Trust is built and tested in the moments you don’t see coming. Sometimes, those moments involve a global superstar throwing a bright orange thong off a balcony.

When a spontaneous Drake post exploded into 150 million global views for his organisation, Sydney Water's Nick Plunkett had a very clear takeaway: virality is never the goal - trust is. And trust is earned through consistent behaviours, long before a viral moment ever arrives.

Nick and his team didn’t just ride the wave; they used it to accelerate Sydney Water’s mission. But they were only able to do so having built critical trust foundations - internally and externally - that gave them the right to act. Because in high-trust, high-stakes settings like government-owned utilities, impressions, reactions and vanity metrics mean nothing compared with lifting water literacy, and driving behaviour change at scale.

In the final episode of Your Digital Reputation for 2025, Nick shares with host Roger Christie how his team connected cultural relevance with enterprise priorities, why strong governance and internal trust allowed them to act quickly, and how they now translate social media performance into business outcomes like water conservation and wastewater behaviour change.

In his words: “Virality is never the goal. It's about building trust. And if a byproduct is virality, that's great - but, at the end of the day, we want to build that trust.”

Tune in for a candid, practical and deeply relevant conversation about the light and dark sides of going viral, and the importance of earning and leveraging trust to drive genuine behaviour change.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:02:19 - Behind the thong: how the Drake moment began

00:06:35 - When a post goes global: excitement vs. fear

00:09:12 - The internal trust and governance that made it possible

00:13:27 - How virality shifted internal expectations and demand

00:15:23 - Measuring what matters: behaviour change, not impressions

00:20:56 - Virality’s dark side: trolling, dilution and community rebuild

00:22:13 - Proximity vs trust: why mass reach can harm connection

00:29:06 - How to take educated risks in high-trust, high-risk organisations

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