Are You Building Trust With Your Brand These Days? It’ll Be Critical for the Coming Months.

Famous business author Stephen Covey once remarked, “Trust is the glue of life. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” 

So, as we begin to fully emerge from the pandemic, I’m convinced that companies will need to continue to stress the “trust factor” as they start to ramp up business. 

Confidence. Dependence. Reassurance. 

Terms that have been in pretty darn short supply this past year wouldn’t you agree? 

As businesses start to rebuild their brands, I believe they’ll need to include a healthy dose of trust in their efforts. 

As I discuss in my new book, The Coming New Impact Economy, Trust will emerge as a key component of the Customer Experience. Essentially, it will emerge as a requirement for success in the ‘20’s! 

Aside from some obvious businesses such as accounting or the legal profession, our ever-changing technology environment has produced some pretty interesting takes on Trust. 

One area is the expensive custom-made men’s suit business.  

So, upon paying thousands of dollars for a bespoke business suit today, most repeat customers usually have a pretty high level of trust in the final product they receive. 

One recent interesting application of new technology – robotics of all things – to the Trust arena is the staid veteran leader of men’s bespoke clothing on historic Saville Row in London, Huntsman's.  

Acquired by Belgian hedge fund manager Pierre Lagrange in 2013, Huntsman’s set about building a fleet of half dozen robots with a digital panel face as COVID sunk in. Lagrange figured if physicians can do kidney surgery long distance, he could certainly take a buyers clothes measurements over ZOOM.  

The results have included cutting down production time to just four months from the usual year to ship product. It also keeps Huntsman’s top tailors from jumping on a plane to Hong Kong or Istanbul to personally outfit a customer paying $ 8000 on average for a custom made suit – who knew, right? 

To summarize, no matter what your business – and never mind the times - “Trust” will always matter. Especially as we rebuild and discussed earlier in this article. 

So now for some business tips on how you – no matter your business – can capitalize on “the Trust Factor”! 

Business Tip # 1. Determine where Trust comes in for your business on a daily business. Is it trust in results achieved? How about reliability of your product or service? Or is it the promises your talent makes when interacting with customers? I think you’ll find trust attributes embedded in there somewhere – go ahead and give it a try! 

Tip # 2. Embed Trust in your Brand Strategy as you role out your strategic marketing plans for the summer and fall. And as you monitor your Brand Image in the market over the next year, determine if your “Trust Rating” is starting to go up. Simply, do my customers “trust” me? (BTW, if you haven’t taken a look at recent public “trust levels” in everything from government to companies in general, you’d be surprised at the dismally low ratings!) 

So get on the “Trust train” in the coming months. I promise it’ll pay off very well in these times! 

And so until we sit around the table kicking new business ideas around once more, let’s talk later. 

So, begin to think about unmasking a little but, above all, please stay safe! 

Ciao.