trust = gold

I was having a quiet conversation with a friend today–one of those where you share similar struggles and empathy with each other. And it surprised me when she ended the conversation by saying, “only two people know about this, you being one of them.”  I felt honored that she trusted me with such a sensative piece of her life, thanked her, and said, “trust is like gold to me.”

And then it hit me: in our culture today
trust really is gold.

In the Gut
Terri Shafer gave a great presentation yesterday on branding where trust also became the focus.  Because branding isn’t about our logo, our color palette, or the way we look.  Branding is our user’s gut feeling about us.  Branding is about trust. I could go on and on about that idea (because it gets me charged up) but I’ll spare ya.  But if you do want to know more, check out this quick presentation on The Brand Gap.

Looking good
Don’t get me wrong, looking good is still incredibly important.  In fact, Stanford   conducted research on public perception of a website’s credibility and were surprised when they found out how much depended on the look of a site. How professional our digital presence looks really does matter.  Everyday we are subtly communicating to our users that they can trust us (or not). And none of us can do that by ourselves.  Its definitely a collective effort.  Here’s Stanford’s top 10 guidelines for increasing a site credibility, in which functionality and content are also important.

Hype vs. Crow
Content is huge.  In fact, it became so obvious to me yesterday when I was listening to several different people speak about ASU.  The first person we heard was a very charismatic, energetic, good-looking guy who was there to motivate the group.  Nothing against this guy, but I have to be honest with you, the whole time he was talking it all felt cliche–like it was just hype.  But when President Crow came and spoke, it was like night and day.  He wasn’t emotionally overcharged, yet everything he said was so meaningful and motivating.  It was absolutely packed with big ideas and tons of information (dang, that guy can remember data).  And in my gut, I trusted him.  I honestly believe in what we are trying to do here… so much that I will give everything I can to it:  time, energy, extra-effort, my first-born child  (just kidding… but she is a student here).

Bruce and Cluetrains
These ideas about trust were also reinforced today when Bruce Mau was talking about how “everything communicates.”  He said our ideas of communication have to radically change, because its not just about what we say, its about what we do (and he gave a great example of a huge shoe company who has spent millions of dollars on advertising but were stripped of revenue and trust when the public found out about some of their labor issues). The market is so transparent now. The ideas he talked about reminded me of the Cluetrain Manifesto –how all of us have refined BS-filters and we just don’t buy in to marketing-speak anymore. And why would we??  We are bombarded everyday–with marketing, advertising, spin, propoganda, and even lies–approximately 2000 messages a day.

So if the value of a commodity is determined by how rare it is,
maybe trust is gold.

But now I’m wrestling with what to do with that idea.  How can we collectively earn, value, and protect that trust.   I’m excited to hear about how Bruce Mau proposes to evolve our brand/presence.