What’s Left When Trust is Lost? Restoring Brand Confidence is Pivotal, Not Optional.
As reported in BtoB magazine, a newly released survey states that “senior business executives have lost trust in a wide array of service providers in the past year of economic turmoil.” The online survey, which has been conducted annually since 2003 by the Financial Times and Doremus Decision Dynamics, queried 470 senior executives around the world in July.
Among the worst performing service providers were: commercial banks (-31%), investment banks (-29%), management consulting (-17%), insurance (-15%), telecommunications (-11%), auditors (-7%), tech consulting (-6%), software (-5%), and hardware (-3%).
In a year defined by a lack of trust—spurred by broken promises from financial institutions, Wall Street, bankrupted corporations, and politicians—the question to ask in branding is: How does one restore credibility?
I view this as an opportunity rather than a crisis. It’s a tremendous chance for marketers to revamp their brand promises by:
- Identifying gaps between customer perceptions and your brand promise as delivered by marketing, advertising, and public relations.
- Listening to your sphere of influence, and watching social media outlets to discover what customers are complaining about.
- Redefining your brand (in terms of both visuals and content) to enhance credibility, then redeploying across your marketing communications enterprise.
It won’t be easy; you can bank on that. But there’s much to gain, and even more to lose. So be sure to define your new brand before your competitors define it for you.
