Why the Loudest Brands Aren’t Always the Most Trusted

There’s an assumption baked into much of modern marketing that visibility and trust rise together. That the brands we see most often and hear loudly are the ones people believe in. In reality, some of the most credible organisations operate with far less noise, resisting the urge to constantly reinforce their own significance and allowing consistency to do the work instead.

And it’s not accidental.

Visibility is not the same as credibility

Sure, high visibility can create familiarity, and recognition and even momentum.  But it doesn’t automatically create trust. It can do the opposite: Take our recent experience switching to Sky broadband. Their advertising is everywhere: billboards, TV, online, social media. The message is loud and confident “On the UK’s most reliable broadband technology.” It clearly worked, because three months ago we switched. Fast forward to last week. Our broadband was crawling along at a snails pace. My husband spent the entire morning on the phone to customer services, only to be told that speeds are “only guaranteed up to the router”. Ahhh, that crucial caveat, unsurprisingly, didn’t feature in the glossy ads or bold headlines. So how do we feel about Sky now? Annoyed. Frustrated. Copious amounts of buyers remorse. And that feeling doesn’t disappear when the call ends. From now on, every time we see another Sky advert, another loud claim about reliability, it will reinforce the inconvenience we experienced. Their visibility is simply amplifying our disappointment.

Why this approach works for some companies

For large, mass-market brands like Sky, this trade-off is often a calculated one. With millions of customers, they are effectively operating on probability. A significant proportion of customers will have a perfectly adequate experience, or at least one that never deteriorates enough to trigger complaint. Those customers become quiet proof points that allow the brand’s broad claims to hold, statistically if not universally.

At scale, the model doesn’t depend on every promise being experienced equally by every customer. It depends on enough customers having no major issues, and on the friction experienced by the rest being absorbed through call centres, processes, and attrition over time. The volume of positive or neutral experiences dilutes individual frustration, even though that frustration is very real at a personal level.

This is where loud visibility can mask uneven delivery. Big, confident claims continue to work because the brand presence is constant and familiar, and because dissatisfaction is fragmented- felt privately, dealt with individually, and rarely connected into a single visible narrative. From a commercial perspective, it can actually be an effective strategy. From a trust perspective though, it’s far more fragile. Quiet authority doesn’t rely on probability in the same way. It doesn’t assume that inconsistency will be lost in the noise. Instead, it treats every interaction as cumulative. It may reach fewer people, more slowly, but it plays a longer game, one where credibility isn’t borrowed from scale or familiarity, but earned through consistency over time.

Quiet authority works differently

Quiet authority isn’t about hiding or being passive. It’s about being deliberate. Speaking less often, with more care. There’s less reliance on slogans or shouty self-proclamations of greatness, and more trust placed in consistency; in decisions, behaviour and tone which then do the heavy lifting. Communication feels calmer and less theatrical and as a result, more credible. There’s no rush to occupy every social channel or comment on every moment. They’re comfortable leaving space, because they know that when they do speak, it'll land and mean something.

Why this matters for marketing

People don’t remember every message from a loud brand. But they do remember how it made them feel: rushed, reassured, confused, patronised, respected. Trust accumulates quietly, through repeated moments of being understood rather than impressed.

The trade-off

There’s a real trade-off between being everywhere and being believable. Companies that struggle most are often those trying to project certainty before they’ve done the work to earn it, filling gaps with confidence rather than insight- and sometimes they manage this quite well (read our article here about how some companies do this). Quiet authority doesn’t need to win every moment of attention, because it’s playing a longer game.

Living up to the noise

To be clear, loud brands aren’t always untrustworthy. Some actually live up to the noise they make. Take Lebara, for example. They operate in the same sector, on a far smaller budget than Sky, yet their messaging is just as bold: “No price hikes”, “Best SIM-only deals”, “Excellent service”,

I was recently looking for a cheap PAYG SIM so my daughter can watch films on long car journeys. Having ruled out Sky on principle, I used a price comparison site and Lebara did, in fact, come out as the best SIM-only deal. A loud claim that turned out to be true. The “no price hikes” promise is particularly interesting. It’s definitive. It’s testable. They can’t suddenly walk it back once you’re in the contract (although it's actually contract free- another benefit that wasn't shouted!). Because that claim feels concrete and verifiable, it lends credibility to the others claims. So I’m now far more inclined to believe the third, “excellent service”, even if that one is harder to prove upfront.

That’s how trust accumulates. Not through abstract superlatives like “most reliable technology”, but through specific claims that survive contact with reality. Time will tell whether Lebara live up to every part of their promise, but they’re the ones I’ve chosen, because their loudness is anchored in something tangible. And that’s the difference. Noise backed by consistency builds belief. Noise that isn’t eventually builds resentment.