Marketing Day 2010: Patrick Collister talking about Trust (#md2010)

Brussels - The WDM Marketing Day is kicking off today with its first keynote speaker, Patrick Collister. He is talking about trust and brands, or how brands have lost the trust of the consumers.

Key take-aways:

• Data can be considered the oil of the organisation, but think about this: oil is dirty and it runs out... so brands have to start thinking about what they are actually doing with the oil.
• Brands are about being consistent, ethical and trusted.
• Trust doesn't come with the dawn of day, you will have to work on it. It will take time and don't screw it up like many (Cadburry, Nestle, etc) on way to success.
• Some brands who screwed it up:
• •  Mercedes A class falling over
  • Ford cars crashing
  • Toyota... pray you will survive the visit to the grocery store
  • Nestle: exploiting the first day of a child by dressing up their sales people like nurses and feeding people poisoned milk powder
• Brands aren't trusted anymore, in 1997, 52% of all brands were trusted, today this has dropped to 22%
• A big brand crash is waiting to happen, bigger than the financial crisis. Trust is going down and stock prices up... when is the clash of the titans (brand versus consumers) going to happen
• Be human as a brand, you can screw up, but act like JetBlue and let the CEO blog immediately and offering an apology. ALso show what you will do about it to solve it.
• Real brands need real people, let people blog in your company, like the the employees of Coca-Cola, Microsoft etc. those will be trusted more and at the same time the brand becomes human

Be human people!