Trust is a word bandied around liberally, like a ticket to be attached to a piece of luggage. A label, adornment, meaning little.
In a world where the bonds of community have been broken down by the pressures of the 21st century, real trust is a rare and earned privilege.
A brand is a badge of trust.
We tend to trust a brand where there has been a lot of media, after all, if the enterprise that owned it did not believe in the product, why would they invest? To some degree, this is the only advantage old media has over digital, most consumers see it as really expensive, while digital is seen (wrongly) as cheap.
Trust is never just given, it has to be earned.
Consider ‘The Knowledge’ as an example of trust.
This is the test you need to pass in order to get a licence to drive a black cab in London. To pass this most demanding of tests, an applicant must know every street, major building, place of interest, cross road, and transport stop, within 6.5 miles of Charing cross station. This adds up to 25,000 streets, many of them with the same name, and 20,000 landmarks. This is in addition to all the major routes in other parts of London. In a day of the GPS, Uber, and an alternative licence for a ‘mini-cab that is not much more than an over the counter transaction, why would you bother? So why is it that there are still people lining up to do spend the time and money to do the training to qualify?
The answer may sound weird, but ask yourself, who would you rather trust with your daughter on her big night out? Someone who had invested years and a lot of money into passing The Knowledge, and who would lose it after any sort of malfeasance, or someone who just turned up with a car and a GPS?
The driver of a black cab has earned your trust, not because you know them, but because of the investment they have made, which they would be dumb to risk, and dumb people cannot pass ‘The Knowledge’.
Consider that the next time you could benefit from dispassionate advice based on deep experience.
Photo credit: photo_forest.
