Beyond ’27: Advocacy & Impact

Advocacy & Impact

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WELCOME MICHAEL MILLER

insights and the actionable intelligence you need to navigate an ever-evolving market.

From Advocacy to Travel, through to Wellness, Sport and Finance, each specialised session is built for genuine collaboration. Our commitment is to work hand-in-hand with you, ensuring every interaction is efficient, effective, and delivers real outcomes.

This program embodies our dedication to being your trusted partner, helping you to not only meet but exceed your objectives in 2027, and beyond.

We look forward to helping you build a future that produces real, measurable success.

WELCOME TO BEYOND’ 27, WHERE WE GET REAL ABOUT THE FUTURE OF YOUR BUSINESS .

The premise behind Beyond’27 is straightforward: we’re here to help you cut through the noise, get ahead of the curve and genuinely grow your business.

The reality is that the world is changing fast.

What worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. We're seeing incredible progress, but also a lot of uncertainty.

Beyond’27 is about helping you find that sweet spot between bold innovation and practical application.

It’s about bringing together our unparalleled expertise and insights to engage in dynamic dialogues that directly address your most pressing needs. We believe in leading upfront, giving you real

Michael Miller Executive Chairman, News Corp Australasia

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Advocacy & Impact

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CONTENTS ADVOCACY & IMPACT

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Introduction Advocacy & Impact

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Headwinds to navigate Early visible proof points

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Enduring needs Focus, Credibility, Accountability, Agency

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Tailwinds to leverage Early visible proof points

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The wrap Beyond 2027

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BEYOND THE NOISE LEIGH LAVERY

and feel that action can make a difference continues to shape decision-making across this category.

That is the central idea behind this whitepaper series. In Advocacy and Impact, we explore the headwinds brands will need to navigate, the tailwinds they can use to grow, and the enduring human needs that give those shifts meaning.

Our belief is simple: the brands best placed to grow will be the ones that can read both the changing world around people, and the enduring needs within them.

We’re excited to share these insights with you, and we hope they serve as a practical guide as you build for sustainable growth through 2027 and beyond.

INTRODUCING THE GROWTH DISTILLERY.

At The Growth Distillery, we exist to help businesses understand people more deeply, and make better decisions because of it. Our role is to decode the forces shaping consumer behaviour, separate the signals that matter from the noise and turn that understanding into opportunity.

That task has never felt more urgent. The world is changing quickly. Technology is reshaping how people encounter, question and verify information. AI is accelerating access and expectation. Misinformation, public scrutiny and institutional scepticism are changing the conditions in which brands compete.

And yet, beneath all of that change, something important remains stable: what people fundamentally want. The tools, platforms and behaviours may evolve, but enduring human needs do not move nearly as quickly. The desire to focus on what matters, trust credible voices, hold power to account

Leigh Lavery, General Manager, The Growth Distillery

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Advocacy & Impact Advocacy and impact are becoming more commercially important because belief is getting harder to win.

Price and product can win a transaction, but advocacy helps build the public meaning that makes a brand more trusted, more resilient and more likely to be chosen over time.

Businesses are operating in an environment where corporate messaging, creator commentary and misinformation all compete for attention at once. In that kind of environment, visibility alone is not enough.

Brands will be judged less by what they say, and more by what people believe, repeat and defend on their behalf.

Beyond 2027, reputation is your growth engine and your defence system.

Organisations that can translate impact into belief and belief into advocacy, will be better trusted, verified and able to withstand scrutiny. Earning genuine credibility demands more than just appearing to do good; it requires being consistently trusted, verified and proving resilient under scrutiny.

That is why advocacy now matters so much. It is the mechanism that turns reputation into something more credible, durable and commercially powerful.

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Headwinds to navigate

72% of Australians believed they encountered misinformation online in 2025.

PRE DI CTE D H E ADWIND #1 AI will scale misinformation faster than neglected trust can recover.

Looking beyond 2027, reputation will be challenged faster, more publicly and by a wider mix of creators, activists, critics and regulators than most organisations are built to handle. In this environment, silence is not neutral. If a brand says nothing, the vacuum is filled by faster, less reliable and more suspicious signals.

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At the same time, transparency expectations are rising. Audiences no longer assess companies only on price, product or messaging, but on whether they behave like credible, accountable participants in public life. That raises the bar for every claim a company makes.

Early proof points already visible

Misinformation moves faster than institutional response: A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US (MIT) found that false news stories are 70% more likely to be shared than true ones, and that true stories take around six times as long to reach the same number of people. The World Economic Forum now ranks misinformation and disinformation among the most severe short-term risks facing the world.

Staying silent is no longer an option. If a brand does not mention what it is doing to address societal issues, consumers assume the worst – 53% of consumers say they assume the brand is doing nothing, or hiding something if a brand does not mention what it is doing to address societal issues (Edelman Trust Barometer 2025).

That speed now plays out in an environment where misinformation is part of everyday media life. According to an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report from 2025, 72% of Australian adults using digital platforms believed they had encountered misinformation in just the first half of 2025, a sign of how crowded and contested the environment has become.

Beyond 2027 , polished PR and top-down messaging will provide little defence against viral algorithms and unpredictable AI-driven risks. Corporate claims are now tested in real

Scepticism is already becoming the default mindset: 73% of Australians say they are more cautious about trusting brands than they used to be (The Growth Distillery’s Reframe Beauty 2026); 60% are concerned about online safety, privacy and scams (The Growth Distillery’s Lighthouse Poll 2026); and 8 in 10 Australians say they are tired of brands claiming to be trustworthy (The Growth Distillery, The Influence Codes 2024).

time by decentralised networks of creators, campaigners, critics and watchdogs. Reactive communications will become too slow for a world that judges brands before trust can be earned.

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Enduring needs Coordinating people to drive meaningful change is hard work.

It means understanding how systems work and raising issues in ways they can't be ignored. That draws on a set of enduring human needs about what people notice, who they trust, what they expect from institutions and when they act.

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“The media may not tell us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about.”

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media, 1972

The issues the media chooses to give weight to are the ones the public ends up treating as important. People do not have the time or attention to evaluate every issue equally. They rely on signals of priority. That need does not disappear in an overloaded environment; it becomes more important.

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“Communications attributed to high-credibility sources produce substantially more opinion change than the same communications attributed to low-credibility sources.”

Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss, The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness 1951

78% of Australians view national news publishers as trustworthy compared to just 36% for social content creators.

Think News Brands 2026

The same message lands differently depending on who delivers it.

In a world of synthetic content, contested claims and fading source memory, credibility has to keep doing the persuasive work.

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“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Louis Brandeis What Publicity Can Do, 1913

69% of Australians agree “Institutions (e.g. governments, corporations, religious organisations) always put their own interests first”.

The Growth Distillery, The Influence Codes 2024

Institutions behave differently when they know they are being watched.

Advocacy matters because exposure still changes incentives, reputations and outcomes. True accountability relies on the public square's ability to demand transparency and enforce consequences when power is abused.

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“People who believe they have the power to exercise some measure of control over their lives are healthier, more effective, and more successful ... People will not try to do things they believe they cannot do.”

Albert Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action, 1986.

Driver analysis found that ‘control’ is the single biggest factor in determining a consumer’s overall sense of optimism across health, technology, finance, connections and worklife.

The Growth Distillery, The Bright Side 2025

People act when they believe action matters. In systems that feel opaque or unresponsive, advocacy restores agency by showing where pressure can be applied and why it might work. In a climate of economic pressure, technological disruption and institutional mistrust, that sense of agency becomes even more valuable.

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Tailwinds to leverage

Nearly 80% of Australians believe brands should use their power for real world change.

PRE DI CTE D TAI LWIND #1 Brands must build credit in the bank of public opinion before the storm hits.

Reputation will no longer behave like a soft brand asset. It will act as pre-built resilience, with audiences expecting visible proof in market before a crisis hits, not polished reassurance once it has already begun.

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Early proof points already visible

Saying the right thing matters less than showing up in the right way. The expectation on businesses has evolved: back in 2020, people looked to institutions to fix society's problems. Today they increasingly expect brands to step up and act. But it has to be personal: audiences reward brands that ‘do good in my world, not just the world’, contributions that feel close to home (Edelman’s 2025).

People expect brands to step up where institutions are not. Nearly 80% of Australians believe brands should use their power for real world change for a range of social issues (AccentureSong/FiftyFive5).

Beyond 2027, reputation is no longer defined by what a

Consumers are also more likely to reward or penalise brands based on what they believe those brands are doing in the world. 60% of Australians say they would be less likely to buy from a brand that ignores its obligation to address societal issues (Edelman’s 2025).

company says in a boardroom, but by what stands up under public scrutiny. In a crowded market that includes newer and less proven entrants, transparency and visible

Contribution now builds reputation.

That’s why advocacy matters so much.

It is the mechanism that turns reputation into something more credible, durable and commercially powerful.

action will become important differentiators.

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Tailwinds to leverage

2 in 5 Australians say they turn to news media to fact check information.

PRE DI CTE D TA I LWIND #2 Brands must show up in the conversations that matter, and where people verify what's true.

Beyond 2027, the trust gap between environments is likely to widen. In a world where belief has to be checked, trusted editorial environments become critical. Reputation is shaped not just by what a brand says, but by where people see it proven. As synthetic media proliferates and lowquality new entrants flood the market, consumers will rely more heavily on sources that help them judge what is credible, what is accountable and what is actually worth believing.

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Early proof points already visible

Australians are already showing a strong preference for trusted news environments. 78% of Australians view national news publishers as trustworthy compared to just 36% for social content creators. (Think News Brands 2026)

This collective trust carries a strong commercial mandate. Think News Brands 2026 found that 85% of Australians report greater confidence in a brand when they encounter it within a journalistic environment. That suggests where a message appears is becoming almost as important as what it says.

Audiences are also actively using those environments for validation. Against an online world of unverified noise, 2 in 5 Australians say they turn to news media to fact check information on social platforms.

(Think News Brands 2026)

This is why the traditional approach of using owned media to talk yourself up is losing force. In a low-trust environment, self-promotion is weak proof. Brands increasingly need trusted causes, campaigns, partnerships and initiatives that build authentic relationships and make their contribution visible in public.

Local and regional journalism holds durable trust too. ACMA’s data shows that 58% of Australians trust regional or local newspapers, the third most trusted source of news, carrying a mandate that national or social voices often lack.

Credibility is increasingly built on standards, not volume. Reuters’ 2026 outlook suggests that as AI-generated and commoditised content expands, publishers are placing greater emphasis on investigation, reporting, verification and human stories, precisely because those are the functions that make an environment feel accountable and trustworthy.

This points to a future in which trusted environments become more valuable not just for reach, but for verification, framing and public legitimacy.

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THE WRA P Beyond 2027, the organisations that grow will be the ones that understand advocacy not as a layer of communications, but as a public proof system.

The old model of using owned media to talk yourself up is losing power. What matters now is showing up in trusted environments, backing credible causes, and building campaigns and initiatives that create authentic relationships through storytelling, emotion and visible contribution.

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