by: David Polinchock
Thanks to copyranter
for the tip on this piece. Wow, 44% of people surveyed don't believe anything a company says! If ever there was a reason to understand the value of compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences, this could be it! If this many people don't believe what you say, you better give them a good reason to believe what you do! There's not an industry on the list that cracks 40% trust and that's pretty sad. Some interesting numbers:
Guess it's a good thing they didn't ask about the advertising industry!
A recent survey found that 44% of Americans don't trust a damn thing that comes out of the mouths of companies. The poll asked, "Which of these industries do you think are generally honest and trustworthy - so that you normally believe a statement by a company in that industry?" and then posed a variety of industries, from supermarkets, airlines, to tobacco companies. Since the poll began in 2003, the amount of people answering, "none of these," increased 7 percentage points. Either companies are getting more deceitful, or somehow, Americans are getting smarter. When queried about the poll, Big Business, Inc. told The Consumerist, "We're aware of the results, and we're taking them very seriously."
Link: Polls: 44% Normally Disbelieve Any And All Company Statements
Original Post: http://blog.brandexperiencelab.org/experience_manifesto/2008/01/polls-44-normal.html
The people who run most organisations live in a world of smoke and mirrors.
The toughest challenge I face with my Brand Discovery programme is getting executives in the workshops to tell it like it is. They are so used to spinning that they lose touch with reality.
I ask them to tell me how they will transform the lives of their customers (because that's what the "brand promise" is all about) and they invariably start by giving me strap lines - usually bad ones at that! (because they aren't copywriters).
One of the truths that I find myself repeating time and again is that if you are't honest with your customers they'll find out soon enough. The CRM guys are always telling us that it costs ten times as much to sell to a new customer than it does an existing one, or that a customer is fifty times more profitable in his/her tenth year than in their first, but you can multiply that cost-of-sale figure by a hundred if you want to entice back a customer that you have already dissappointed.
Its not just the fact that managers talk a load of crap most of the time though, nor the fact that almost all organisations focus more on making promises than delivering them, its also about execution.
I have never measured this, but from my experience probably only one in ten marketing strategies is executed to an acceptable standard. That's about skills training, experience and probably most of all internal marketing, which is why Full Effect Marketing focusses on this area more than most.