They hear you before they listen: how sound and picture in business video affect trust in your company

Same speaker, same talk, same words. Researchers added an echo to the audio and changed nothing else. Listeners rated the talk lower and judged the speaker less intelligent.

Companies go through this every day: a Teams call with a prospective client, a sales team webinar, the managing director’s interview on an industry podcast, a client testimonial on the website, a conference talk that then lives on YouTube for months. Usually all of it is judged by one criterion: was the right thing said? I produce video for business, and here I want to look at a second criterion that people rarely talk through. How it sounds and how it looks. And what experiments and market data tell us about it, leaving agency opinions aside.

First, a word on the quality of the evidence. Below you will find three kinds of data: controlled experiments, correlations in market data and surveys of executives. They carry different weight, and I will flag which is which.

In brief

• Poor audio makes the same expert seem less intelligent and less credible to listeners. This is the most solidly proven finding in the piece.
• The impression a leader makes in a short video is linked to real money, right up to the share price at an IPO.
• “Authentic” phone video earns trust for a private individual, but not for a company.
• Expensive production is not the answer either. The aim is to look professional for your category.

Clients get to know you without you

Let me start with where the first meeting with a client happens today.

According to a 2025 survey by 6sense (around 4,000 B2B buyers), 94% of buyers have a ranked shortlist of suppliers before they first contact a seller. The early favourite wins about 80% of deals. The first conversation with a seller comes, on average, 61% of the way through the buyer’s journey.

According to Gartner data published in March 2026 (646 B2B buyers), 67% would prefer to buy without a sales rep at all. A year earlier the figure was 61%.

Both sources are commercial, both rely on self-reporting, and there is an honest caveat: 85% of buyers in the 6sense study had already worked with the vendor they chose. So the shortlist often comes from past experience, not only from content.

But the conclusion stays the same. Most of the decision is made in a room you are not in. All the client has is what they have seen and heard of you.

The experiment: same content, different sound

In 2018 the psychologists Eryn Newman and Norbert Schwarz tested something simple. They took real talks by physicists and engineers from YouTube and played them to listeners. In one version the sound was clean. In the other they added echo, as in a large empty hall. Nothing else changed: same words, same arguments.

Listeners who heard the echo version rated the talk lower and found the speaker less intelligent and less likeable. Averaged across four ratings (the talk, the speaker’s intelligence, how likeable the speaker was, how important the work was), the gap was 0.6 points on a five-point scale, and for the quality of the talk it was almost a full point. When participants compared two speakers, they preferred whoever sounded better: swap the audio, and the order flipped.

In the second experiment of the same paper, the researchers took radio interviews with scientists and degraded the audio to the level of a bad phone line. The effect was a third as strong, but it was still there.

Higher stakes: testimony in a virtual court

In 2021 the same group of researchers moved the test to a virtual court. Participants listened to audio recordings of witness testimony. There was no video in these experiments. Some recordings sounded clean, others had echo. The study plan was registered in advance, so the analysis could not be bent to fit the result.

Witnesses with poor audio were seen as less credible, their testimony was remembered less well, and in one of the two cases it also carried less weight in the decision on guilt. According to the authors, the whole effect ran through one thing: how credible the person seemed.

For business, this situation is closer to real life than a conference talk. A virtual court works much like a remote negotiation, a project pitch to the board or a presentation for a client in another country. One person speaks, another decides whether to believe them. Between them sits a laptop microphone.

Two caveats, and these data should not be quoted without them. First, both papers come from the same research group. There is independent support: in 2018 psychologists in the US showed participants mock job interviews over Skype, and candidates with a poor connection were rated as less hireable, even when participants were told outright to ignore the quality. Second, the effect is small to medium. A bad microphone does not lose you a deal on its own. It works against you time after time, and you never find out.

The usual explanation goes like this. The brain does not sort what it hears into “what was said” and “how it was said”. When listening is hard, the difficulty rubs off on the speaker. Not as the thought “he has a bad microphone”, but as a feeling that he is somehow not very convincing. This is an explanation rather than a separately proven fact, but it fits the data.

Picture works the same way, only weaker

The evidence is strongest for sound, because sound is the easiest thing to isolate in a lab. With picture there is an effect, but a subtler one.

In a 2023 study, participants were shown photos of people framed as a Zoom call, against different backgrounds. The background noticeably shifted ratings of how far the person could be trusted and how competent they were. For competence, the background explained about a quarter of the spread in ratings. Bookshelves and plants worked best, while an ordinary home setting and “joke” virtual backgrounds did worst. One limitation: participants saw still images, not video.

In a 2011 experiment, the same news story was shown with high and with poor production quality, the content identical. Viewers found the better-made version more credible. But they were not willing to pay more for it.

Remember this detail. We will come back to it. Quality of delivery works as a signal of trust, but it does not add value by itself.

Where an impression turns into money

You could object that these are students and people taking online surveys. Professionals who make decisions worth millions look at the numbers.

That is why the most interesting data come from capital markets.

Before a company goes public, its leaders present to investors on video. The researchers Blankespoor, Hendricks and Miller took short clips of the CEOs from these presentations, 30 seconds each, and asked people to rate their impression of the executive without relying on what was said. That impression turned out to be linked to the price at which the company sold its shares. The link was strongest where the company’s filings showed more uncertainty.

Quarterly calls with investors gave a similar result. The emotional tone of executives’ voices predicted returns and the company’s future earnings over and above what was said in words and figures (Mayew & Venkatachalam, 2012).

Both papers are correlational: they show a link, not a cause, and an impression does not necessarily reflect real competence. But the lesson for business is direct. If professional investors with models and financial statements pay more for a company whose CEO comes across better in a 30-second clip, then for your client, who has neither a prospectus nor analysts, the impression weighs even more. The less they know about you, the more what they saw decides.

What executives say themselves

There are also direct surveys of decision-makers. They should be read with a pinch of salt: they are run by Edelman and LinkedIn, and both companies earn money when businesses invest in content.

In the 2024 Edelman and LinkedIn study (3,484 executives, seven countries), 73% called a company’s thought leadership content a more trustworthy basis for judging its capabilities than its marketing materials. And 60% said strong thought leadership makes them more willing to pay a premium. Yet only 15% rated the content they read as “very good” or “excellent”.

In an earlier survey by the same authors (2016, US, 1,329 business decision-makers), 45% said a company’s content had lowered their respect for it. For 30%, content had led directly to a decision not to award the company a contract. The data are old, and they concern the quality of thinking rather than of picture. But the direction is clear. Weak content is not neutral. It works against you.

The 2024 figure of 15% is, to my mind, the most useful one. The space for good content in B2B is almost empty. Standing out in it costs less than it seems.

Objection one: “people want authenticity now”

When I talk about this with business owners and marketing directors, the first response is almost always the same: people want authenticity now, the boss can film a video on their phone, it is more honest that way. There is some truth in this, so let us look at it carefully.

In a 2014 experiment, people were shown a travel video and told it had been made either by an ordinary tourist or by an advertising agency. Each video came in poor and in good quality. The tourist’s poor-quality video earned more trust than the agency’s equally poor one. The roughness worked as a signal: an ordinary person filmed this and has no reason to make things look better. But at high quality the difference in trust disappeared, and perceived expertise rose with quality for both. The authors state plainly that their result calls into question the familiar idea that user-generated content is always stronger.

So raw video earns trust for those from whom rawness is expected. For a company, that signal adds nothing.

Market data divide the roles in a similar way. The agency Brainlabs analysed 46 Meta Brand Lift studies covering 225 campaigns in the UK. “Native” creative, meaning videos by creators and users, did more to lift purchase intent. Studio creative did more for brand awareness. This is a correlation, and the data come from an agency, but the logic is clear: when a stranger is forming a first impression, quality matters more.

And one more experiment, old and very telling. In 1966 Elliot Aronson and colleagues had people listen to a recording of a quiz contestant. In one version he answered brilliantly. In the other he was average. In both, at the end, he spilled coffee over himself. After that the brilliant contestant became more likeable. The average one became less so.

Imperfection is forgiven in someone whose strength nobody doubts any more. A market leader with a spotless reputation can afford a phone video, and people will read it as down-to-earth. For a company the client is still sizing up, strong or average, the same sloppiness on camera makes the decision for them.

Objection two: so it has to cost more

The opposite conclusion is wrong too.

Advertising research described this effect long ago: people judge the quality of a brand by how much they think it has spent on advertising. But the relationship follows an inverted U. When the spending looks excessive, the conclusion turns negative. Amna Kirmani’s 1997 paper puts it right in the title: “If It’s Advertised So Much, Something Must Be Wrong”. These are experiments without independent replications, so lean on them with care.

There is a market case too. In 2009 Tropicana switched to a “cleaner”, more expensive-looking pack. The recognisable elements of the brand disappeared, and within seven weeks sales fell by about 20%. PepsiCo brought back the old packaging. This is not an experiment, and those same months coincided with the financial crisis. But the case shows clearly that an expensive form which does not match expectations does not help.

The goal is not “as expensive as possible” but “professional for your category”.

Style and technique are different things

Put it all together, and the research separates two dimensions that people usually mix up when they talk about video.

The first is technical clarity. Can you hear every word, can you see the face, does the frame stay steady, does the thought come through? Here the audience punishes failures in anyone it expects competence from: a witness, a scientist, a company leader.

The second is stylistic polish: studio lighting, expensive graphics, staging. It raises the impression of expertise, but not trust or willingness to pay. And when overdone, it breeds suspicion.

I boil it down to one line:

Style can be conversational. Technique can’t.

A leader can speak without a teleprompter, without a suit, in their own words. That is style, and here you are free. But they must be easy to hear, and the thought must not get lost. Carelessness that does not look like a choice looks like a lack of skill. And a lack of skill is the last thing anyone expects from a company they trust with a contract.

What to check in your company

Here are five points where clients meet your company on video. Most of them are not thought of as “content”, so nobody looks at them.

1. Video calls by senior people and the sales team. What are they speaking into: the laptop’s built-in microphone or a headset? Is there echo in the meeting room? What is behind them? This is the cheapest point of all, and the closest to the sound experiments: the virtual court and the Skype interviews.
2. Webinars and online presentations. Listen to the latest recording on headphones. Can you hear every word without straining?
3. Interviews and talks by top executives. Podcasts, conferences, YouTube. If the venue delivered poor sound, should the recording go out under the company’s name unprocessed?
4. Client testimonials. Here a little roughness works in your favour: the client does not need to prove they are a professional. But the sound still has to be clear.
5. Company content as a whole. Can you say in one sentence what each video is about? Is it different from what your competitors publish?

If the answer on any of these points is “no”, the problem is almost never the budget. The problem is that the client draws conclusions about the company before they start listening.

What nobody has measured yet

One last thing.

The experiments I have described measure perception: how intelligent, credible and competent a person seems. Market data show a link between impressions and money, at IPO and in financial results. Surveys show what executives say about content.

There is no direct experiment in which the same leader is filmed once on a phone and once properly, and then enquiries and deals are counted. For B2B, the link “video quality → revenue” still rests on a sum of indirect evidence rather than on direct measurement.

But you can run that test on your own funnel. The same presentation, two versions of delivery, different segments of your mailing list or ads. Data like that will be worth more than any figure from an industry report, including the ones I have quoted above.

In the meantime, keep one picture in mind. A client is choosing a supplier for a serious contract. They have not yet spoken to you or to a competitor. All they have is what they have seen and heard.

Would they hire someone who sounds like this?

Frequently asked questions

Does poor audio quality really reduce trust?

Yes, and this is the best-tested part of the subject. In Newman and Schwarz’s experiments, a talk with echo was rated lower than the same talk with clean sound. In the virtual court studies, witnesses with poor audio were seen as less credible. The effect is small to medium, but it is at work every time someone listens to you.

Is audio more important than picture in business video?

Yes. Its effect is better proven. Picture also changes the impression, but less. If the budget only stretches to one, start with a microphone and a room without echo.

What is the best background for video calls?

In the 2023 study, bookshelves and plants got the best ratings for both trust and competence. An ordinary home setting and joke virtual backgrounds did worst. In the same study, a smile also raised ratings of trust and competence.

Can I film video for business on a phone?

For client testimonials, yes: nobody expects studio images from them. For a company the client does not know yet, sloppiness on camera is more likely to do harm. You can still film on a phone, as long as every word is audible, the face is visible and the frame does not jump.

Do I need expensive video production?

No. An expensive form that does not match expectations breeds suspicion, as both the advertising experiments and the story of Tropicana’s packaging show. The goal is video that is professional for your category.

How can I quickly check the sound on my videos?

Listen to your latest webinar or call recording on headphones. If even one word takes effort to make out, swap the laptop’s built-in microphone for a headset or a clip-on lapel mic, and get rid of the echo in the room.

About the author

Maksim Demchenko is a video producer and the founder of Palette Production, a studio in Valencia that films and produces video for business: podcastvlc.es.

Sources

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