Think trust: the greatest asset of them all

You want a true partnership with your agency, but the initial enthusiasm from them may have waned and everything has become very functional, and delivery led.

So how do you retain the magic?

You might want brilliant creative, delivered efficiently but the qualities our clients tell us that are most valued are people, team and relationship. Coincidentally this matches the findings of the ‘What clients think 2025 report’ by Up To The Light, stating: “a sense of partnership and working with people you get on with is key”.

And this all leads to a relationship built on trust.

Trust is a differentiator. Both ways. When you have it, it drives growth for all stakeholders.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust is now at the top of the tree with 80% of people trusting the brands they use.

In the past, brands have been expected to promote their values through social causes they champion, but consumers today want something different: economic hope and personal stability.

They are looking to brands for safety, to feel calm, confident, inspired. They want optimism, education, and even a sense of community from brands. This is what your consumers want – just the same as what you want and need from your agencies!

In our experience, trust helps us get invited into internal client debates and offer our packaging expertise to help problem solve…creating opportunities more often than not; but that is a natural bonus – the will and support is there regardless.

Trust is particularly important in multi-agency scenarios

With global brand and retail clients, we often find ourselves in multi-agency or multi-stakeholder settings. That is where trust really does take centre stage and truly matter.

With some clients, we are the lead creative agency, with others we play a more design-rollout role, using our blend of creativity and technology, what we call our “Magic & Logic” approach. We are proud to have built strong relationships with internationally recognised strategic agencies. No egos or inter-agency fights here…And in so doing, we have been able to play to our own strengths and bring greater benefit to the client (in brand consistency, speed and cost) by trusting each other, playing to each agencies strengths and trusting each other’s teams.

With another client, a leading strategic agency are setting the overarching brand identity, but when it comes to taking this and developing further across categories and within specific ranges, that’s where we step in. With 1,000s of product lines, it is a massive undertaking and requires implicitly transparent and collaborative working across both agencies and the client. This approach is the cornerstone to build trust and get to the best possible outcome for the client.

Expertise and credibility is paramount

As buyers you are rightly no longer simply purchasing a product or service – you are seeking expertise and credibility of the people behind the agency. A further report last year, the Dentsu Superpowers Index, recognises that, for the first time, personal decision drivers (including trust, ethics, and values) have overtaken functional drivers (like price and features) in shaping B2B buying decisions.

This marks a major shift toward human-centric B2B relationships, where authenticity and emotional business connection matter more than ever before.

This has shaped our approach at Sun Branding since 1893, and a big reason as to how we’ve retained our key client accounts for decades. We proudly promote our #brandcatalysts; a unified name we give to our team of packaging specialists across our creativity, graphics, legal, technology and sustainability services. Some of our clients invest in all our packaging services, others one or two. Some clients go for the end-to-end solution from the outset; others start with one and take it from there.

Whatever the journey looks like for you, whatever your preferred agency mix, build your relationships on trust and growth will closely follow.

As we see it, trust is driven out of transparency, inclusivity and consistency.

These days, people want to work with and for companies that not only deliver but also stand for something.

When teams build trust from the inside out, everything changes. You connect more deeply, collaborate more smoothly, and create outcomes that actually make a difference for everyone.

Trust should not just manifest between agencies and agencies and clients, but should be the backbone of any business. A trust-driven culture within an organisation will lead to better relationships outside the agency with all stakeholders – be those clients or other agency partners.