Brand [dis]trust
Brand trust is the tried and true influence gained by companies. It’s how consumers feel when they purchase that brand: their expectations, satisfaction, likeliness to recommend it, inability to live without it… that kind of stuff.
Example: Starbucks and Bose have tremendous brand trust.
There is huge reliability. You always know what you are going to get and loyal customers express an unwillingness to live without them.
Brand trust is a hard thing to put a finger on, but more than half of all marketing dollars spent by big companies every year goes towards creating or securing brand trust.
On the other hand, brand trust can be real easy to loose.
Think about Microsoft’s release of Vista last year. Billions of dollars of brand trust were lost. I don’t know of ONE person who talks about Vista with fondness and that “I-can’t-live-without-it” attitude. Microsoft may never regain the trust that they knew from the American people circa 1995.
Think about AOL and the clutter that is now associated with their brand. AOL used to be a leader of online technology. A name you could trust. I know of ONE person that uses an AOL email account now. They compromised billions of dollars of consumer trust with the decisions they made.
Think about McDonalds deflecting criticism from Super Size Me or child obesity complaints. Brand trust disappearing right before our very eyes.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
This is a thought-provoking post. On the one hand, I completely agree with you about the importance of reliability in brand. On the other, equating “brand” with “trust” leaves a lot on the table.
As someone who writes on trust, I consider reliability only one part. Others include credibility (which you do addresss), and intimacy and self-orientation (which you don’t). These latter two are part of the almost-entirely personal component of trust. Since brands are by nature about impersonal things (companies, products), there’s a disconnect.
On the other hand–if you look at things like integrity in the management of branded companies, you’ve got your link. if you really trust a company to do the right thing, then their product-based brand attributes are greatly strengthened.
More on this idea at http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/355/Is-Brand-Trust-An-Oxymoron . Thanks for raising the subject.