#4 Why has trust in corporate(s) dropped off?

Thanks for all your votes.

Let’s give Cadbury a chance shall we – we thought we’d give Cadbury the right of reply so we will be e-mailing this link to them – specifically the Marketing Director of Australia & NZ.

It seems that the first majority of us think that Cadbury are up to some sort of mischief. Over 90% of voters think that Cadbury are sneaking in a way to make more money and getting it under the radar.

Consumer trust in corporate(s) plummeted in the 90’s at the same time as corporate spending on ‘being good citizens ’ went exponential – for the first time marketing had truly failed.

In judging Cadbury – We are being like consumers – viewing corporate(s) as self serving and evil:

• Are you evil?
• Is your company evil?

We suspect you would say no – and yet when looking at another organisation we seem to judge them differently to ourselves. Why is this – it’s very important – it undermines the importance of Referral Marketing of course but you’d guessed that already. When advertising first started – advertisers were genuinely viewed as great citizens – allowing consumers to navigate away from ‘rip-off’ merchants to companies who were successful enough to advertise. (Source Permission Marketing – Seth Godin). It was P&G’s mastery of this evolving medium in the 40’s that gave birth to the current model as we know it.

The Yankelovich report of 2006 shows that as corporate spending on being ‘seen to be good’ went exponential so too:

• Consumer trust in corporate (s) plummeted to an all time low at the same time as advertising spend on ‘being good’ went exponential
• In fact the University of Chicago showed that we trusted religions, governments – in fact everyone less.
• In other words we didn’t believe the million dollars in advertising telling us how nice corporate(s) were.

Marketing – for the first time in history had truly failed. We, the marketing community could not persuade people anymore. The reason? Well the one cited in the Yankelovich report is that essentially we spent more time on interactive media than broadcast media so messages didn’t get through. That explanation just seems too simple, too superficial and ultimately it leaves us (marketers) feeling powerless – doesn’t it?

Why has trust in corporate(s) dropped off – have marketers failed or are corporate(s) more evil?

What has changed, really, really, really? Take out the it’s harder to reach people argument – Let’s pose another hypothesis – has trust dropped off because

corporates are inherently less trustworthy? Less responsive? Less caring? So in fact all the spending in the world could not mask the ‘evil corporate’ because their day to day behavior was at odds with their claimed values.

That argument doesn’t work either. The motive of most companies has not changed in this century or the last – to make money for their shareholders. Of course some companies will take more risks than others and some are more greedy than others – but really nothing has changed.

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It will be interesting to find out where we sit on this – and for you to reflect on the importance of Referrals more than ever. At the risk of ‘jumping the square’ – we’d like to get a broader feel on this for the community – so please forward it to a friend who might benefit from the answer.

Many thanks

The Anglo-Dutch TVS

Best

Jake & Cornelis