Beyond AI
The behavioral science of trust doesn't stop at AI.
Trust is a behavioral outcome. It forms from expectations, depends on whether people feel they have agency and is tested when something goes wrong.
Small violations compound. A brand that handles one failure well can emerge stronger, and one that handles it badly can lose years of goodwill. Recovery, more than the original failure, often decides the outcome.
This research runs through Behavieural’s work, and it is why the same principles carry across contexts. Trust in AI is one case of a broader problem, and an AI incident is a brand crisis as much as a technical one.
Three areas of trust, applied.
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What do people actually believe about a brand, and what moves it?
The Great Canadian Brand Index is a Bayesian-modeled national survey measuring brand trust across seven values for 130+ Canadian brands in 12 industries. In the 2026 release, 93 of the 130 brands declined. The index supports brand strategy, competitive benchmarking and positioning, and an analytical newsletter, the Great Canadian Brand Ledger, publishes on Sundays.
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How should an organization respond, and prepare, before trust is tested?
Managing Brand Crises: A Guide to Navigating the Storm (Business Expert Press, 2025) sets out the STORM Framework: Swift response, Transparent communication, Ownership of the problem, Re-building trust, and Monitoring and learning. STORM SHIELD extends it into pre-crisis preparedness as a workshop for leadership and communications teams, in a half-day Foundations format or a full-day Complete format with a live simulation. It draws on inoculation theory, the threat-rigidity response and normalization of deviance, three mechanisms that explain why organizations freeze, drift and answer badly under pressure.
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Is loyalty durable, or only satisfied?
Satisfaction scores, NPS and program enrollment record stated loyalty. They don't show how well it holds up against a competitor's offer. Repeat purchase can reflect habit or switching costs, not commitment. Behavieural's loyalty work distinguishes revealed loyalty, meaning behavior when alternatives are available, from stated loyalty. A diagnostic that separates durable loyalty from transactional loyalty is in development, alongside original consumer research.
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Who this is for?
Chief marketing officers and brand leaders, communications and public-affairs teams, customer experience and loyalty leaders, and executive teams and boards preparing for, or recovering from, a trust event.
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One science of trust.
The mechanisms that decide whether people rely on an algorithm also shape whether they believe in a brand, forgive it after a crisis and stay loyal when alternatives appear. Behavieural applies the same behavioral science to brand trust, crisis communication and customer loyalty.
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Ways to work together.
Speaking and workshops on brand crisis, trust recovery and loyalty, from keynotes to the STORM SHIELD simulation. Advisory and consulting for organizations facing a specific brand, communications or loyalty problem. Data and insight from the Great Canadian Brand Index for marketing and strategy teams. Learning through the Academy, including courses on branding and PR crises, emotional marketing, luxury consumer behavior and consumer behavior in the sharing economy, and the book Consumer Behavior in Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).