Trust issues

            Trust can be a fragile thing. We heard the other day that the campaign to discredit the FBI and Department of Justice successfully compromised some people’s faith in those institutions. It didn’t take much. I mean, have you read that Nunes memo?

            In the last 4 months of 2017, I was given 3 briefs that identified trust as the ultimate goal. More recently, the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer indicated that trust in US institutions is imploding. Some would say folks already gave up on trust by electing a president who is impossible to trust. It’s a problem.

            Unfortunately, trust isn’t something that can be implanted. You don’t even notice it until it blooms. But when someone has come through repeatedly, or continually been upfront with you, or regularly kept their word and made good on their promises, we tend to reciprocate.  Same with clients. So we can work on promoting their dependability, or their constant transparency, or their unceasing ability to do the right thing, or their unwavering gratitude for every customer.

            And, we can develop a voice, a human voice that people recognize as trustworthy, you know, a Tom Hanks kind of voice. “Persuasion,” wrote Aristotle, “is achieved by the speaker’s personal character…when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible.” So find some inspiration. Read some great essayists and memoirists. There’s an art to sincerity. Then craft that voice and stay true to it, because if you break character, resort to expediency and suddenly affect the Oxy Clean guy to spike sales, you undermine your efforts. And it’s really hard to win back someone once they’ve felt betrayed.

            Just don’t let this dip in confidence go to waste. We have an opportunity not to add to people’s fears and distrust. Find the appropriate place to talk about efforts that both increase profits and improve people’s lives. Let it be known, at least on a website, that the company pays fair wages, offers better benefits and treats its people with respect. Listen to the employees, customers and stakeholders, and from there, mine real insights. Hey, if it helps, look at what the president does, then do the opposite – in that, we can trust.
            It’s won’t be easy. According to the ad press, there isn’t a lot of trust between agencies and clients. But imagine the work we could do together if there was.