The brands that win are the ones you can trust

OK, that's probably not news to you, but what continues to amaze me is that very few people still understand what we mean by 'trust' and how you go about building a trusted brand.

Here's the thing - it is not about the ad. It is not about the latest marketing campaign. It doesn't matter that it was great and you won an award for it. It doesn't matter what it looks like or the feeling it creates, or even the number of customers it attracts.

That's all a part of it, of course, but if you are measuring the success of your marketing on the number of people it attracts, or the recognition you have achieved, that is not a TRUSTED brand. That's a recognised brand.

A trusted brand is one that delivers on the Promise. One that meets the Expectations that have been created. One that meets the Needs of the market.

This means it is not just about you, but it's about everyone in your organisation.

Get that right, and you will build a truly trusted brand.

Vanessa

Restoring trust in a messed up State

Kristina Keneally has a job on her hands. Being Premier of NSW on its own is a job many people simply would not put their hand up for. Stepping in at a time when the State has been run into the ground, when its constituents have lost trust in State Government and no longer know who to trust - now that's a job that is going to require some very special skills.

One of the things that happens when trust is eroded is that people build up negative expectations based on their previous experiences. We all do this when things just don't work out the way we Expect. In fact, what happens is that we no longer believe the Promises that are made to us. 'Things will be different. I'm here to sort things out' etc, are simply a waste of breath because everyone is sitting around thinking 'Sure. That's what the last guy said, and the one before that, and the one before that....' Because their experience is negative, because the Promises that were made in the past were not kept, cynicism sets in and a new Expectation is formed - the story everyone tells themselves, in order to keep their trust intact is 'They always break their Promises, and they are all as bad as each other'. Now, there are exceptions to this rule, there will always be the few who will give them a go, but the majority will sit back and wait to watch them fail.

Sounds pretty awful, hey! But we all do it, and you are probably very aware that we all do it. The challenge for the one attempting to build and restore trust in that environment is to:

1. recognise that it is very real and that is the environment they are dealing with
2. know that making statements to convince people that things are different is hopeless
3. work at shifting the negative expectations first - that means slowly proving them wrong
4. know that people don't like to admit that they were wrong, so they cling to their negative expectations even if they don't like that about themselves
5. be patient, and consistent - keep proving, bit by bit, brick by brick, that you are serious about restoring the trust that has been broken

I'm putting in a call to Kristina's office and sending her a copy of 'The truth about trust in business' - hopefully I can help her in some way with her enormous challenge. Fingers crossed!

Even Celebrities Have Trust Issues

Well, I guess I really can't stay quiet on this one, as it's everywhere, and it's all about TRUST!

One of the interesting things about issues of trust is they make a HUGE MESS! Whether we know the details of what was going on or not, once something is out there, particularly something as big as Tiger's issue of infidelity, our expectations of that person change. We begin to doubt everything they say. We don't know what to believe, and even if they promise something different, or claim that nothing happened, it's too late - the negative expectation has set in and negative expectations are very, very hard to shift.

Some people won't care. Why is that? Why does this sort of thing really disturb some people and not others? It depends on their values and their needs, and what they were expecting in the first place. Some people will have written Tiger Woods off altogether, and won't want to know anything about him any more. Others will shrug their shoulders and get on with their own lives.

The stress, embarrassment, and reputational damage to Tiger will have taken a few years off his life, that's for sure.

What we all need to avoid is this kind of thing happening in our personal lives, and also in our businesses.

A breakdown of trust hurts and even after the initial mess is cleaned up, it leaves stains and scars.