The quality of communication between your brand and your young consumers is a function of trust not technique.

In the mobileYouth report we found that only 27% of youth surveyed “trusted” their mobile service providers. So what? You may say, “trust” is merely a PR exercise and I need to focus on launching this product/driving topline growth/marketing partnerships/product development etc.

This comes at a time when the industry falls over itself to find the latest Web 2.0 widget. Young consumers, it appears, are increasingly disconnecting with their mobile industry’s stale platitudes about “listening to the customer” when firstly, they don’t want to be listened to they want a conversation and secondly, they aren’t interested in Web2.0. Period.

When brands have trust, communication is fast, productive and consumers forgiving of their mistakes. Trust means they listen. If we as an industry had trust they would listen to our feelings and thoughts about Web2.0. The dividend payback reflects in lower account management costs, churn rates, greater cross-selling opportunites and long term profitability even on the lowest spending consumers. The converse is also true. Without trust, brands will face higher account management costs due to difficult and flighty customer tendencies, resistance to new offers and low margins.

Suffering from falling revenues as a result of in-category competition, Starbucks turned to its consumers and asked “what do you think?” on their consumer portal. Within days of launch consumers flocked in their 1000s to vote on ideas they’d like to see taken on board by their favourite high street brand. The most popular idea, based on votes and comments,was that Starbucks should offer customers a free coffee after they’d purchased a certain number of drinks. On day 3, the idea had 394 comments and over 31,000 points (each vote cast counts for 10 points). Second in popularity was free Wi-Fi in the coffee shops.

Starbucks like Red Bull, Scion, Jet Blue, Apple, Krispy Kreme and Nike have “trust” with young consumers. The GAP, Wal-Mart and Vodafone do not. Starbucks is able to call for ideas and help from its consumers because it first listened to them before it needed to ask.

Trust has a direct impact on business profitability, particularly with young consumers who value trust as the number one determinant in deciding between mobile service providers or handsets, leaving the service and/or recommending and complaining to friends.

Consider the following:

31 per cent of concerned consumers do not trust any of the mobile phone operators or providers to sell them the mobile phone package that best suits their needs. When concerned consumers are asked to put the mobile phone operators’ overall behaviour on a scale of 1 to 100, nearly all fall in the negative zone, below 50. The only exception is O2, which comes in at 51. (Populous 2007)


Where then will the 3G payback come from? Without trust and without a dialogue, how (and why) will consumers listen to us propose new ways for them to spend more money?

Without trust there will be no 3G payback. In fact, what we will see is a gradual increase in youth churn and decline in average spend on untrusted brands.

So, the question is - what creates trustworthiness? Trustworthiness in youth brands is not dissimilar to the criteria for establishing trust between individuals and can be summarized in the following 3 tenets:
* a) Honesty is the best policy
* b) Give before you receive
* c) People don’t care that you know unless they know that you care

a) Transparency and honesty, while universally accepted as moral values, are uncommonly practised in business communication for a number of reasons - fear of admitting failure and alterting investor scrutiny, alterting the competition and fear of upsetting consumers. Typically we can see this is the fear of negative reviews by consumers. If a consumer provides negative feedback on a product or service, surely consumers will be put-off by such reviews. Contrary to expectation, the presence of negative reviews is considered more trustworthy than no reviews at all. Young consumers, it appears, appreciate the candour and accept that a company open to criticism (and therefore change) is a company that they’d like to know more about and build a long term relationship with.

Jet Blue’s CEO went public on Youtube to say they had “screwed up”. The impact was immediate. Perceived trust, especially amongst students increased. Several months later, investors ousted him. The short term won again.

b) Giving before you receive is widely accepted as the fundamental tenet of investment, yet again is loosely practised in our marketing. In most instances, marketing focuses on the smaller picture - ie the immediate return on the marketing dollar. For a marketing campaign to lose money in the short term is generally regarding among the industry as a failure. However, a brand that gives to its consumers without obligation opens dialogue.

Without obligation is a key moot point in marketing to consumers - a “30 day free trial”, for example, is not without obligation. Consumers will quickly read between the lines that you’re trying to hook them into buying the product and may actually damage trust long term. Similarly, “get your first month free” often reads as “buy now pay later”. Most young consumers are short of the experience necessary to discern between genuine offers and marketing tricks until that it is, it happens to them. At that point they will be all too willing to spread the badwill amongst their peers.

Giving without obligation genuinely means that. Here is something that, if nothing else happens, you can have for free. If you decide to pay me at some later point then that is a bonus, but you will not be penalized if you fail to do so. As with honesty boxes and pay-as-you-like downloads, there will always be those that bend the system yet the bigger picture often points to a greater level of trust and therefore profitability amongst those themselves that are trustworthy (ie the majority).

c) People don’t care that you know unless they know that you care. Traditionally marketing has sought to educate the consumer through a tell-sell. The telecoms industry is no different, albeit a few years behind the mainstream in its methods employed. Telecoms still believes the market adoption of many of its services is a function of consumer education. 3G, for example, will “take off” once the “consumer is educated”.

What this “education” based approach fails to comprehend is that consumers don’t care about being educated unless the product itself resonates with them. The industry approach, which derives from a lack of consumer understanding mixed with internal arrogance, relies on educating to show relevance rather than demonstrating relevance before education. Young consumers will only start using your music download service when they find out that your values are in line with theirs.

Communicating values will become as important as communicating the product portfolio to young consumers because, ultimately, the brand will become the values held by the company. When GAP was exposed for hiring child labour in India, young bloggers and message board activists attacked the brand integrity because, regardless of the approval of icons such as Madonna or Missy Elliot, the values were distinctly in conflict with those of its consumers.