Gales Network • Brand building from the inside out

June 2009

Honest is the Best Policy
Honesty gives Brand Promises Added Impact

Big Idea: The distance between a brand and its customer used to be bridged by gatekeepers who owned a trust relationship with their audience. Charismatic authority figures on radio, TV and in print delivered (your) brand promises while motivating and reassuring customers with (what was perceived as) truth and honesty. In today's noise, these respected personalities are still relevant, but less so than direct brand access. No longer satisfied with a proxy, customers expect brands to build a personal relationship with them.

At Issue: How do brands learn to "friend" their customers and build trust that leads to brand loyalty?

Big Ideas View: Start with honesty and consider vulnerability. Sound scary? For corporate America or any celebrity, it sounds like professional suicide when the historical mandate for brands has been to provide their audience promises of idealism and perfection. We are THE Brand. We are big, we are powerful, buy us now.

Welcome to a new reality. What this "bigger than the little guy" position overlooks is that buying decisions have become dialogues directly between the customer and the brand. Take General Motors. Put aside any judgment about their past products or business practices and look at their brand strategies in recent weeks. Just a day after officially announcing their bankruptcy filing, they delivered a unified laser-focused media message: "We were failing and we made mistakes, but we're going to fix the problems and reinvent ourselves". Not all customers will give them a second chance, but they have earned permission to continue the dialog with more than a few. GM put aside the cone of silence on their weakness, named it and is moving forward.

Like a king without his clothes, some of our country's largest brands are being turned inside out as bankruptcies and failures mount; direct fallout from the "Great Recession". Dirty laundry hangs on some of the most dignified companies in this country's history. Can these brands be revived? The outlook is good if they treat the audience with respect, acknowledge the elephant in the room, and deliver an authentic promise. Keith Urban's visit to rehab is all but a distant memory following his public statement of apology to his wife, family and fans and promise to regain his sobriety. Urban delivered on his promise, fans held on and the album release that followed set sales records.

Honesty is not exclusively about acknowledging failure or mistakes. It might be the declaration that the product, the celebrity, or the service is in transition or not number one yet. How about "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" where honesty and humility win for the smaller brand. Honesty invites vulnerability. Check out Honda's willingness to post customer complaints on their public bulletin board.

We're talking way beyond "truth in advertising" with these efforts. These actions and messages form the foundation of trust. Trust leads to loyalty.

As with any (particularly online) initiative, balance openness with discretion. You wouldn't give away your innermost secrets to all of your friends. However, if you want to deliver a promise to two friends and hope they will tell two friends and they will tell two friends and so on and so on, start with talking to your audience like they ARE your friends. Communicate with customers or fans as if you were face to face. You will find that brand loyalty can grow without total dependence on the recognized gatekeepers. Keeping the gatekeepers loyal to you may depend on the amount of your next advertising budget so authenticity is a good policy for any brand. And that's the truth...honest.