Burson Research: AI trusted for workplace queries, not on leadership

Burson, today released The Credibility Paradox, a new report showing that there is a variance in how AI-generated answers about brands and companies are perceived by audiences. 

Burson partnered with Profound, a leading AI marketing platform, examining thousands of reputation-related answers across seven major AI answer platforms, evaluating 85 companies across the eight standards of a reputation framework developed by Burson. 

“In today’s zero-click world, LLMs have become the new gatekeepers of reputation – how brands are discovered and evaluated. But visibility is not credibility,” said Corey duBrowa, CEO, Burson. “AI synthesizes, summarizes and delivers information directly to audiences. Showing up in these LLMs is necessary but not sufficient. Our role is no longer just to make clients visible, but to build an evidence ecosystem so robust that the answers AI constructs are believable to the audiences that matter most. This research is our playbook for turning the credibility paradox into a competitive advantage.”

Key Findings

• AI rewards proof, not positioning. Fact-based claims tied to innovation, products and workplace culture consistently outperformed those tied to what might be perceived as more subjective qualities like leadership, governance and citizenship. This underscores a strong mix of earned, owned and social content for GEO, as AI places the greatest weight on independent corroboration from media coverage, reviews and conversation.
• Workplace is an underused credibility lever. As demonstrated in Burson's Global Reputation Economy research, Workplace is a consistently underleveraged lever in building reputation capital, and LLMs are no exception. Workplace-related answers are the most believable among the general population, a finding consistent with LLMs’ reliance on independently verifiable sources like talent platform reviews, labor reporting and earned media.
• Leadership is AI's toughest credibility test. Responses to leadership-related prompts consistently ranked among the least believable across every industry studied. The industries that scored higher – Aerospace and Technology – shared a common thread: The underlying proof came from governance structures, business performance and external validation, not executive messaging alone.
• Believability varies by audience. A narrative that appears credible in an AI answer may not land equally with customers, investors, employees or regulators. Business decision makers rated AI-generated answers +10% more believable on average than the general population, with more specialized audiences more receptive to innovation-led narratives and the business context behind them. Audience-specific GEO analysis is essential.

“Across APAC, much of the conversation around AI has centered on whether brands appear in AI-generated answers, while far less attention has been given to whether those answers are accurate, credible, and believable. That is the gap our report addresses," said Red Surtida, APAC head of intelligence and transformation. 

"As AI becomes an increasingly influential layer between companies and their stakeholders, it is shaping not only how brands are discovered, but also how they are understood and evaluated. The real opportunity for organizations is not simply to secure share of answer, but to ensure those answers are grounded in evidence, backed by credible sources, and believable to the audiences that matter most.”

"GEO began as a visibility challenge quantified by audit reports," said Steve Rubel, EVP, media insights and measurement, Burson. "The data from this study makes clear it has become something more consequential: a test of whether the reputation a company has earned in the real world is legible, corroborated and believable in the AI-mediated environments where audiences are increasingly forming their opinions. Our framework gives communicators a practical path forward and establishes GEO as a new domain in reputation management."