Caliber, a stakeholder intelligence platform helping organizations build and protect trust, released its inaugural Stakeholder Intelligence Report, revealing global trends in brand, reputation, and data-driven communications. As economic anxiety, AI disruption, and geopolitical uncertainty intensify, leaders across industries are making higher-stakes decisions under conditions of compressed trust and heightened reputational risk. This report equips executives with data and actionable insights to support decision-making in 2026 and beyond.

The 2026 Caliber Stakeholder Intelligence Report draws on nearly one million responses from more than 360,000 individuals across 37 countries, surveyed between January 1 and October 31, 2025. Central to the report is Caliber’s parallel assessment of brand and reputation, an approach that distinguishes Caliber’s platform from other players in the traditional corporate reputation management space that tend to keep brand and reputation in discrete silos.

Key elements of the report include:

• Taking the temperature of stakeholder sentiment to establish the context within which people make decisions about companies
  • Globally, the top three issues that most concern stakeholders today are increased cost of living (36%), artificial intelligence (24%), and economic recession (20%), closely followed by unemployment (19%), rising energy prices (19%), and Donald Trump’s presidency (18%).
  • Global financial optimism is down, with only three out of 37 countries (Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands) showing net-positive sentiment on how secure people feel in their future financial situation from 2024 to 2025.

• Revealing the reputation of 14 industries in 2025 and how they have changed to uncover which stakeholder segments are losing trust in certain sectors, and which aspects of brand and reputation drive overall standing
  • The most globally trusted and liked sectors are Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, MedTech, Retail, and Electronics & Appliances, all with Trust & Like Scores (TLS) of 72. The least trusted and liked sectors are Automotive and Telecom, both with a TLS of 65.
  • The sectors with the largest declines in TLS are Big Tech and Automotive, which are down three and two points respectively from their 2024 scores.
• Exploring the impact of awareness and familiarity on reputation to give marketing and communications teams actionable, data-backed insights to strengthen reputation in 2026
  • Familiarity functions as a reputational buffer in periods of volatility. The more a company can tell its story and shift people from simply being aware of it to having qualified knowledge about it, the more insulated its reputation becomes from shocks—and the more resilient it is likely to be when crises emerge.
• Analyzing employer attractiveness in the war for talent to equip CEOs and HR executives with the data-backed information they need to pull ahead in the AI talent race
  • In 2026, employer attractiveness is no longer a soft metric—it is a gating factor for access to AI and engineering capability. The sectors that appeal most to job seekers are MedTech, Banking, Big Tech, and Chemicals, whereas Oil & Gas, Electricity, Telecom, and Automotive appeal the least, raising long-term competitiveness concerns for industries struggling to attract skilled talent.
  • Among STEM talent specifically, this trend is similar, with the most appealing sectors being MedTech, Big Tech, and Chemicals, and the least appealing sectors being Telecom, Oil & Gas, Retail, and Automotive.

“As the gap in stakeholder trust in corporations widens, the companies that will thrive are actively building brands that resonate and inspire instead of managing reputation reactively,” said Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz. “With our first annual Stakeholder Intelligence Report, we are putting Caliber’s real-time, multi-stakeholder, AI-augmented data and insights to work to help leaders make confident decisions under pressure, at a time when every choice carries reputational risk.”

Read the 2026 Caliber Stakeholder Intelligence Report here.

Founded in Denmark in 2016, Caliber supports global organizations such as Airbus, BASF, ABB, Novo Nordisk, and ASML with its always-on, AI-augmented stakeholder intelligence platform. Caliber provides leaders with real-time insight into how key stakeholders — including employees, customers, investors, and opinion leaders — think and behave, enabling more confident and timely decision-making. Caliber’s platform is built on millions of data points collected since 2016 from thousands of stakeholder interviews each day, tracking how the public perceives 6,000 companies in 40+ countries.

About Stakeholder Intelligence

Stakeholder intelligence is the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data about all the people who matter to an organization. By better understanding their stakeholders, organizations can make informed decisions that strengthen relationships, build trust, and improve outcomes. Unlike traditional approaches focused on single audiences or channels, stakeholder intelligence takes a whole-system view: tracking how perceptions change across stakeholder groups and explaining what leaders should do about those shifts and the outcomes they will drive.

About Caliber

Caliber is a stakeholder intelligence platform that helps organizations understand the people who matter to them. It surveys stakeholders — from customers and suppliers to investors, talent, and opinion leaders — then interprets their responses alongside other sources of data, including share prices, media coverage, market signals, web analytics, proprietary research, and historical data, using AI to connect the dots and deliver real-time actionable insights. To learn more, visit https://www.groupcaliber.com/.

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