We’re living in a new era for brands, where consumer trust has become a make-or-break difference for a brand’s success. There’s a new, accelerated expectation for brands to do more and say more than ever before. There’s an increasingly urgent need to address both personal and societal needs, affecting how brands operate.
Building on nearly two decades of experience in researching and analyzing trust in businesses and their brands, Edelman has developed a methodology for brands to measure and manage their own trust capital.
Edelman Trust Management (ETM) Brand is a framework for managing brands differently. Developed together with business leaders and renowned academics, it goes beyond providing static equity models to deliver a strategic roadmap for solving for specific challenges and identifying opportunities using trust’s predictive and protective power.
The Importance of Brand Trust
Our study, Brand Trust in 2020, uncovered that trust in a brand is second only to price when it comes to evaluating a new brand. Fundamentally, trust acts as a critical gateway from consideration to purchase to loyalty, deepening relationship between brands and consumers.
Trust allows brands to be better equipped to navigate disruption, seize opportunities, engage and act responsibly.
- Trust is a belief in the future. It is predictive in nature.
- It is a willingness to accept uncertainty (e.g. Trying a new brand / product).
- Trust enables smoother, deeper and more meaningful consumer relationships.
- Trusting is a rational and emotional process, built from conscious and unconscious biases.
- Trust is magic, intricate, powerful yet very subjective and complex.
