Why CEOs are losing trust when it matters most — Isentia in The Business Times

Summary: Featured in The Business Times Singapore, Isentia’s commentary unpacks the widening authenticity gap between CEOs and the audiences they’re trying to reach — and what communicators must do to bridge it before reputational damage is too late to resolve.

In an opinion piece for The Business Times, Isentia’s Prashant Saxena (VP, Revenue and Insights, SEA) and Nikita Gundala (Content Marketing Executive) dissect the trust crisis facing today’s corporate leaders. Drawing on data from the Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 and Isentia’s own authenticity framework, the piece reveals that trust in CEOs has fallen —  a decline driven less by performance metrics than by a perception that leaders are less relatable, less transparent, and increasingly indistinguishable from the AI-generated content flooding audience feeds.

The authors argue that in an era where synthetic content can be produced faster than ever, authenticity has quietly shifted from a “nice-to-have” to hard business currency. Using viral case studies — from the Andy Byron Coldplay controversy to the Mia Zelu virtual influencer backlash — PR leaders need to stop scrambling toward AI only in a crisis, to humanise how AI is deployed day-to-day, and to respond (not merely react) to what is actually moving their audiences.