The onward march of globalization is permanently altering the relationship between consumers and the artificial psychological and experiential aspects of a brand.

Brands are now competing in a hand-to-hand battle for attention, and most importantly for trust. I argue that brands and brand architects should give up the fight. Trust is not something that is awarded to the victorious; it is something that has to be built over time through engaging stakeholders and by adopting a responsible approach to commerce.

Building Trust
Consumers are now bombarded by masses of information before, after, and during their experience with a product or service. Manufactured brand messages represent only one of these sources, and, assuming that consumers recognize the source, it is acknowledged as being one of the least trusted sources of information.

A December 2005 survey produced ahead of this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) shows that trust in global companies is now at its lowest level since tracking began. Despite a relative improvement following Enron, etc., trust could now be considered to be a corporate asset in terminal decline. The same survey shows that all of the other identified institutions and competing information providers are considered to be more trustworthy than large businesses. For the fourth year in a row, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) top the list of the trustworthy.

What is so special about trust? For a business, it represents a mind-blowing competitive advantage, infinitely exploitable, virtually impossible to replicate, but without perceived accountability; easy to lose, and even more difficult to regain.

What does the WEF survey mean for the corporate brand architect? Firstly, and most poignantly, it shows that their job is going to get yet more difficult. Consumers are less likely than ever to be “taken in” by manufactured messages. Secondly, if businesses are to learn from “more trusted” institutions, then they must take greater account of societal goals and aspirations in their day-to-day operations. I am not talking about superficial so-called “cause-related marketing”; I am talking about real organizational change and accountability.

Accountability
It seems obvious to note that stakeholders trust institutions that are seen to be contributing in some way toward the best interests of society. This idea would not have been alien to Aristotle in ancient Greece. Indeed, in today’s economy many businesses are aware of this relationship and have altered the imagery surrounding their brand so that it aligns with stakeholder expectations. However, for sustainable trust to be generated I would argue that businesses need to be seen to be placing themselves in a position where they can be held to account if they fail to meet their promises.

From the branding perspective, in order to consider how best to stimulate organizational accountability a business need look no further than the street. Who would you trust to do something important for you? Someone wearing mirrored sunglasses, a hood, and listening to an iPod, or someone whose head is free from accessories? I know which one I would choose: the person whose senses are unimpaired.

In a nutshell, I am suggesting that a brand should not simply reflect the consumer, it must be transparent and receptive to have a hope of starting out on the trust game.

Transparency
The “spin”-aware 21^st century consumer is proficient at examining brands and looking for discontinuities—discontinuities between the information that they have received from other sources, and the information that is embodied by the brand. The difference or similarity between the two pictures is one of the ways that today’s stakeholders judge responsibility and accountability.

Businesses with brands that are “image heavy” are now finding it difficult to stand up for themselves—even when they are in the right and it is the NGO that is mistaken.

Take the example of a big NGO like Greenpeace. When it decides to take on a business, it often succeeds in getting its judgment in between the business and the consumer. Why? Because, as the WEF survey shows, it is on average thought to be more trustworthy than a business. However, by adopting a transparent approach themselves, businesses can neutralize some of the negative reputational impacts of NGO confrontation. But, to avoid immediate and cynical dismissal, this transparency must be seen to be in place prior to the conflict.

Receptiveness
Multinational business is increasingly viewed as being arrogant, not necessarily by virtue of its behavior or brand imagery, but simply by virtue of its size. Many businesses that carry the burden of this conception have responded by initiating advertising campaigns. BP’s Beyond Petroleum is a prime example of this.

I argue that the preconception of arrogance is not one that can be shifted by adding to the imagery; rather, it’s better to respond by doing something completely un-arrogant, like taking off the headphones and listening.

This is a strategy that has been used by BP’s competitor Chevron in its current online debate about global energy. For the time being Chevron has taken a massive step forward in terms of transparency, but the stakeholder jury is still out. Will it act on the basis of what it has heard and make a significant shift in policy and practices? If not, Chevron will have severely damaged the value of its brand.

Giorgio Armani, Gap, Converse, and American Express provide us with another example. Seemingly listening to widespread public concern about the AIDS epidemic, they have partnered with Bono and Bobby Shriver (individuals who command high stakeholder trust) to launch the Product Red initiative. As partners, the businesses are able to retail products branded with the Product Red logo—provided that they contribute a portion of the profits to fight AIDS in Africa.

I don’t think anyone would deny that this latest initiative represents an opportunity for the companies concerned (so much so that commentators have coined a new phrase to describe it: Corporate Social Opportunity); however, I would argue that it also represents a powerful risk. By signing up to this initiative the partners have, perhaps unwittingly, gone further than they had intended toward increasing stakeholder expectation. I for one would now expect these partners to be leaders in terms of corporate responsibility in their respective sectors.

Conclusion

Trust is the competitive advantage of the 21^st century. Brand architects have a central role to play in this quest. They must ensure that the brand they represent is grounded in transparency, and takes account of stakeholder opinion. As for the brands themselves, they must be allowed to evolve naturally on the basis of substantive behavior.

At the end of the day, the only business that need fear a transparent brand is one that has an undesirable way of doing business, and to my mind a business like that does not deserve to succeed.