A Time for Renewing Trust

Especially at a time of national tragedy, we have to remember that one of the most valuable characteristics of a society is trust. When that existential sense of trust in the world around us is challenged, sensitivities will be high. Our McKinsey Boston office, where I am based, is two blocks from the bombings, and we were fortunate that everyone in our office and their families are fine, but it was a very scary day. My sense is that experiences like this, puncturing our sense of trust in the world around us, naturally lead people to be more circumspect about the choices we make.

In that vein, I have to admit that I am nervous about the implications on society of the huge leaps forward we are about to make in the intrusiveness of data collection and its use. When you start to see the direct recording and use of data, I believe anxieties will rise in ways we have not yet anticipated. Brands will need to take more explicit stances on why people should trust them. People walking down the street with augmented reality glasses can be taking movies of anything, look up faces in databases, and record everything they hear. Wearable monitoring tools will track a wide range of medical measures that will be uploaded into cloud-based databases. Social communities are already selling something close to personal dossiers to advertisers for targeting.

Yes, there have been many articles and discussion threads floated about privacy, confidentiality, and security, and many counter-arguments that people don't care or don't use the options they have to protect themselves. And we all value the ability for law enforcement to access video and pictures from crime scenes. But the road ahead, in the era of big data, looks much more extreme, especially as the brands we have trusted extend into new kinds of relationships with us based on the data they amass.

I am starting to see this issue on the agendas of executive leadership teams. So far, it has mostly been about protecting the data they have from hackers and misuse. But there is a broader dialogue that will need to begin. Privacy policy should be a board-level issue for many more companies beyond just financial services firms and health providers. Every marketer has plans to collect and use vast amounts of personal information and needs to set their guardrails. Then they need to turn their polices not just into internal limits on what they can do, but also bring their policies into the explicit fabric of their conversations with customers. Here's a great presentation from my colleague, Betsy Holden, that addresses this point directly.

There will certainly be huge risks to doing so, because all it may take is one breach to destroy any trust you have built. But the risk in not doing so is likely much worse. Making a good-faith attempt to address customers' concerns about trust is a huge step forward beyond where the vast majority of marketers are currently. Instead of burying policies in detailed terms and conditions, let's put the brand's privacy stance upfront, in simple words, and illustrate it with clear examples. Talk about it in social media. Prove it through stories. I would rather not see legislation arbitrarily set general restrictions. I think marketers can see the importance of multi-dimensional trust, recognize the anxieties in the market, and craft creative ways of making it a new aspect of connection to their brands.

For most brands, trust has meant safety and reliability of their offerings. As connected services, transaction tracking, and social CRM grow, more brands will need to extend their brand's trust factor to how they manage the privilege of knowing their customers individually.
General anxiety about the world around us went up a bit this week. Beyond the inevitable messages we will see about sympathy and strength, let's also use this as a moment to dig deep into the other anxieties we, as marketers, can help reduce.

How have you brought these new dimensions of trust into the fabric of your brand? Do you think this will differentiate a brand?

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[Image: Flickr, doegoxI]