In a recent report on the state of brand trust called “Distrust in America is High, but Brands Continue to Command Confidence”, which you can view here, it has been discovered that most Americans give individual brands the benefit of the doubt. This comes with the data that over 70% of Americans have said that they trust the average major company to consistently deliver on what they promise and that over 50% of Americans are in agreement that companies would have to do something wrong in order to lose their trust.
On a list of items that Americans said they trusted most, the two top brands also happened to be two of the best performing brands in the world, Amazon and Google. With Amazon and Google at the top of the list, it goes to prove that brand trust is vital to ensuring a brand’s success.
Source: https://morningconsult.com/form/brands-well-trusted/
In fact, this is something we teach through The Social Media Magnet. Before starting their Live Practicum campaigns, students go through every step of the branding process, including developing several brand promises and beliefs that they plan to keep in the effort to eventually build brand trust. Ultimately, this allows them to create what we call the brand hub.
In our model, the brand hub is what is at the center of the entire model as seen below.
In this model, the spokes and arrows coming out of the hub are the messages and messaging channels. The infinity loop overlapping it is the target audience that is capable of seeing any of the brand’s messages.
If a brand starts putting out messages that no longer connect with the audience, the model becomes off balance as seen below:
In an instance like this, the target audience is not being connected with. In order to fix this, the brand can return to its brand hub, the promises, values, beliefs, and trust that make it up, in order to re-center their model and begin creating messaging that will once again align with their target audience.
To learn more about The Social Media Magnet theory and model, you can request a free copy of our white paper here.
If you are a Professor interested in adopting our Courseware and Live Practicum into your classroom, you can gain a free Professor Preview by requesting it here.
Source:
Morning Consult. “Distrust in America is High, But Brands Continue to Command Confidence”. 2020.
