Trust me, be
yourself...
Some words we use in branding should come with a health warning. Something like 'MAY CAUSE COMPLACENCY' or the perhaps the more shocking 'HAS BEEN LINKED TO LOSS OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE'. Over the years the number of brands we've worked on that say they're 'Trusted' has been mind numbing, for us and the clients. Nowadays it comes along as an attribute to offset the daring excesses of 'Innovative'. What it generally means is 'Been around for a while' or 'No major product recall in living memory'. Trust has been turned into a passive thing, not the tool for persuasion and relationship building it ought to be.
How do brands build trust? Most psychological models of trust building focus on four attributes. Honesty (you'd hope that would be a given for a brand), Competence (it's not exciting but it's there), Predictability (the element most of our brands like to equate with trust) and Generosity. It's generosity that's the key here, the one thing that allows a brand to build both trust and its own equity.
Google has been cited as Australia's most trusted brand in a number of survey's recently, and it's the best case of a truly generous brand. First of all it's free, and we think you can't underestimate the rise of free to use web content and the effect it will have on the behaviour of tangible brands. Secondly it's incredibly good at being itself, just look at the goofy logos on anniversaries and holidays, the puns and the apparent lack of spin. But the thing that strikes you most is the way it does its R&D in public, half ready, full of bugs, an open experiment. Contrast this with Microsoft and the army of bloggers up in arms at the slightest glitch in their latest software release.
Generosity is not about free stuff, it's about the willingness of a brand to show its deepest truest unmediated self. In which case nothing's deeper than the Cadbury's gorilla. Devoid of pitch these ninety seconds of exquisite silliness come deep from the heart of the Cadbury's brand and they ask for next to nothing in return. In response the UK saw a 9% rise in sales and Cadbury reunited with its core 'happiness' equity. Generosity builds trust AND differentiation.
The model we propose for building trust in the new world is a return to fundamentals. Core brand values that are really what's unique and irreducible about your brand, and a willingness to reveal your self. It's simple, and it's human. Again and again in trust building experiments it's shown that the person who reveals most about themselves is most likely to gain trust. But think about your own experience, the people you distrust... you're 'not sure' about them. So away with weasel words and in with openness, transparency and our true selves.
When a brand is truly trusted it allows companies and brand managers the opportunity to do things they perhaps normally wouldn't. Dairy Devils is just one example of this. It's a brand that was started from scratch and has ended up breaking the category norms. It was allowed to do this because the brands owners Dairy Farmers had spent years building a trusted brand.
Given the dark shadow of the downturn that hangs over us it's hard to see how brands can afford not to be generous.
