Designing for Trust with Margot Bloomstein

Today, organizations in every industry need a new strategy to earn trust, act with transparency, and help consumers and citizens make confident decisions. But undermining confidence is cynicism: it erodes trust in the media, government, public institutions, and consumer brands. To regain the trust of consumers and citizens, marketers talk about empathy and authenticity. But how do you get beyond those buzzwords? Give more control to your audience—and they’ll put more trust in you.

Empower your audience to earn their trust. Our tactical choices in content and design can engage, educate, and ultimately empower people. Drawing on examples from retail, publishing, government, and other industries, Margot will share lessons from her upcoming book, Trustworthy, about how voice, volume, and vulnerability can inform your design and content strategy to earn the trust of your users.

Let’s address the tough questions: How do brands develop rapport when audiences let emotion cloud logic? Is there a place for vulnerability in corporate strategy? And what’s the role of command and control consistency in the creative work of a corporate enterprise? These questions can drive design choices—and the way we respond can empower users and rebuild our ability to trust in society itself.

About Margot:

Margot Bloomstein consults, writes, and speaks about content strategy and how brands build trust through content—especially right now, as we all embrace a new normal for trust, transparency, and empowered communication. The principal of Appropriate, Inc., she’s the author of the seminal Content Strategy at Work and Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap, coming in March 2021 from Page Two Books. For 20 years, she has helped shape the content strategy industry by leading workshops, keynoting conferences, and consulting for communications, marketing, and UX teams in a range of institutions. Her clients include the American Montessori Society, Sallie Mae, Harvard University, Fidelity, Lovehoney, Scholastic, and Lindt and Sprüngli. A participant in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium and featured speaker at SXSW, Margot is a popular keynote speaker at corporate events, conferences, and in private workshops around the world. She also produces BrandSort and teaches in the graduate program of FH Joanneum University in Graz, Austria. Find her on Twitter at
@mbloomstein
or sign up for info about Trustworthy at http://appropriateinc.com/trustworthy .