{"id":4463,"date":"2019-09-18T08:58:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/?p=4463"},"modified":"2019-09-18T08:58:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:58:50","slug":"brand-trust-a-big-deal-for-marketersbut-what-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/?p=4463","title":{"rendered":"Brand Trust\u2026 a big deal for marketers\u2026but what is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/?attachment_id=4466\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4466\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-4466 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screen-Shot-2019-09-18-at-8.43.52-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"158\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screen-Shot-2019-09-18-at-8.43.52-AM.png 496w, https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screen-Shot-2019-09-18-at-8.43.52-AM-300x227.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 209px) 100vw, 209px\" \/><\/a>Brand Trust has become a \u201cbig deal\u201d for marketers in 2019.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While some define brand trust as building trust with your customers and consumers, not everyone agrees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A recent article in Adweek called <i>Consumer\u2019s Trust in Brands Has Fallen to a New Low<\/i> highlights the confusion that often arises when \u201ctalking trust\u201d from a brand standpoint, or any point for that matter. This particular article ran the &#8220;building trust gamut\u201d from:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Elevating trust with consumers<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Through data privacy\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Relationship building<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">To increasing transparency<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Meeting the needs of millennials and Get Z<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And even being good corporate citizens. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I don&#8217;t know about you, but for me that\u2019s a pretty tall and confusing trust order.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>So I asked the members of our <a href=\"https:\/\/trustacrossamerica.com\/trust-council.shtml\">Trust Council<\/a> to read the article and share their professional observations about what brand trust is and what it isn\u2019t. Here&#8217;s what five members had to say:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Bart Alexander<\/strong>, a seasoned CSR professional opined that <i>most consumers, including young adults, are still choosing products and services based on functional attributes more than responsibility performance of the parent company. Similarly, most investors still seek to maximize total return rather than focus on long-term sustainability performance. But we may well be on the cusp of a tipping point where the approaches referenced in the article become mainstream. At the same time, we must acknowledge that most of the economy is continuing to operate on far more traditional views about value. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Nadine Hack<\/strong>, a leadership consultant and educator, concurs. <\/span><span class=\"s2\"><i>All of this activity makes me wonder (hopefully, yet cautiously) if we may have finally reached a tipping point where corporate social responsibility is something businesses must act on, not just talk about.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Randy Conley<\/strong> at Ken Blanchard adds that <i>in the digital world, organizations are having to constantly make deposits in the \u201ctrust bank\u201d of their customers, because sooner or later, there will be an instance where trust is broken. It\u2019s not a question of if they\u2019ll break trust, but when. The vast majority of consumers are starting to realize that we only live under the illusion of privacy and data security.\u00a0 At the end of the day, each of us as consumers has to decide our own comfort level of risk in sharing our information with others and trusting those individuals\/organizations to keep it safe.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Linda Fisher Thornton<\/strong>, an ethics educator and consultant had this to say\u2026 <\/span><span class=\"s1\"><i>Reputation and brand used to be considered separate things. You built your brand (what you wanted people to believe about your company) and you sought to protect the image of your brand that you had built. That approach is outdated. With social media transparency, reputation and brand have converged to the point that reputation defines and shapes the brand. People believe what they see a company doing rather than any pretty picture it has created to represent itself.The way to build trust is not to pretend to be a trustworthy brand, but to actually live it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThe Trust Ambassador\u201d <strong>Bob Whipple<\/strong>\u00a0concluded with these thoughts\u2026<\/span><span class=\"s2\"><i>The thing I was reminded of is that we all need to be cognizant of the reputation of our own brands and the jeopardy we could put people in unwittingly. The real test is how diligent the company is on the front end to design a robust system and how the company reacts if and when something goes wrong. That is the test of their leadership.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">Which brings us back to the question in the title of the article. What does Brand Trust mean? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">I suppose it depends on one\u2019s personal and professional perspective. If you are a marketer in 2019, apparently it\u2019s a big deal, not unlike \u201cpurpose,\u201d another big deal. Sadly, many of these are merely PR \u201ccampaigns\u201d designed by those who have no subject matter expertise. The result is not only less trust, but more cynicism and confusion for both customers and consumers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\"> Marketers who choose to talk about brand trust, should consider shifting their focus to helping build trustworthy and enduring brands. That\u2019s not accomplished through data security or meeting the needs of a certain generation, and it&#8217;s certainly not the sole responsibility of the marketing department. The way trustworthy brands are built is similar to the way people build trust between themselves. It always boils down to principles and values, and either leaders, teams and organizations have them or they don\u2019t. If brands want to be trustworthy and trusted, it&#8217;s leadership&#8217;s responsibility, along with their Board, to first clean up their own house from the inside out. Building a foundation of trust via principled leadership and trustworthy employees is the only solution to elevating brand trust. And then the marketing team can step in and craft an authentic message, not just a PR campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">As Bob Whipple said earlier, <em>the real test is how diligent the company is on the front end<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\">Trust Across America-Trust Around the World<\/a> whose mission is to help organizations build trust. For more information on how to build authentic brand trust, contact her at <a href=\"&#109;&#x61;i&#x6c;t&#x6f;:&#98;&#x61;r&#x62;a&#x72;a&#64;&#x74;r&#x75;s&#x74;a&#99;&#x72;o&#x73;s&#x61;m&#101;&#x72;i&#x63;a&#x2e;c&#111;&#x6d;\">ba&#114;&#x62;&#x61;ra&#64;&#x74;&#x72;&#x75;st&#97;&#x63;&#x72;os&#115;&#x61;&#x6d;&#x65;ri&#99;&#x61;&#x2e;co&#109;\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2019, Next Decade, Inc.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-best-social-bookmark\"><ul class=\"socials\"><li class=\"oknotizie\"><a href=\"http:\/\/oknotizie.virgilio.it\/post.html.php?url=https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/?p=4463&title=Brand Trust\u2026 a big deal for marketers\u2026but what is it?\" title=\"Share this on oknotizie\"> <\/a><\/li><li class=\"twitter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=Brand Trust\u2026 a big deal for marketers\u2026but what is it? &raquo; https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/?p=4463\" title=\"Share this on twitter\"> <\/a><\/li><li class=\"delicious\"><a href=\"http:\/\/del.icio.us\/post?url=https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/?p=4463&title=Brand Trust\u2026 a big deal for marketers\u2026but what is it?\" title=\"Share this on del.icio.us\"> <\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Building a foundation of trust via ethical leadership and trustworthy employees is the only solution to elevating brand trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,404,420,434,433,390],"tags":[122,452,202,100,136,84,86,116,81],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4468,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463\/revisions\/4468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustacrossamerica.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}