Trust Earned and Lost

“Communication is not a function of technique but a function of trust” - Stephen R Covey

Trust is earned never bought. It comes from years of doing rather than saying. Consider the Google brand as a trusted benchmark. However, trust is easily lost through complacency and the 6 ways illustrated below.

In my earlier post “The Rise and Fall of Youth Brands” I looked at the consequences of brand hubris - the ivory tower (discussed later). But for now, let’s look at how your brand can all into entropy:

How do brands lose it?

* (1) Value inconsistency: You failed to either communicate your brand values or move your values with the time. Lego failed to update its brand values when communicating with a more modern gender issue-savvy audience. And if your strength was once your free open community and then you floated the idea to start charging (eg Craigslist) consumers would turn against you.
* (2) Saying not doing: You focused on saying rather than doing, eg: you assumed that saying your were friends meant you were friends (eg Facebook) . Can brands be friends? A common moot point; Blyk seems to think so. It’ll work if the friendship is not a PR platitude and a genuine value-add to their universe and community.
* (3) Took consumers for granted: You took your consumers for granted or assumed they were stupid (eg Disney)
* (4) Failed to control: Your platform or brand becomes overrun because you overmarket or let the affiliates run riot. Youth will begin to turn off.
* (5) You got lazy: Competition is a mere click away and consumers need not compromize in the post Google age. So the higher you set the bar, the higher your performance needs to be. Levi’s market share declined from 50% to 9% in 20 years seeing its position slump from #1 to #7 in the global jeans market. Google is already itself suffering from criticism of lack of innovative development in its offerings.
* (6) Your marketing was merely a sweet topping on an unpalatable dish. See my earlier post on Meatball Sundae to illustrate.

The consequences of losing trust

When Steve Jobs took to centre stage, the eyes and keypads of the blogging world were engaged. For a man who had not long returned from Pixar following his unceremonious ousting from Apple, Jobs was a man who could do no wrong.

Compare his fortunes with that of Microsoft. So convinced were they that MS products were receiving the butt end of blogger publicity that they covertly invited top bloggers to their Operation Mojave, a secret location in the New Mexico desert to show them their latest operation system. MS took glee in the fact that bloggers had warmed to their latest cutting edge code when in fact it was no more than the humble and out-of-favour Vista in disguise.

Had MS proved its point with its consumers? No. It only proved to the world that consumer success is not about product virtue but trust, a quality that MS had lost irrevocably over the last decade.

When we interviewed youth on the street we found that 52% trusted their handset brand, while only 27% trusted their mobile operators (data from the mobileYouth report). Check out this video for some insights.

So what? (you may ask) We have a job to do and that job is the ARPU battle. Well, consider for a minute the financial implications of trust on the bottom line, using the following extract from the Youth Marketing Buzz blog:

High Trust Customers
* High propensity to spread the word (word of mouth)
* Low management costs (don’t phone up and complain)
* Self-educate or teach each other
* High propensity to try out new products and services (cross selling)
* More forgiving of brand mistakes
* More open to dialogue and profiling

Low Trust Customers
* High propensity to spread negative PR
* High management costs (often complain, cause problems, default)
* Need more education
* Low uptake of new products and services (equals higher marketing costs)
* Unforgiving of brand mistakes
* Wary of dialogue and profiling
* High churn (need sweeteners and discounts to stay on board)

The Good News?

Trust can be measured and developed. Earlier, I discussed the 3 ways in which youth brands can build trust. The impact on the bottom line can be significant and we’re starting to see companies commit larger budgets to specifically building trust - such as the communication of values that resonate with the consumer (as in cause marketing). My recommendation is to implement the 3 loyalty metrics alongside your standard KPI for consideration:
* Churn
* Lifetime Value
* Net Promoter Score

Technorati Tags: trust, youth marketing, youth brands, stephen covey, brand values, transparency, mobile youth, mobile research, graham brown, churn, lifetime value, net promoter score

Tags | brand values, churn, graham brown, lifetime value, mobile research, mobile youth, net promoter score, stephen covey, transparency, trust, youth brands, youth marketing