Who can you trust? PART 2

I wrote a piece on trust a while back and concluded that companies are more trusted than governments, but the way in which we interact with them is crucial. A couple of weeks later I went to an Acacia Avenue seminar on the topic and decided that I’d only just scratched the surface. Delving deeper was not as easy as first thought.

Even the basic definition of trust is pretty confusing – there are 24 plausible descriptions. But the first (and presumably most read) goes as follows:

“Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.”

This seemed pretty solid and even pays homage to the word’s origin (it comes from a Middle Age game called “tryst” involving one set of villagers chasing a load of rabbits towards a line of club-bearers who, ‘standing in tryst’, would wait for the bunnies to arrive before bopping them dead). However, one key element, featured in other definitions and implied in the game outlined above, is missing – expectation.

This is where trust works for brands. Consumers have an expectation that brands will represent/display certain attributes. They don’t just rely on these qualities, they expect them. Stability from John Lewis (only 4 chairmen in the last 100 years), openness from Pret a Manger (recipes given away online), practising what you preach from Innocent (Fruitstock) and self-confidence from ghd (that one’s from the girls, I don’t actually have any hair to straighten).

Despite this expectation and my previous conclusions a GlobeScan survey on trust in institutions found ‘global companies’ and ‘large national companies’ to score second and third from bottom respectively. In fact, both scored negative ratings whilst ‘armed forces’ topped the table. However, a glance at Edelman’s survey on specific brand trust suggests they are far more trustworthy then the army with Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola and Microsoft leading the way!

So what’s going on? The key difference is in the question asked in each survey. GlobeScan measured “Trust in an institutions ability to operate in society’s best interests” whilst Edelman’s focus was simply on “Which brands do you trust”. One concentrates on the community and one on the individual. It pains me to say it, but Thatcher spotted the importance of this difference a while back – “There’s no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women”.

I don’t agree with her sentiments but recognising this difference is essential for the poor performing ‘global companies’. Ultimately people still crave community (think London Marathon, Diana’s funeral, Facebook, reaction to Thatcher’s comment, etc) and it is one of the original pillars of trust. Brands are our bunny-boppers.

So is the trick nowadays to think community/society and not just individual? Perhaps – Coca-Cola and Microsoft are fighting AIDs, HP are saving the forests, everyone's chasing 'green trends', and so on. Maybe we’re not in the age of the individual after all?

Hmm… this may need a Part 3. Until then, I’m sticking with Bob Dylan – “If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself”.

Who can you trust?

I was following a debate on a football forum this Sunday (about Ronaldo’s penalty-taking style if anyone’s interested) and came across this statement:

“I'm prepared to believe respected newspapers over people posting on an Internet message board”

Although this was merely a rant from a fan whose argument was on the ropes it raises an interesting question – “Who do you trust when gathering information”. This reminded me of a 'trust chart' I came across a while back:


In the UK businesses are actually trusted more than the government (and are only trusted less then NGOs). This seemed like great news for our brands, so I decided to delve a little deeper and checked out ‘Edelman’s Trust Barometer’ (an annual trust and credibility survey amongst global opinion forming elites).

The latest edition confirmed the prominence of businesses on the ‘axis of trust’ but revealed that whilst people trusted our brands and companies, they didn’t always trust how they found out about them.

Sure, the conventional CEO statement, company employee, press, etc sources were all listed but the highest score achieved was "media" with a mere 38% (of people agreeing that it is a trustworthy source).

So who do we trust? It’s actually the third parties – industry analysts, academics and specialists, all scoring over 55%. This makes sense, with the general consensus believing that these sources are less swayed by company propaganda and are hence not as likely to “toe the party line”.

However, there is a final trusted group that beats all of these sources hands down – “people like me”. Out of those questioned across 18 different countries 58% agreed that if they heard information about a company from “somebody like me” they would find it credible.

So who are these “people like me”? Apologies to MOSAIC and Acorn but the overall opinion is that it has nothing to do with geography, local community, demographics or even a common industry. It’s actually much simpler: “people like me” are people who “share my interests”, “have similar political beliefs” and other such logical stuff.

This brings forth the old ‘social networking’ argument. Yes, we’ve been chatting about it for ages now (amongst people like ourselves) but it still holds true.

It’s understandable that brands are unwilling to relinquish control and offer themselves up to the world of social networking – “What if they only say bad stuff?” – but whether they like it or not it’s already happening. More importantly these peer-to-peer networks are proving more impactful than the millions invested each year just to paint a pretty picture of the company.

This doesn’t mean that every brand needs its own social network, more that they have to be smarter and reconsider how and where they talk to their customers. Peer-to-peer efforts need to be incorporated with big budget comms plans. Yes it’s big, scary and seems risky, but there are small steps out there. Think how Innocent gauged customer opinion before deciding whether to enter McDonald's or not. They found people like them (current customers) and asked them.

A final word of warning: if you’re reading this and nodding along thinking that maybe I’m somebody like you, think again – according to Edelman only 14% of people found us bloggers to be trustworthy!