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Aug

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Do we really TRUST brands?

August 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Writ­ten by: Lee on August 6, 2009.

TrustI was read­ing an arti­cle on Brand Republic’s Mar­ket­ing called ‘Brands face trust cri­sis’ As I read it I won­dered whether I had ever trusted a brand. What does this really mean?

So, in my ana­lyt­i­cal way I started at what I con­sider a reli­able source to explain what trust is: the dic­tio­nary. I selected Collins as a mod­ern day rep­utable dictionary.

Trust:
verb
1. to believe that (some­one) is hon­est and means no harm, my father warned me never to trust strangers,
2. to feel that (some­thing) is safe and reli­able, I don’t trust those new gad­gets,
3. to entrust (some­one) with impor­tant infor­ma­tion or valu­ables, she’s not some­body I would trust with this sort of secret,
4. to believe that (some­one) is likely to do some­thing safely and reli­ably, I wouldn’t trust any­one else to look after my child prop­erly,
5. to believe (a story, account, etc.)
6. to expect, hope, or sup­pose, I trust you’ve made your brother wel­come here
noun
1. con­fi­dence in the truth, worth, reli­a­bil­ity, etc., of a per­son or thing, faith, he knew that his father had great trust in him.

There were other def­i­n­i­tions for both def­i­n­i­tions men­tioned here that are not rel­e­vant to this article.

This poses a new ques­tion is your brand just a some­thing or a someone?

If your brand is just a ‘some­thing’ then if it is con­sid­ered safe and reli­able you could say it is trusted based on the dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion. If your brand is a ‘some­one’ or has a per­son­al­ity mak­ing it a ‘some­one’ then trust would be more complicated.

I use the same laun­dry prod­uct, advised to me when I moved to Eng­land, hav­ing no prior ref­er­ence or knowl­edge of the brands here. Word-of-mouth was the major con­tribut­ing fac­tor. It is a well-known brand. If there is no stock when I shop I take another brand, but next time use the one I have for a while. I have changed brands in my life: usu­ally to do with sup­posed ben­e­fits of a new brand.

The ques­tion I then asked myself is do I buy because I trust the brand, trust peo­ple who advised me or by it out of habit?

Now I had to look up what habit meant:

Habit
noun
1. a ten­dency to act in a par­tic­u­lar way,
2. estab­lished cus­tom or use, the Eng­lish habit of tak­ing tea in the after­noon,
3. an addic­tion to a drug,
4. men­tal dis­po­si­tion or atti­tude, def­er­ence was a deeply ingrained habit of mind

Based on the def­i­n­i­tions of trust and habit and what I know of myself I would say all three.

But, some­thing still nig­gles inside of me and I feel this is too shal­low a method for me to feel com­fort­able to say yes I trust xyz brand. Is that because we treat brands as ‘some­ones’ and trust is not such a sim­ple mat­ter? How­ever, based on the marke­ing arti­cle I read it could just be because I am a woman and more inclined to dis­trust media.

What are the major indi­ca­tors of ‘trust’ in the world of brand­ing and brand­ing met­rics I would like your opin­ions on this? I will post my find­ings here in a few days.

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