gets clicks, you're not rebuilding trust. You're creating another performance your customer eventually has to see through.
My controversy happens to be pretty easy to find because I'm a sex therapist. Sex itself is controversial. But my particular version of controversy isn't simply saying the word sex a lot. It's talking about sexuality as something that can be healthy, playful, funny, relational, awkward, meaningful, and enjoyable. In a culture where sexuality is frequently discussed through fear, danger, shame, scandal, or performance, simply saying, Hey, sex can actually be fun, can be surprisingly disruptive.
Your controversy may look completely different. Maybe everybody in your industry hides their prices and you publish yours. Maybe everybody promises miraculous results and you openly explain what your product can't do. Maybe your competitors are constantly upselling people and you occasionally tell a customer, You know what? You don't actually need the expensive package. Maybe your entire industry has done something one way for 30 years and you're willing to say, I think there's a better way.
Research around controversial and taboo advertising is considerably more complicated than the internet's simplistic controversy sells advice would suggest. Studies have found effects on attention and brand recall, but controversy does not universally improve people's attitudes toward the brand or make them want to buy. That supports the distinction I'm making here. Don't be controversial for attention. Be willing to be different for truth. If the controversial thing you're saying is completely disconnected from your actual values, people eventually figure that out, and now you've made the trust problem worse.
Experience: This Is the One I Think Matters Most
Comedy can get my attention, and controversy can interrupt my expectations, but experience is the one I keep coming back to because an experience lets me stop relying entirely on what you say your business does. I get to feel something for myself.
There is some interesting evidence supporting that shift. Freeman's research into business events asked nearly 2,100 people who had recently attended in-person or online events what most positively influenced their experience. Immersive experiences topped the list at 64%, with customized agendas coming next at 45%. People weren't simply asking for more information. They wanted to be in it.
That makes enormous sense to me because information has become one of the cheapest things in the world. I can sit in my house and learn practically anything. I can watch YouTube, listen to podcasts, take courses, Google something, or ask AI. I can also stream a movie on an enormous television while sitting in my own recliner with my own snacks, my own bathroom, and nobody's six-foot-three husband sitting directly in front of me.
So if you want me to leave my house and spend $80 at a movie theater, you've got a problem. You've got to beat my recliner, and my recliner is fucking comfortable.
That's why I don't think "experience" simply means putting people in a physical room. A mediocre experience doesn't magically become valuable because I had to put on pants to attend it. It needs to give me something I couldn't easily create by myself: novelty, participation, connection, discovery, community, or transformation.
And I know exactly what that feels like.
The Balloon That Gave Me Hope
A few years ago, I was going through my divorce. It was one of those periods of life where you can't see very far ahead of yourself. My whole life felt like it was falling apart, and I genuinely didn't know what the future would look like. During that period, someone invited me to the Balloon Glow in Forest Park in St. Louis. It’s coming up this month. https://www.greatforestparkballoonrace.com/
I had never experienced anything like it. There were hot-air balloons everywhere, and when the burners fired, these enormous balloons would suddenly light up against the night. There were people everywhere, noise, fire, color, and community. It felt magical. But that wasn't even the best part. The next day, this family introduced me to something I didn't even know existed: balloon chasing.
Apparently, when the Great Forest Park Balloon Race happens, you can get in your car and try to follow the balloons across St. Louis to see where they land. My immediate reaction was basically, Wait. We're allowed to do that? So we chased them. We drove around trying to predict where these enormous balloons floating through the sky were going to come down, and when we finally found one, I felt this ridiculous amount of excitement. WE FOUND THE BALLOON.
Years later, I can still feel that experience in my body. I've continued doing it. My husband and daughter have chased balloons with me. One year we followed them all the way into North County. I've watched balloons land near churches, businesses, car lots, and places I didn't even know existed. And somewhere in the middle of one of the hardest periods of my life, chasing a giant balloon across St. Louis gave me something I desperately needed: hope.
A hot-air balloon obviously didn't solve my divorce. It didn't fix my finances or tell me what my future would look like. It didn't magically make everything okay. But it reminded me that there were still things I hadn't experienced yet. There were still weird things to do, people to meet, places I hadn't discovered, and future moments when I would be screaming in a car because we found the fucking balloon.
I walked away with this feeling in my body: I can do this.
That's transformation. And that's why I think businesses need to understand the difference between providing information and creating an experience. Entertainment gives me something enjoyable to do for a while. A transformational experience leaves me somehow different afterward.
Don't Say You Transform People. Let Me Experience It.
I'm seeing this in my own sales process too. The traditional discovery call is often basically an information exchange: What do you do? What does it cost? How does it work? When can we start? Those questions still matter, but increasingly I find that one of the most powerful things I can do is sit with somebody and actually listen to their story.
I don't promise outcomes I can't promise. I don't tell someone I can magically fix their marriage or business because that's bullshit, and I'm not interested in trying to rebuild trust with another exaggerated promise. Instead, I let them experience a small piece of how I work. I listen. I ask questions. I notice patterns. I may offer a different way of looking at something they've been struggling with. They get a tiny experience of, Oh. This is what working with Angela feels like.
I watched something similar happen recently while speaking to a small group of podcasters. The event shifted away from the presentation we thought we were going to have and became a remarkably honest conversation about the trust recession and how difficult business feels right now. I could physically see the room change. People who had been sitting back were suddenly leaning forward. Nobody was pretending to have everything figured out anymore. We were business owners talking honestly about something we were all experiencing, and I think we left a little different than we arrived.
That's the standard I'm becoming interested in. Not simply, Did they hear me? Not even, Did they enjoy me? The better question is: Did something change?
From Promising to Participating
One line from Edelman's recent research stopped me because it sounds remarkably similar to what I've been observing: brands need to move from promising to participating. Consumers don't merely want another company announcing what it believes. Edelman's 2025 research found people increasingly wanted brands to provide things that affect their actual lives. Among the report's findings, 68% wanted brands to "make me feel good," 62% wanted optimism, and 59% wanted brands to teach and educate them.
That sounds a lot less like traditional advertising to me. It sounds more like a relationship.
Maybe that's the larger shift happening underneath comedy, controversy, and experience. We spent decades learning increasingly sophisticated ways to tell people what to think about our businesses. Now people have been told so much that telling isn't enough. They want to see you, test you, laugh with you, watch what happens when you say something real, participate in something with you, and gather enough evidence to make their own decision.
Because here's the thing about trust: I don't trust you because you told me to. I trust you because I've had enough experiences with you that my brain finally has evidence.
That's why I think experience—and ultimately transformation—may become one of the most valuable currencies in business. The question for the businesses of the future won't simply be, How do I market this? It will be, How do I let people experience enough of what I do that they can decide for themselves whether it's worth trusting?
In a trust recession, another promise is cheap. An experience is evidence.
And transformation?
That's something people remember.
Back to Part 1: Why Do Sales and Marketing Feel Like Lies?
Sources
Edelman's 2025 Brand Trust: From We to Me research surveyed 15,000 respondents across 15 countries and found trust was as important as quality and value for money in brand purchase decisions. The report also examined consumers' desire for brands to contribute to optimism, education, community, and personal well-being.
A meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science examined research on humor in advertising and found positive effects on attention, affect, attitudes, and purchase intention, while also finding that humor does not automatically increase source credibility.
Freeman's attendee research, reported by PCMA, surveyed nearly 2,100 recent event attendees and found immersive experiences were the most commonly cited factor positively influencing their event experience.
Research published in the Journal of Business Research has examined taboo and controversial advertising and demonstrates why controversy should not be treated as a universally positive marketing strategy: attention and recall do not automatically translate into positive brand outcomes.
