A general theory of bullshit – and why advertising needs to build trust

The advertising and media industries are facing significant challenges around issues such as fake news and a lack of trust but there are steps they can take.

Fake news is an issue in the media industry, a lack of consumer trust is an issue for the advertising industry. It seems like everywhere one looks these days, there’s an air of suspicion. Nor is this exactly new – the global financial crisis a decade ago ushered in a new era of cynicism, although bankers seem to have clawed back some credibility since then and are more trusted than business leaders generally in Ipsos’s Veracity Index.

Advertising executives, on the other hand, are at the bottom of the list of trusted professions, behind the traditional bad guys: politicians, journalists...

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