About this episode

Nick Plunkett discusses the importance of building trust over seeking virality in the context of Sydney Water's mission.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Roger Christie

Guest: Nick Plunkett

Topics covered

• trust
• virality
• social media
• water conservation
• governance

Keywords

• trust
• virality
• Sydney Water
• social media
• water literacy
• governance
• behavior change

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Sydney Water

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