It’s A Matter Of Trust—Or Lack Of It—For Marketers

Trust is the key building block of brand loyalty, but today’s marketers find themselves dealing with the crisis in consumer confidence, with significant implications for communications.

Consumer trust is in a state of crisis. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in the institutions of business, media, government, and NGOs dropped three points in 2017. Media is now at an all-time low, and two-thirds of surveyed countries are now categorised as “distrusters” with under 50% trust.

This breakdown has significant implications for marketing, where building consumer trust has long been seen as the lynchpin of building strong brands. Add to that the fact that consumers believe brands don’t always have their interests at heart, and it is, perhaps, the greatest challenge facing marketers today, according to industry experts

J. Walker Smith, executive chairman at Kantar Futures, explained: “People feel like institutions—including brands—are pursuing agendas that don’t include them anymore. So the imperative for brands is to simply make sure that consumers understand brands are putting their interests first.”

Ultra-Transparency

Building trust is a complex challenge for brands. Harjot Singh, chief strategy officer at McCann Worldgroup Europe, says it is an incredibly delicate issue for marketers, as it is important to both businesses and consumers but difficult to attain. “Securing trust has become increasingly difficult, as information has become more readily available online”, he explained.

With this virtual flood of online information, from email hacks to product reviews and social media channels, it is no longer possible for businesses to maintain a public and private face. Saul Betmead, chief strategy officer at Y&R Europe explained: “You can no longer consider there being an inside and an outside of a company, you can no longer say one thing and do another.”

With brand behaviour under unprecedented scrutiny, many believe that marketers seeking to drive trust need to look beyond the bottom line to actively put the consumer first, both in terms of how they communicate with them and the products and services they create.

The example of Unilever, which has put sustainability at the heart of its entire business, is, perhaps, the greatest example of a company re-engineering its organisation around a greater purpose. This shift can also happen on a more micro level. Last year Cancer Research and the RNLI both switched to using only opt-in data for its fundraising activities.

Meanwhile, in the tech sphere, better protection of consumers’ privacy and individual rights is rising up the marketing agenda. Jamie Inman, head of planning at BMB, points to the examples of WhatsApp or Apple, as they recognise the need for a social contract based on respect for the individual. He added: “They also demonstrate the reputational benefit for brands that make a commitment towards higher levels of integrity.”

Building A New Covenant Of Trust

Despite the growing wealth of data on declining trust, some analysts believe marketers should look beyond the noise. Sam Shaw, head of insight at behavioural insights agency Canvas8, warns that when people say they don’t trust something, it doesn’t necessarily follow through to a change in behaviour. For example, consumers may declare they don’t trust banks, but, in reality, they aren’t stashing their cash under their mattresses. Shaw suggests that, on a macro level, there is actually a global rise in how trusting people are. He explained: “We are moving towards greater outsourcing of everyday life—we are less likely to fix our homes, cook our own meals, drive ourselves around than previously.” This shift also means that consumers have less time to manage every relationship with every brand, so they feel more at risk and more vulnerable to being let down.

Authenticity And Influence

In this quest for authenticity, the knee-jerk reaction among some brands has been to invest in big-budget marketing campaigns to announce their trustworthiness. Yet many believe this strategy is fundamentally flawed, as it does not address the underlying disconnect consumers feel with the brands they thought were supposed to be working on their behalf.

Kantar Futures’ Walker Smith explained: “The best way for brands to earn trust back is to prove that people can trust them. Take incremental steps—it’s one small promise at a time, kept and met.” Making and keeping a series of small commitments, such as ensuring products are delivered on time, is what underpins trust. He added: “Over time, consumers will learn they can believe what you say because you always come through.”

This focus on keeping promises is also translating to a renewed focus on peer-to-peer marketing, evidenced in new research by Mori for Mumsnet. CEO Justine Roberts said: “Our research showed people are increasingly likely to turn to their peers, online and offline, because they feel that crowd wisdom is less easy to manipulate and less likely to be motivated by undeclared interests.”

Face-to-face elements of marketing are also important in order to build trust. Luke D’Arcy, president U.K. at Momentum Worldwide, says areas like brand experiences and experiential marketing are powerful tools, adding: “It is not what a brand says, it’s what it does that matters.”

While the issue of trust remains high on the marketing agenda, the next wave of marketing will demand that brands open themselves up in new ways. Phil Teer, chief strategy officer at Brothers and Sisters, said: “Brands need to publicly say what they stand for and open themselves up to scrutiny so they can be held accountable.” He points to the example of brewing company BrewDog, which has a radical manifesto and raises money for expansion by inviting consumers to become investors. It is an approach that demands that brands build a manifesto as much as they do a marketing strategy.

Trust may be in short supply, but the myriad of marketing opportunities available to meet this challenges show no such scarcity.