Is your Organisation Giving Communications Something Authentic to Communicate?

Organisations spend considerable time deciding what they want to be known for. They define their values, develop positioning and build communications around the qualities they want stakeholders to associate with them, but none of that answers the more difficult question of whether the organisation is behaving in ways that make those claims believable.

The 2026 Ogilvy APAC Believability Index offers a useful indication of what happens when that connection breaks down. Conducted with YouGov across 7,176 respondents in Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong SAR and Mainland China, the study found that 93 percent of consumers who lose belief in an organisation disengage silently rather than complaining, and that nearly half, 48 percent, stop purchasing altogether. Only 10 percent would post about a negative experience on social media.

The damage, in other words, arrives without warning and without a headline.

Authenticity cannot be created through messaging alone

Authentic communication is an expression of organisational character rather than something that can be manufactured through slogans, campaigns or carefully constructed corporate narratives. Communications can articulate what an organisation stands for, but it cannot permanently create credibility where the underlying behaviour gives stakeholders reasons to doubt it.

An organisation can communicate its commitment to transparency while making important information difficult to access, speak about respect while handling difficult decisions in ways that leave stakeholders feeling disregarded, or position itself as ethical while tolerating behaviour that contradicts those claims. The communications may remain consistent, but the experience is not.

The say-do gap is a communications issue too

The EY Global Integrity Report 2024 found that 44 percent of Southeast Asian respondents believed unethical behaviour was tolerated by senior management, compared with 31 percent globally, pointing to a disconnect between what organisations say about integrity and what stakeholders believe leaders are prepared to tolerate in practice.

For communications, this changes where authenticity needs to be assessed.

It cannot be judged only by whether the organisation's messaging is consistent, whether its leadership communications are well written or whether its values appear clearly across its corporate channels. It has to be tested against what people can actually observe when those values become difficult, inconvenient or expensive to uphold.

What happens when the organisation makes a difficult decision? How does leadership explain a mistake when the organisation is under pressure? Does the response reflect the principles the organisation regularly communicates, or does the language change when the consequences become uncomfortable? These moments often tell stakeholders more than the most carefully prepared campaign.

So what is communications' role?

Communications may not be able to create authenticity, but it can identify when there is a gap between the story an organisation is telling and the reality stakeholders are experiencing. It can bring that gap into leadership conversations, challenge claims the organisation cannot yet support, and help communicate honestly when something has gone wrong.

Richard Brett, President of Ogilvy PR APAC, put the underlying point plainly when he said that the organisations succeeding in 2026 will be those that recognise operational action matters more than a traditional holding statement. Communication can explain the action. It cannot substitute for it.

The question is therefore not simply whether the organisation is communicating authentically. It is whether the organisation is giving communications something authentic to communicate. That distinction matters because stakeholders have more ways than ever to compare what an organisation says with what people experience, and because credibility is increasingly shaped outside the channels an organisation controls.

For communications leaders, the responsibility is not to close every gap with better storytelling, but to recognise when the gap exists, understand what is creating it, and bring that reality into the conversations where organisational decisions are being made.

Because when behaviour consistently contradicts the message, the challenge is no longer how to tell the story better. It is whether the organisation is prepared to change the story it is telling through its actions.

Sources: Ogilvy, APAC 2026 Believability Index: The Power of Proof, July 2026. EY, Global Integrity Report 2024.