Every quarter, marketing executives gather in boardrooms across Metro Manila and beyond, poring over budget allocations. The pattern remains frustratingly predictable: advertising gets the lion’s share, while PR fights for scraps. This formula made sense in 2010.
But we don’t like In 2025 anymore. And doing this is killing your brand’s most valuable asset – trust.
According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 47% of people globally trust businesses to do the right thing. That’s barely higher than a coin flip. Even more telling, trust in businesses has declined by 8 percentage points since 2019, with particularly sharp drops in sectors like tech, healthcare, and financial services. When consumers were asked about advertising specifically, the numbers get worse. Research from think tank Credos in partnership with the Advertising Association shows that only 29% of Britons trust advertising in 2023, a dramatic fall from 48% in the early 1990s.
The cold and hard truth is this: the more you spend on traditional advertising, the more you erode the very credibility you’re trying to build.
Here’s why this happens. Advertising operates on a fundamental assumption that attention equals influence. Pour enough money into media buys, creative placements, and disruptive campaigns, and surely people will notice your brand and eventually buy from you. This worked beautifully when consumers had limited information channels and trusted mass media as arbiters of quality.
That world no longer exists.
Filipino consumers, like their global counterparts, now live in a state of perpetual ad bombardment. Research shows the average person encounters between 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily across digital and traditional channels.
The result? Ad fatigue has become the default consumer state. When 73% of consumers dislike pop-up ads and actively use ad blockers, your expensive campaign isn’t breaking through the clutter; it’s contributing to the noise people desperately want to escape.
The advertising industry’s response to declining effectiveness has been to double down on targeting, personalization, and data-driven optimization. More ads. Better targeting. Smarter algorithms. This approach misses the fundamental problem: consumers no longer trust the medium itself.
A recent study on consumer trust in advertising found that only 25% of consumers trust ads, while recommendations from friends and family rank far higher on the trust scale. When people actively distrust your primary communication channel, spending more money on that channel accelerates your credibility problem rather than solving it.
This crisis of trust creates a cascading effect. Consumers become skeptical of marketing messages, leading brands to make bolder claims to cut through the noise, which further erodes trust when those claims prove exaggerated or hollow. The cycle feeds itself, with each iteration making the next ad campaign less effective and more expensive.
So what’s the alternative?
PR offers a fundamentally different approach to building brand value. Where advertising buys attention, PR earns credibility. Where ads interrupt, strategic communications engage. Where marketing messages proclaim, PR demonstrates through third-party validation, authentic storytelling, and genuine community building.
Consider the mechanics of how trust actually forms in 2025. According to research, 88% of buying decisions are influenced by trust. Consumers look for signals of authenticity: transparent communication about how products are made, honest acknowledgment when things go wrong, alignment between stated values and actual business practices, and genuine engagement rather than promotional messaging.
These trust signals emerge through PR-led strategies, not advertising campaigns. When your company’s experts become thought leaders quoted in respected publications, credibility compounds. When your brand responds transparently to customer concerns on social media, trust builds. When influencers with genuine followings authentically engage with your products, recommendations carry weight that no paid placement can match.
The Philippine market offers a particularly clear example of this dynamic. Research by Agile Data Solutions shows that 57% of Filipino consumers are influenced not by mere awareness, but by trust knowing that brands align with their own values. They have become what researchers call “inclusive supporters,” willing to cultivate diversity and reward brands that take a stand on important issues. With the rise of social media and activist voices, conscious consumption is the new norm.
This values-driven decision-making process requires a different communication approach entirely. You cannot advertise your way into someone’s value system. You can, however, demonstrate shared values through consistent action and authentic storytelling over time. This is PR’s domain.
To be fair, advertising still has a role in modern marketing. Once you’ve built credibility and trust through strategic communications, advertising can amplify those messages to wider audiences. Paid media works best when it reinforces authentic narratives that already resonate, not when it tries to create trust from scratch.
The optimal marketing structure positions PR as the strategic foundation. Build credibility first through thought leadership, community engagement, authentic partnerships, and transparent communication. Let PR create the fertile ground of trust where brand messages can actually take root. Then use advertising strategically to scale those authentic narratives to broader audiences through targeted placements.
This partnership creates a potent combination. PR establishes the credibility that makes your advertising believable. Advertising extends the reach of stories that PR has already made resonant. The two disciplines work in concert, with PR leading and advertising amplifying.
Companies that maintain advertising-first budgets while wondering why their brand metrics decline are solving the wrong problem. They’re trying to buy trust in a market where trust must be earned. They’re shouting louder when the real issue is that people have stopped listening to shouts.
The solution requires a fundamental reallocation of resources and strategic priorities. Move budget from paid media to strategic communications. Invest in building authentic relationships with communities, journalists, and influencers. Create content worth sharing rather than ads worth skipping. Train executives to become genuine thought leaders rather than corporate spokespeople. Build internal culture that employees want to advocate for rather than messaging that feels disconnected from reality.
This shift feels risky to many executives. Advertising offers the comfort of control and measurable reach. PR requires patience, authenticity, and a tolerance for conversations you cannot entirely script. The discomfort is real. So are the results for companies brave enough to make the change.
Your advertising budget might be delivering impressive impression counts and reach metrics. Those numbers look great in quarterly reports. They also might be systematically destroying the one asset that actually drives purchase decisions in 2025: trust. At what point does the metric you’re optimizing become the problem you’re creating?
The choice is yours. Keep pouring money into channels that consumers actively distrust, or redirect those resources toward building the authentic credibility that actually moves markets. One approach delivers comfortable metrics. The other builds lasting value.
Which legacy are you creating for your brand?