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Brands & Branding 2007 – In Brands We Trust

In Brands We Trust
True? False? Wishful thinking? Some of our leading brand practitioners offer their very diverse opinions in pithy, quotable quotes contributed to Brands & Branding 2007. Some are longer, but for brevity Kees Schilperoort leads with In Brands We Trust and trust is a must, for brand that lie, die.

Brands & Branding 2007 – In Brands We Trust

The underlying theme for Brands & Branding 2007 is In Brands We Trust, which can be interpreted in various ways. Here are some…

In Brands …
In Brands We Trust the financial partners that help us grow our wealth, the cars that keep our family safe and the clothes that speak on our behalf to friends and strangers alike.
Joseph Benson, Benson Brand Strategy(US)

Brands That We Can Trust
Trust is what defines a brand. Trust is built on successful experience of the brand. Every experience must justify that trust. Every time.
The idea that advertising can create a brand is wrong. Advertising can spark interest. Advertising can intrigue and lead to trial. Advertising can reinforce. Advertising can remind you of a successful brand experience, thus leading to re-trial. Advertising does not create trust.
If it's your strategic intent to create a brand, every rand spent on creating and guaranteeing a successful brand experience is worth three or four rands spent on advertising. Today's advocates of "living the brand" are creating strategic assets for the future - the ultimate form of future wealth: brands that we can trust.
Mike Perry,Perry & Associates

The Holy Grail
Trust has become the Holy Grail, it’s the stuff that makes things predictable for us crazed consumers. To earn trust requires absolute consistency and predictability and a level of authenticity that brand are only just starting to focus on. The quest for authenticity is the road we need to follow and our challenge is to ensure the entire organisation walks with us.
The brand and company’s purpose is in the spotlight. The organisation’s social capital or EQ has become a table stake. Brands must increasingly contribute to consumers’ authenticity and help them achieve their evolved ideal self. So add authenticity and organisational spiritual capital or SQ and win TRUST.
Kay Nash, Yellowwood Brand Architects

In brief …
In Brands We Trust, and trust is a must.
Because brands that lie, die.
Kees Schilperoort, XFACTA

The Power of Brands
Which petrol do you put in your brand new car? The brand you know, or the one you don’t? What about the nappies you put on your baby? Pampers, or BabaGoo’s Discount Diapers? And cornflakes? Kellogg’s or no name brand? Even though Kellogg’s probably makes the no-name brand as well. The power of brands can be summed up in one word: Trust.
Matthew Bull, Lowe Bull

The future of brands …
In brands we trust, oft times in the absence of any compelling reason for this blind faith other than sheer force of the brand’s history.
The future of brands are only as good as the continuing veracity of their proposition to the consumer, the alignment of a business’ value chain behind them and the quality of the executive team in whose curatorial care they find themselves.
Perhaps the question will become “In which brand teams do we trust…?”
Steve Miller,AVI

In Brands We Trust …
Because they help us to navigate the world, they help us to assert our identity and they help us to simplify our choices in the growing complexity of options.
Gail Klintworth,Unilever South Africa

Trial becomes trust …
I think we've become brand bedonderd. Most so-called brands are at best products and usually just companies with logos - why else are customers so fickle? So let's stop flattering ourselves by using the term until we see customers rewarding us with unstinting loyalty for consistently making a significant difference in their lives as both consumers and people. Only then can one claim to have mastered the process whereby trial becomes trust and products evolve into brands.
Derek Carstens, FirstRand

Brand anchors and brand servants
A brand is the total offering from name, product, design to presentation positioned as one package to the consumer. But its success depends on much more than marketing and I contend that it is in fact the brand’s social relevance that ultimately separates big brands from small ones. That, in my book is why creative people are the brand anchors. Of course marketing people also play a role but in essence they are just brand servants. Frankly, there is not a single successful brand that is not creatively anchored.
Nkwenkwe Nkomo, FCB

In Brands We Trust to be the beating heart of a business, not an enticing veneer presented to customers. Companies that seek to manipulate their brand on an external level without paying attention to the resonance of the brand in the real world (in the office, on the shop floor, over the telephone) are losing ground by the day to rivals who take an holistic brand management
approach.
Janice Spark, Managing Partner, Idea Engineers.

With trust up, costs come down.
Uncertainty about a brand is a cost to consumers. They have to do something they don’t want to – they have to work at making a decision. And people hate to work. Depending on the risk it entails, consumers take measures to reduce this risk to an acceptable level.
This gives rise to a Point of Trust: when we require no further proof to commit to the purchase we stop looking around for substitutes and buy the brand. On ownership, we then adjust our trust according to the brand’s delivery.
This point is not a fixed one, but depends on outside factors. For example, a protective father will quiz his daughter’s date for a far shorter period of time if the rugby’s on – the cost of interrogation is just too high for the reduction in risk – the kid’s lying anyway.
Sid Peimer, Boonzaier, Elcott, Housdon & Peimer

Trust Unsurpassed
The creation of effective and relevant advertising that is informed by appropriate language and cultural dynamics will forever form stronger bonds between quality brands and the people that consume them. The trust that epitomizes the strengths of these relationships and in many cases hold this comradeship together is not well comprehended, even by the makers of such brands. It is not feasible, without insight, to believe that in the rural and urban communities of South Africa people enjoy and drink more Coke than they do free water from the streams and the taps. That is trust unsurpassed.
Louis Seeco, Elements

Brands represent us …
Most brands, stripped of all their marketing finery, deliver something entirely functional. Yet people don't buy the brand function, they buy the brand promise. And with a promise comes trust and with trust comes an emotional connection. Why do people connect emotionally to brands? A brand is an explicit promise witnessed by millions. Individuals who select a particular brand over another are making a statement to those same millions about who they are and what they stand for in the world. They associate themselves with a particular brand's attributes and use those attributes to position themselves to everyone around them. The brand selected stands for something specific and is trusted not to waiver from what it represents. In brands we trust - not because of what they can do for us, but because of how they represent us.
Howard Fox, Liberty Life

Peace of mind …
Known and trusted brands reassure customers and generate peace of mind in the confusing consumption process. Companies that create a multi-sensory brand experience and engage in an empathetic dialogue with customers, using powerful multi-channel one-to-one communication, will develop brands, that are the store of future sales and profit, as valuable and sustainable assets.
Winnifred Knight, TheMarketingSite.com

The Brands That We Trust
The future of our company is in the hands of Brands that We Trust. Our core brands, that have grown and become household names in South Africa over many decades, are the most valuable assets of our company. In the Brands we Trust lies the potential to unlock future growth through continual reinvention, innovation and extensions into adjacent categories. It is both a responsibility and a privilege for marketers to be involved in nurturing and growing these great brands.
Brenda Koornneef, Tiger Brands

In Brands We Trust
Why? Because they simplify our choices in a mad head-splitting world of too many things to do.
Why? Because brands make a promise we can believe.
We believe when they have delivered against their promises since we first knew of them.
We believe because we like what we experience each time we use them.
We like them for the simple pleasure of knowing what we want and getting it without any fuss.
We like them even more when they give us a pleasant surprise and less when they disappoint.
In brands we trust as long as brands are entrusted to the best brand thinkers.
Nicholas Bednall, BBDO Cape Town

In Brands We Trust, in that trust brands reduce our risk and raise our self image. Don't trust brands that shout 'it is all about me and my business'.
Gordon Cook, Vega School of Brand Communication.

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