From Proof to Propagation: Q1 Data Shows How Reputation Is Built in a Multiplayer World

In our 2026 Global RepTrak 100 report, released earlier this month, we shared that RepTrak data showed that reputation is increasingly being co-constructed by a variety of stakeholders: communities, employees, creators, cultural participants, and, increasingly, AI systems. 

Now, fresh data from our Q1 2026 Current Events research further substantiates that point.

A Shift to Customer-Focused Fundamentals

In our Q1 Current Events data, the Informed General Public said companies should be more focused on operational fundamentals that impact the customer and less on topics that skew more narrative-driven and signaling-oriented. 

In fact, those customer-focused fundamentals like “Improving the customer experience” and “Data privacy and cybersecurity” both led the way in terms of what the Informed General Public labeled as the top priorities for companies. And a third—“Supporting local communities where they operate”—jumped three percentage points since the last time we asked this question (Q2 2025), with 29% of respondents placing that as a top-3 priority.

Topics like “Environmental sustainability” and “Business transformation” and “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”, meanwhile, either stayed flat or lost appeal among respondents. DE&I, in particular, fell 10 raw percentage points since Q2 2025 with less than a quarter of respondents considering that a top priority for companies.

Read through the lens of our “reputation is multiplayer” thesis, these datapoints confirm much of what we covered in our Global RepTrak 100: Companies build reputation through what they do. But, increasingly, it is stakeholders who build reputation through what they say about it, not the companies themselves.

This shows up, too, in questions surrounding corporate involvement in politics and workplace communications: Some 45% of respondents (up from 43% in Q3 2024) said business leaders and corporations risk their reputations when they become involved in politics. 

There is, it should be noted, an agreement that business leaders and corporations should get involved in politics. The point to be made here, though, is that the Informed General Public is signaling how much risk there is in rhetoric right now.

And nowhere, perhaps, is this signal stronger than in questions surrounding how workplace practices impact reputation: When asked which practices most negatively affect a company's reputation, 64% of IGP respondents point to poor working conditions and 56% to a lack of equal opportunity and fair treatment. The lone rhetoric/signaling-based option presented (“limited transparency about pay, benefits, or promotions”) came in well behind at 47%. 

Again, the strongest reputation levers are foundational, not promotional.

In practical terms, reputation is increasingly being built on what stakeholders can observe, experience, and verify.

From Proof to Propagation

Once that proof exists, stakeholders are increasingly willing to construct and distribute a narrative themselves.

If communication strategies are no longer something companies control in a top-down fashion, but something stakeholders carry, then reputation measurement has to evolve as well. The real question becomes whether there is enough credibility in the system for stakeholders to carry and scale your reputation.

You might begin to look at reputation on two vertices:

1. Proof. Companies create trust through consistent, observable performance

2. Propagation. Stakeholders distribute and reinforce that trust across networks

For communications leaders, then, part of the role is now validating whether there’s enough proof for a particular narrative to exist. 

A Model for Validating Corporate Narratives

RepTrak's Feel-Think-Do model can answer this by measuring:

• The degree of esteem, admiration, trust, and positive regard stakeholders hold toward a company. The Reputation Score is the primary Feel metric: a single number from 0–100 that reflects the overall strength of the emotional connection the informed general public has with a company. It is the output of everything a company does and everything stakeholders say about what it does.

• What stakeholders believe about a company across seven Drivers of Reputation: Products & Services, Performance, Innovation, Leadership, Conduct, Citizenship, and Workplace. Each driver is composed of underlying factors that describe specific, measurable attributes. Think scores explain why people feel the way they do. In the case of “proof,” it can also tell comms leaders whether they, in fact, have it.

• The actions stakeholders are willing to take on behalf of a company. RepTrak measures seven Business Outcomes: Buy, Recommend Products, Say Positive, Trust to Do the Right Thing, Work For, Invest, and Benefit of the Doubt. These are the behaviors that translate reputation into commercial and institutional value. Strong Feel scores produce strong Do scores; weak Feel undermines all of them.

Reputation no longer belongs to the company that communicates it most effectively; it belongs to the one whose stakeholders are willing to carry it. And stakeholders only carry what they believe.

Our Q1 data shows how this developing trend is now showing up everywhere. Pressure-testing yourself by understanding what proof your stakeholders believe is key to developing a multiplayer reputation strategy.