Building a trusted brand

Kirsty Minns at Mother Design argues that you can’t be everything to everyone – not if you want to be trusted

Why have brands forgotten a fundamental marketing truth – that you can’t be everything to everyone? With a few exceptions (a public service, say, that needs to reach as many people as possible), brands that veer beyond a clear target audience tend to end up speaking to no one. 

Over the past 10 years, more and more brand owners seem to have forgotten this simple tenet. Yet, in today’s world, remembering it is more important than ever. If you don’t, you will dilute your message, you will struggle with standout and neglect your brand promise. 

But most importantly it’s a sure-fire way to lose trust, just as this commodity is at its most elusive. 

A precious commodity

Consumers are increasingly weary – of institutions, corporations, tech and media. According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in the United States as a nation has fallen 10 points since 2017. And the US isn’t alone: Trust is eroding around the globe, especially in developed countries and established democracies.

When it comes to brands, consumers are increasingly jettisoning those that don’t earn their confidence. As one recent study showed, 55 percent of customers refuse to return to trust-breaking brands and more than ever, trust is earned or broken with every single brand experience. 

If anything, consumers are more fragmented, more polarised. We live in an era of alternative social media platforms catering for numerous communities, beliefs and identities – from the emergence of the ‘sustainability generation’, to the growing trend of deinfluencers pushing against perceived wisdom, the rise of a new cohort of nihilists or the ‘queenagers’ celebrating midlife.

Embracing the nuance

With the stakes so high, why do so many brands still fail to see they can’t possibly nurture trust when trying to reach the widest common denominator? Brands might start off with a crystal-clear idea of their audience – but along the way they try to add an aside to Gen Z, or make sure to include the millennials, or just try to reach for more. In their quest to be relevant to all, they forget how to be true to their original purpose. 

Brand history is littered with cases of brands losing their way, trying to be everything to too many. Yahoo, for example, faced with the success of the likes of Google and Facebook took on more of a Jack-of-all-trades approach, lacking the singular focus of its rivals. Apple regained success when Steve Jobs rejoined the company in 1997 following a period of steady decline. Arguably, success was in part down to Jobs bringing back a crystal-clear priority on singular innovations rather than spreading the company too thin in a bid to match rivals.

But if you’re looking to boost confidence in your brand, or reclaim trust, you can’t just rely on a refresh or a wholescale rebrand. The jury’s still out on Victoria’s Secret’s attempt to recapture those put off by its blinkered view of female perfection via a wholescale rebrand; and has Volkswagen managed to put its emissions scandal behind it with its ‘authentic’ new strategy? I’m not convinced. 

A reset after a loss of trust can be a good start but it’s usually not enough on its own. You need to think more holistically about how you can signify expertise, responsibility and accountability throughout your brand. 

Reading the cues

This used to be pretty straight forward, as trust codes were rooted primarily in an authoritative voice. Think of how banks and financial institutions back in the day used to rely on the power of big business to instil a sense of trust and security. They gained trust through the story of the brand’s history, told in an authoritative way, and further endorsed by asserting that its standards and quality were unrivalled.

But the way to build trust today is more complex. It needs to be layered through everything you do. Every interaction, every visual, verbal, tone of voice, needs to bolster confidence in, understanding of and connection with your brand. At every touchpoint, with every texture, message, shape, colour or other sensorial cue, you need to know whether you’re reinforcing or undermining that trust. 

Instinctively, we scan our full range of perceptions, experiences and feelings before making a decision. In brand terms, this means we evaluate how we’ve experienced the brand in the past, what our social groups have said about it, and how it’s communicated verbally and visually. Brands need to use all these visual and verbal communication codes to purposefully instil the feeling of trustworthiness into the brand design.

Understanding the nuance

To do that well, you need to take a step back and really know the consumer you’re looking to target. Trust depends so much on the sector you’re in and the people you’re talking to. It only comes from truly understanding the belief system and needs of the people you’re looking to connect with. 

Take skincare brand The Ordinary. Trust in the brand is boosted through neutral, scientific codes to build confidence among an audience that buys into the simplicity and efficacy of scientific progress and results. 

Other brands might be looking to build trust through speaking to their audience through empathy and care. For them trust is built through a design language that is friendly and welcoming, using warm and inviting cues. A welcoming tone of voice, using real people and injecting a human touch into verbal and visual communications. A good example is investment app Robinhood that manages to disrupt the financial services sector by using human and friendly design language. 

These examples show that trust cannot be an afterthought. Only granular knowledge of your specific audience allows you to build strong relationships with your customer base over time – and helps you navigate difficult times when you make a mistake. 

The ‘everything to everyone’ mindset will never allow you to do this and puts the longevity of your brand at risk. If you want to build and remain a trusted brand, it’s time to refocus on who truly matters most.

Kirsty Minns is Executive Creative Director at Mother Design

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com