Trust the bank!

I suppose we were all shocked to discover that, once again, a bank we had all learned to trust has abused this trust. Be it intentionally or not. And in hindsight, you ask yourself why you trusted them more than other banks. You tell yourself you should have known.You shouldn’t have believed. And yet, you did.

Recently, in De Tijd, a very interesting article about (restoring) trust. In it, the author, David De Cremer, applies his lessons from the psychology of interpersonal trust to the world of finance, and argues that banks don’t succeed in restoring trust, because they have not yet really fully accepted that the world has changed. Underneath all their outward signs of understanding and humility, they still hope for things “to return to normal”. People feel this, and justifiably therefore, refuse to trust their bankers. No wonder they score low in a recent survey on the trustworthiness of professions - they almost rank with advertising people!

Which brings me to what I guess my main topic is: trust. Trust in advertising. Trust in brands.

Trust is by definition not rational (which doesn’t mean it’s irrational). It’s by definition a forward-looking decision, and is therefore always uncertain: no matter how well you think you know the subject of your trust, you don’t know if he/she/it will keep its promise. That’s why it’s called trust. And I’m convinced that people look for it, in brands, and therefore, in communication.

Sometimes the claim is made that brands are dead. That consumers have taken over control, have become supercritical, don’t accept anything from brands anymore, that the Internet has given them the power to challenge authority, etc. See this discussion between Fons Van Dijck and Guillaume Vanderstichelen.I don’t believe any of that, I’m with Guillaume here: even the most liberal, emancipated people desperately want to believe in something, in a person, in an idea, in a future. In a hero. They want to trust somebody. That’s the magic of Obama, and I think it can be the magic of your brand too.

Obviously, your brand has to be worth this faith, and that’s where the supercritical consumer kicks in: if something smells fishy, he’ll discover and share it. But that will not take away the, in my eyes fundamental, need for people to believe in something. I seriously believe cynical people are people who don’t dare to believe, not people who don’t want to believe.