Brands want us to trust them. But as the SPF debacle shows, they need to earn it

It’s quite unsettling to discover something so central to our cultural rituals – the “slop” in the Aussie mantra of “Slip! Slop! Slap!” – can no longer be trusted.

We’ve never really had to scrutinise sunscreen. We slop it on because Sid the Seagull (in his role as spokesbird for the Cancer Council) told us to. We’ve learned about sun protection factors (SPF) and made choices to protect ourselves. We do it because it works.

Or so we thought.

Consumer group Choice recently tested 20 sunscreen brands and found only four met their labelled SPF claims. The findings have shaken consumers’ trust in the brands that make these products, and perhaps, in the institutions responsible for regulating them.

Trust is the silent architecture of our lives that makes everything from catching a bus to undergoing surgery feel possible. Indeed, we are born into trust. From infancy, we are wired to trust, first in our caregivers, then later in life in the cues and symbols such as endorsements, SPF ratings, brands or rankings that help us navigate a complex world.

It’s also why we rarely read the fine print or terms and conditions.

The role of power in trust relationships

Trust, and its erosion in public life, has become such a critical issue that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has made it a focus of Friday’s Consumer Congress, titled “Who can we trust? Regulating in an environment of declining consumer trust”.

Something that is often missed in discussions around trust is that it is also a social arrangement, shaped by power and vulnerability. Trust is nearly always asymmetric; those with the least power are usually required to place their trust first and most fully.

The powerful rarely have to reciprocate that vulnerability. They hold the information, set the rules and shape the narrative. When things go wrong, the powerful often walk away relatively unscathed, while the vulnerable are left to navigate complex complaints or refund systems.

Increasingly, we are told to be savvy, to read the fine print and to “do the research”. But putting the responsibility on the individual reframes structural failures as personal shortcomings. It places the burden of vigilance and scrutiny on people who lack the time or expertise to meaningfully assess risk.

A breach of faith

The issue is compounded by a wider trend across many businesses that have misread their relationship with consumers. Much of our trust in brands is automatic.

We are more inclined to trust claims from familiar or warm-sounding sources, with research showing warmth comes first. People tend to judge others and institutions by their perceived warmth before considering their competence. So a brand that feels benevolent often earns our trust before we assess its actual performance.

Qantas, a brand that built its entire identity around the idea that it was “us”, trashed our trust when it began acting like a transactional retail business, rather than one built on relationships.

Management and the board failed to grasp they had been given something rare: a kind of cultural endearment underpinned by trust and perceived reciprocity that made Australians feel personally invested in its success.

While Qantas does retain market share, the erosion of this emotional bond means many customers are more willing to try its competitors. It will struggle to rebuild that trust simply with price deals or heartstring-tugging ad campaigns.

The response matters

For organisations such as the Cancer Council, whose trustworthiness is built on moral authority, the response to failure matters deeply. Its decision to acknowledge the findings and commit to retesting was more than public relations. It was an act of relational repair.

In contrast, some of the other corporate brands in the survey responded by disputing Choice’s methodology. That reveals an outdated corporate reflex – one that attacks the messenger rather than engaging with the message. This defensive posture reflects a mindset shaped more by legal risk and brand control than by public accountability or ethical responsibility.

Still, individual responses are not enough. We need systems designed with human limits in mind. Trust cannot be sustained if it is constantly tested by complexity, misinformation and opaque accountability.

Consumer bodies such as Choice provide a public service by filling the gap between what people assume and what they can verify. But more broadly, businesses and regulators must treat trust as a relationship, not a marketing goal.

The system needs to prevent harm, not deal with the fallout

Rebuilding trust means putting people at the centre of consumer regulation. A human-centred system does not treat people as problems to be managed. It treats them as participants in a shared moral project. It requires systems grounded in evidence, designed around real human behaviour and focused on preventing harm rather than managing fallout.

One way to do this is through collaborative regulation. This approach brings together consumer representatives, regulators, behavioural experts and industry to design rules and standards that reflect how people actually behave (as opposed to how we hope they behave). This reduces asymmetries of power, and ensures trust is earned and maintained over time.

This collaborative approach has been successfully adopted in local government and health. But it only works when collaboration is approached in good faith by all parties, not just a “tick-the-box” exercise.

Of course, this approach runs counter to a legal system that tends to prioritise the system over the people it serves, and process over outcomes. But the goal shouldn’t be to force better ideas into outdated frameworks. Instead, we should design systems that lead to better outcomes for everyone.