Trust as a Metric
In an era of noise and generative AI, good content has become more valuable, not less.
There has never been an easier time to make content. A brand can now generate pages of copy, dozens of concepts, images and social posts before the first cup of coffee is finished. That can be enormously useful, and we use new tools ourselves when they make the work faster, help organize information or allow a creative team to explore more directions.
The problem is that when everyone can make more, volume stops being much of an advantage.
For years, digital marketing often rewarded scale. More impressions, more posts, more keywords and more places where a brand could appear all seemed like progress. Today, audiences are surrounded by so much information that simply creating another piece of content does not mean anyone will care about it.
What feels increasingly valuable is judgment. Someone needs to understand why a story matters, whether it is true, what the audience actually needs from it, what belongs in the story and what does not. Someone needs to decide whether the final product sounds like a real organization with a point of view rather than another piece of content generated because the calendar said something had to be posted on Tuesday.
Those decisions are where human-led storytelling earns its value. AI can help a smart person move faster, but it cannot replace the responsibility that comes with deciding what an organization should say and how it should say it.
At Fose + McKay, we tend to think about content as part of the relationship between an organization and its audience. Every page, email, post, video or campaign makes a small deposit into that relationship, or a small withdrawal from it. You build trust by being useful, consistent, clear and recognizable over time.
Trust does not always fit neatly into a dashboard, but its effects show up everywhere. People come back. They spend more time with what you create. They share something because it was worth sharing. They recommend the organization to someone else. When something goes wrong, they are more willing to hear what the organization has to say.
Generative AI will continue to make content easier and less expensive to produce. We think that makes thoughtful content more important, not less. When everyone has access to the same tools, the difference will increasingly come down to what you choose to say, why you choose to say it and whether the audience believes you when you do.