The Six Drivers of Brand Credibility - AMA

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The Six Drivers of Brand Credibility It’s time to tell credible stories. By Pete Blackshaw

B U S I N E S S W E E K K I C K E D off March with an

arresting cover story entitled “Consumer Vigilantes,” touted as a memo to corporate America that “hell now hath no fury like a customer scorned.” Author Jena McGregor writes that consumers “are arming themselves with video cameras, computer keyboards, and mobile devices to launch their own personal forms of insurrection. Frustrated by the usual fix-it options—obediently waiting on hold with Bangalore, gamely chatting online with a scripted robot—more consumers are rebelling against company-prescribed

At the end of the day, a brand is a promise, and consumers assess brands through the lens of that explicit or implicit promise. service channels. …And of course, they’re filling up the Web with blogs and videos, leaving behind venom-spewed tales of woe.” Is that hyperbole? No way! Brands today are facing a real credibility crisis, and consumers are putting brand positioning, claims, marketing rhetoric, and advertising to the ultimate torture test—thanks in no small measure to the Web’s peer-to-peer, opensource, easily searchable environment. And it’s not getting any easier to manage—in fact, it’s far from it. All the “conversational” tools that marketers wax poetic about in industry speeches and trade-publication sound bytes are being used to dial up scrutiny, expose weaknesses, and even embarrass brands. If there’s any outcome of today’s Internet world, credibility is everything. Brands are in a credibility crisis, with consumers losing faith that brands are credible—and brands not working hard enough to understand and nurture credibility. In today’s environment, the most impor-

tant asset companies—and particularly consumer affairs—can nurture is credibility. Credibility might not be on your balance sheet, but it’s the only asset you’ve got. It’s the only valid currency in this vast and noisy marketplace. Credibility is the product of six core drivers, which I will be articulating with far greater detail in my forthcoming book. (See Exhibit 1 on page 52.) 1. Trust 2. Authenticity 3. Transparency 4. Listening 5. Responsiveness 6. Affirmation

Trust Trust is perhaps the most critical driver of credibility, implying confidence, dependability, and faith in the brand. It flows from honest, ethical, straightforward, consistent, and predictable business practices. Unfortunately, trust is a diminishing resource in marketing circles, and marketers are doing their fair share to erode it in the eyes of consumers. Trust is the credibility driver that is most closely linked to product or service performance, especially as it relates to the implied promise in marketing or advertising. We trust brands that truly perform. At the end of the day, a brand is a promise, and consumers assess brands through the lens of that explicit or implicit promise. They ask: Do the brand’s ad campaigns stretch or exaggerate the truth? Do the claims match what the product can actually do or deliver? Is this a promise that was meant to be kept? Lands’ End. Now part of Sears, Lands’ End has built a name for itself by nurturing a trust-based relationship with consumers. Its apparel consistently measures up to its claims, and the company is unusually responsive if consumers ever question that trust. The net result: extraordinary high levels of loyalty

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and an off-the-charts digital trail of positive consumer-generated media (CGM).

Authenticity

bility, and it’s increasingly important in the age of the Internet. Activists often talk about transparency in the context of understanding the “brand behind the brand.” Transparency has always been important as a driver of credibility, but the digital age has put new emphasis and urgency on brands getting it right on this front. This can be a bit scary for brands, because there’s no simple boilerplate formula. Indeed, transparency in the extreme can prove to be counterproductive to shareholder interests and obligations. Why should brands overexpose themselves or release privileged information, beyond what’s absolutely necessary? For many consumers, it might be as simple as enlarging the fine print of product information or making ingredient listings clear and easy to read. Transparency also pertains to how brands address disclosures in advertising. Much of what we see in pharmaceutical ads, where more than half of the ad copy is dedicated to health risk disclosures, is what we might call “forced transparency.” Transparency is also at work (or not at work) in disclosures around privacy, or the use of personally identifiable information for uses beyond the scope of the consumer’s explicit knowledge. Of course, in most cases, transparency isn’t necessarily a choice; thanks to consumer-generated media, the real story behind how brands and companies behave emerges right out of the mouths of consumers who have relevant experience. The real choice lies in how brands choose to manage in a more transparent environment.

Authenticity is what is perceived to be real and sincere, consistent and genuine. Authenticity is an especially important driver of credibility in the digital age, where consumers have more tools at their disposal to prove or disprove what is real and true. There’s no question, for instance, that bloggers and posters on message boards put a very high premium on whether companies and brands speak with authentic vs. phony or overly contrived voices. One could even argue that the new realities of transparency put an even higher premium on authenticity. It becomes increasingly important as consumers grow more cynical about advertising and brands. The consumer asks: Is the brand real and sincere? Does it speak with a genuine voice? Are its motivations pure or manipulative? Does the brand truly care about me? Trust and authenticity share a symbiotic relationship, because consumers trust brands that come across as real and sincere. But there are important nuances that justify why we need to think about authenticity through a distinct framework. We’re entering a new era of marketing where consumers are evaluating brands through a much more stringent set of criteria—and in some cases they bring their own values and even causes to the table. GM Fastlane blog. Led by executive vicechairman Bob Lutz, General Motors struck the “authenticity” chord with its widely praised FastLane blog. Rather than put ■ Exhibit 1 out yet another “brochure-ware” oriented Six core drivers of credibility Web site, the world’s largest car manufacTrust Authenticity turer sought to communicate through the Confidence As advertised blog publishing platform. This provided GM the agility and flexibility to distribute Consistency Real and sincere content in real time, respond quickly to Integrity Real people negative news, and most importantly Authority Informal leverage a platform for senior executives to reflect on company developments Affirmation Listening and news.

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Transparency Let the sun shine in Easy to learn Easy to discover No secrets

Responsiveness

Playback

Empathy

Follow-up

Transparency

Reinforcement

Welcome mat

Invitational marketing

A corporation or brand is transparent if much (or at least the most relevant) information and data are known about it. Transparency involves openness and visi-

Search results

Humility (we can learn)

Solidifying the solution

Community

Absorbing feedback

Dignifying feedback

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Accountability

Dell (Direct2Dell). Despite all its challenges and woes, Dell is also leveraging transparency to competitive advantage. In an effort to combat several waves of negative, if not hostile, publicity around customer service, Dell computer made a rather bold move last July: It not only launched a corporate blog, but it addressed head-on most of the embarrassing issues and concerns that have been raised by bloggers and others. Dell even opened the door for blog comments, ultimately generating more comments per blog post than any major corporation. Not unlike Nike shining new light on supplier abuse, Dell held its entire organization more accountable around customer service (or at least took the first few critical steps) by using the candor and openness of the corporate blog.

Listening Listening is the degree to which your brand invites open conversation, is approachable, and (of course) is accessible. When wearing our consumer hats, we often ask, “Do you hear me?” This is a big issue today, because consumers in control want to

The real story behind how brands and companies behave emerges right out of the mouths of consumers who have relevant experience. feel respected and valued. Even the simple signal that a brand is open for conversation, a comment, or feedback can improve the relationship. Half the game for marketers in earning respect and credibility with consumers is simply showing they care. Listening drives credibility in several important ways. First, it humanizes the brand. The process of gathering open, honest feedback can be a humble, sometimes embarrassing exercise—because it reveals uncomfortable truths about how brands truly connect with consumers. Inevitably, however, the unprompted candor of the feedback pipe makes us all more accountable. Second, listening drives credibility because it is the foundation of relationship marketing and loyalty building. Virtually all consumers have an emotional desire to be heard, and the listening process validates that core need. Of course, the many brands now pushing blogs understand this quite well—as a core

strategy behind blogs is to position companies as proactive listeners. “We care what you think.” “We want to be part of the conversation, therefore we must listen.” Third, the process of listening shapes the external conversation. When consumers think companies are not listening, they get cynical or go to other outlets for their expression, and this was a decisive factor in the BusinessWeek consumer profiles. In fact, a big reason consumers drop CGM all over the Internet is because they don’t feel that they are being heard. It’s that simple. The sweet spot for companies in the listening arena is consumer affairs, and this is also the place where the biggest opportunities lie for organizational change. On this front, organizations are all over the map. Brands like Geico and Gerber splash a happy “talk to us” button in prominent places on their Web sites, while other prominent brands take you on a scavenger hunt to find the most unfriendly of e-mail forms. Toyota Motor Corporation. It is not only a leader in product quality and innovation, but the Japanese auto manufacturer has set a very high bar on attentively listening to consumers. Well beyond the call-center or contact-us form, Toyota listens to and processes virtually every quality or brand specific complaint on the Internet. Moreover, the company requires dozens of engineers to systematically review these complaints through an online reporting dashboard, as part of their “total quality” process. Similarly, Bank of America not only listens to direct consumer feedback, but it has developed a powerful new model of “360” listening that incorporates all forms of consumer data, including external CGM. As with Toyota, Bank of America views holistic listening as fundamental to brand strategy and competitive advantage.

Responsiveness Responsiveness is how you respond to, address, and manage specific consumer interactions. It’s one thing for companies to be listeners, but if they don’t do anything about what they hear, they simply don’t get full credit. Consumers have been conditioned through the years to believe that companies will always try to put on a great face—but in the end, never go the distance to address their concerns. And this is why companies that make the extra effort to be responsive resonate so well with consumers. In

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responsiveness, consumers see the eye of sincerity and genuine concern or appreciation for their problems or suggestions. Many consumers go the distance to let others know about their frustration with insensitive, indifferent and unresponsive companies. This is why customer service is so critical for brands and companies to work through. Geico. This company strives to always be responsive. If you call them with an issue, they get back to you promptly. In fact, smart companies like Geico increasingly realize that what appears to be a useless complaint is actually a loyalty driving or “upsell” opportunity. Lenovo. This company not only tries to improve customer service, but the brand is actually reaching into the CGM space to address and respond to concerns. In fact, one of Lenovo’s key executives frequently visits message boards to volunteer responses to issues.

A ff i rmation Affirmation is a collective assertion of the “truth,” particularly when consumers agree about a business or a brand, either positively or negatively. It occurs tens of millions of times every day, especially in the digital age. Not surprisingly, CGM is the primary engine of affirmation, powering the purchase behavior of the vast majority of consumers today. Affirmation is a core credibility driver because truth, in the eyes of a growing number of consumers and buyers, is defined as the collective judgment of either peers or other consumers. Credible brands in the digital age are affirmed through positive comments, opinions, recommendations, reviews, blog posts, or even real-time, face-to-face talk around the

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water cooler. Lousy brands are affirmed in the negative through a digital trail of hostility, documented bad experience, and especially search results. Social media tools such as Wikipedia (a free-content encyclopedia), also a trusted brand, underscore the role of reinforcement and validation. Multiple authors converge on definitions in this group-encyclopedia platform, rendering what is perceived by curious onlookers as authoritative consensus of opinion on a particular topic. Participating editors can tone down or remove sections they deem inappropriate, off-subject, or even the product of selfpromotion.

Bringing It Home Coming back to BusinessWeek, it’s worth mentioning that the same issue also ranks the top companies by customer satisfaction—drawing from its annual scorecard with JD Power. What’s so interesting is that the list of winners—brands like Fairmont, Ace Hardware, LL Bean, Trader Joes, Jet Blue, Amico—all do a great job of meeting most if not all of the six credibility drivers. These brands also tend to drive a high volume of favorable—and unsolicited—wordof-mouth, or what I like to call CGM, across the Internet. Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars (Portfolio, 2005) states that the most effective marketers tell the best stories—that is, the most convincing, the most relevant, or the most entertaining stories—about their brands. I would argue that today brands don’t just need to tell good stories, they also need to tell credible stories. Credible stories beget good stories, and good stories shape perceptions and ultimately buyer behavior. Credibility rules the day, so let’s stay credible. ■ Author’s note: Blackshaw’s upcoming book is entitled Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World (Currency, July 2008).

The Strategic Marketing Forum at www.marketingpower.com

About the Author

offers high-level resources and

Pete Blackshaw is executive vice president of digital strategic services for Nielsen Online, a firm he helped co-found, and Nielsen NetRatings. A former interactive marketing leader at Procter & Gamble and founder of consumer feedback portal PlanetFeedback.com, he co-founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and authors several blogs, including ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com. He may be reached at [email protected].

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